Tag Archives: Pepper

Busy Day

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We have visitors coming up from south for their holidays tomorrow so I wanted to be prepared, food-wise, and have spent my day chained to the stove, cooking with varying degrees of success.

I made 3 curries, 2 chutneys, a really bad cake (I am quite ashamed of it and will try and pass it off as pudding rather than anything you would eat with a cup of tea), a batch of ice cream, got another one mixed ready to go, and lastly boiled and peeled lots of duck eggs for picnic sandwiches. Obviously I was supervised.

 

Later on, Monster and Pepper had a good battle – it was revenge for when Pepper had ambushed Monster.  He won, of course and she ran downstairs using me as her shield in case he had another go.

I needed a break from the kitchen, all the cooking and so I took everyone outside.  After putting out the haynets for the Shetland ponies, I went into the sheep field and sat down on my coat for some much-needed sheep-watching or maybe it was the other way around?

 

Pepper sat on me and then beside me getting annoyed with the flies.

She was trying to catch them by snapping randomly at the air.

Lambie was far away.

And then suddenly he wasn’t.

My dear little boy. We had a lovely chat.

And he also passed the time of day with Pepper too.

(which I always think is very sweet).

Sitting in the field surrounded by flowers and sheep, listening to the birds, while Pepper snapped randomly at flies made a peaceful break after slaving away in the kitchen all day.

The Simmer Dim

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This is to show you just how light it is at night this time of year – I took this photo from my bedroom window at 11.30 p.m last night.  It doesn’t get any darker at the moment but the birds do stop and it is magically silent for a few hours in this long Shetland twilight (“Simmer Dim”).

Anywho, today was lovely. The sun shone and all was good. It was a rather strenuous dog-walk, when Pepper successfully and expertly removed some hill sheep from our field (separating them from my flock, getting them through three gates onto the track) like a well-trained collie, listening to my instruction. I was telling her what I wanted, and miracle of miracle, Pepper understood and made it happen. So I decided we all needed to have a sit down in the garden to recover from such exertion.  Ted was no help, of course.  It was not his bag.

Feeling better and after lunch, we moved ourselves to my shed and I made a felted sheep.

Everyone was there recovering from Pepper’s efforts.

And then OH came home from work and everyone wanted to leave.

(I do love this photo very much).

Sick Dog Day (again)

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I have a headache, so I will keep this short.

Monster “helped” me to fail to complete my morning quiz (NY Times Connections). In my defence, they were very weird words today – I hadn’t a clue and neither had Monster. He was absolutely no use.

Pepper was also having an off-day.  She woke me up at 4 a.m. being sick and I immediately took her outside. I then spent the remainder of the night hugging her in bed, while she shook and her tummy made alarming noises.  Poor little soul was very unhappy but she managed to sleep a bit while I was now wide awake, which probably explains my headache.

I have just about finished my daily chores, which are kept to the bare minimum because it is summer.  The Shetland ponies who live on the track, however, do have two haynets in the afternoon.

They approve of this routine and come racing up.

It is not easy, though.  The haynets are small-holed, double nets so the ponies have to work very hard for every piece of hay they can prise out.

Today Newt said he couldn’t be bothered with the hay and he is fat so there must be something on the track.  I refuse to worry.

And then suddenly Pepper felt better, raced inside the house for her tea and everything was back to normal.  OH says there are many rabbit corpses lying around (thank you Monster), so I have a feeling they might be the problem.

More sighing *** oh, Pepper ***.  Early night for us both, I think, to get rid of my headache.

Grubby Little Boys

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Last year I took down part of the Shetland ponies’ track and put all the plastic fence posts into a big tonne bag in case I needed them again.  The bag was left securely tied to the fence post. Since then, every time I walked past the bag, I thought to myself that those fence posts would be better off in the shed.

It was a big task so I split it up into doable bite-size chunks and every day (if I remembered) I would go down the hill and take up a few fence posts to put in the shed until it was empty.  And then today, I went down with a knife and a pair of strong scissors to cut the tonne bag off the fence post, dragging it up the hill to put in the shed.

The ponies spent their morning staring at the vacated spot from the tonne bag.

They knew something was different but they couldn’t quite put their hoof on it…

So far, the track is working well.

Everyone is happy if revolting. Tiddles will not let me brush him so I that’s his choice.

The farrier is coming on Thursday so I might have another go then when Tiddles can’t argue.

Newt is sporting his sleek summer look.

And Albie is also revolting.

Silver is the perfect little white dream pony.

And Waffle optimistically followed me up and down the hill after my tonne bag.

In other news, Little Herself is back on form.

And note-to-self, I must remember to check my brakes!

No Poppy Film

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After breakfast, I collected up all the buckets – I usually leave everyone to get on with eating rather than wait around – and I noticed their big water container was half full or half empty, depending on your perspective in life.

Anyway, while everyone was snoozing as it was a big breakfast, I decided to wait around for the container to fill up.  I had Pepper for company.  She was unhelpful.

Depressingly, the field mud still hasn’t dried up but there’s nothing I can do about that.

Meanwhile, Pepper precariously perched on the wobbly drystone wall that “rumbles” (disintegrates) while you look at it.

At one stage Pepper decided to clamber on my shoulder, which was not helpful either.

Once the container was full and I knew everyone was in the right fields, I went into the house for my breakfast and to decide whether to continue with trying to film the poppies again.  But that choice had been taken away from me.  All the poppies had opened by themselves apparently earlier this morning.  I now officially give up.

So I contented myself with trying to take arty-farty photos of them instead.

So, again, here is a plethora of Monster photos to make up for another day without the poppy-opening film.  And that is that.