dis boot and das boot

It feels like an age has passed and I haven’t written a  thing, not even thought about writing a thing. Sometimes it’s like that, we wait for inspiration, we forget that we are waiting, we get on with our lives. There is a huge amount of nothingness here in the mountains, well some would call it nothingness, there’s plenty, if you know where to look, we have to take our inspiration from tiny things, from the inane, from the “doing-ness” of our lives.

November has had a lot of ups and downs, we’ve had the most bizarre weather

and not enough rain and then loads all at once. It’s been too hot, then really cold. We had no olives and what we did have ended up on the floor after gusty winds.

I’ve made some splendid cakes

and cookies

I’ve sown some stuff

Meanwhile,  in the garden

things are slowing down, I’m still harvesting parsnips, carrots and Kale, herbs and flowers. The dahlias have been dug up and put to bed, the citrus have been covered again. the asparagus has been cut down.

A few years ago, I let some garlic go to seed
aside from the fact that they look beautiful, I wanted to collect the seed and grow my own garlic.

It can take years for the garlic to be a useable size and you just keep harvesting and keeping for next years seed, until it is big enough, which seems like a faff (it is) but possibly worth it in the end (or not)

When I’m super stressed (which is most of the time, it seems), I count, I count everything, how many steps I’m walking, how many things I am picking, how many times I have turned the spade over etc. etc.

Last week I planted 457 cloves of garlic………I dressed the soil with ash from the bread oven and some blood, fish and bone, raked it all in and am keeping fingers crossed that that will be enough to get them going…….

 and just to round off, a little light-heartedness about boots…..
Rick’s boots, have been the source of much entertainment over the last 6 years, mostly in the sort of laughing one does when one is a little bit desperate and trying to see the funny side of things when actually they couldn’t be sadder………I’ve lost count of how many pairs of boots he’s been through on this build, aside from how much money they cost, it’s the logistics of buying them that cause the most amount of angst because he is too big for Portugal (clothes wise)……they have to come from the other world….the world were men have feet that are bigger than women’s feet!!!

which brings me to the end of this entry and little ditty about dogs, life, the universe and everything……

Woody caught a boot,

a lonesome, soleless, cowboy boot…….god knows where it came from, how old it is or who it belonged to, given that there are not many cowboys around these parts (although I did see one recently in the agri store, sporting a fantastic moustache and wearing spurs….), it’s been up and down the road several times, being picked up daily by one of the dogs…..

the dogs and how they are, are a constant reminder that often the very thing that you want/need the most is often right under your nose, if only you could just stop for a moment and use your senses to find it or see it……….