The House(s) of Fran_mart

This follows on from http://franmart.blogspot.com/2008/07/life-rural-joys-of.html, and like that post concerns water. However on this occasion it is about having too little, rather than too much. We had thought that in the second half of August Spring must be getting close. Perhaps not here yet, but we should be able to see it! However when I got up on the 19 th the outdoor thermometer was reading -3.9C and everywhere was white and crunchy underfoot. The sprinklers were going on the front lawn giving some very nice icicles on the vegetation. This was a genuine joy. The antijoy came when I turned on the tap in the kitchen to get the coffee happening: zip! Obviously the frost had got to the system somewhere. After some scurrying around by Frances we had enough, from various bottles, to make a serve of java but that was it. My next strategy was to pour hot water (if I could find any) on the area around the pump. Frances was a tad concerned about this and suggested ringing our p

It is a fair while since I mentioned Tammy the rocket propelled rodent on these pages, in http://franmart.blogspot.com/2008/06/tammy-rats-excellent-adventure.htm, so here is an update on her activities. The yelping at night became resolved (more or less) when we decided to let her out of the laundry at night and to sleep in the lounge. We think we were also getting on top (fortunately intellectually rather than physically) of the house training situation. Then she was in kennels while we went away for nearly three weeks and on our return everything more or less reverted to the start. Two weeks after we returned and the night time noise has gone back to acceptable standards but there are still issues with what we find in the morning. But there are some positive signs on that front also. It is basically the only major problem (apart from having to make arragements for her if we go away etc). Perhaps part of the improvement is due to us having introduced bones back into her diet as il

Of the many forms of art which I enjoy near the top of the list are the efforts of Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy . Mr Long tends to leave rocks at odd places along huge walks and then write a book about the route he took: I think conceptual is an appropriate word here. Mr Goldsworthy builds things (or at least designs things and manages a bunch of lower orders building them). One of his best known things is a wall built at Storm King Gallery in upstate NY. Here is an image of that. Since originally writing this post we have visited the UK equivalent of Storm King, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park  Although we missed their Andy Goldsworthy exhibition (by about 3 years) they still had several excellent examples of his work.  Herewith the relevant post . We decided to try something along these lines by shlepping some rocks around on our morning walks. These are the first images after about 6 months. One of the issues is that the wildlife seem to enjoy knocking the rocks off

Although we have had temperatures below freezing most nights for the last three weeks a bunch of our bulbs are making a floral appearance in the garden. Here they are for your enjoyment.