First world neighbour with contactless fish

So I jotted down a list of things I wanted to remember to blog about. No, I haven't lost the list; I'm just explaining why this post will be a bit all over the place.

First on the list is fish. (Stop and think for a minute to work out what that means. Ah yes.) In the supermarket I bumped into a woman I used to work next to in our old exercise class. We were both choosing fish. She had smoked haddock and planned to serve it with a poached egg and rice. "That sounds nice," I said, and then I bought cod, new potatoes, and a tub of hollandaise sauce. Which is why she is skinny and I'm . . . not.

It's a bad time of year for tree seeds. The surface of our pool is covered in them. First world, middle class problem. Rich enough to have a pool, not rich enough to have a poolboy to scoop them up for you.

Every morning at about 7.40 our next door but one neighbour goes out to his car and makes a phone call. We hear it ringing. Husband thinks he's phoning his mother in Greece. I doubt he'd do that every day.

I'm doing banking in my Duolingo Welsh lessons. Contactless is ddigyffwrdd. One vowel, all those non-vowels - consonants, that's it. Unless you count y as a vowel. Then you've got daearyddiaeth, meaning geography. No wonder I struggle.

Thank you, Arctic Fox, for reminding me that my red plant was called Heuchera. This one was planted in the same bed at the same time but didn't get the tlc that the red one received.

It was looking even more pathetic but more light and space seems to be making it happy.

Come for a walk

Since I "know the way" led Daughter on a sliiiightly overgrown path she refuses to do any more exploratory walks until we get a map. Personally I don't think a map will help unless she can read it, because Husband will tell you that map-reading isn't a skill I have. (But I am good at finding 'scenic' routes.)

So I asked Husband if he wanted to come for a walk to explore Ilston Valley.
"No chance! I know what your walks are like!" (He approached again a few minutes later to apologise for sounding aggressive. I told him it all made good blog fodder.)

So it was just me and Toby who set off from the Gower Inn to try and find our way through Ilston valley to St. Iltyd's Church. So please join us now for an adventure in the valley.

First, ladies and gentlemen, look to your right where you'll see some ruins.

The ruin is the site of a pre-Reformation Trinity Well chapel used by John Miles (or Myles) from 1649 for meetings of the first organised church of baptised believers in Wales i.e. the first baptist chapel in Wales. (In 1663 Miles emigrated to Rehoboth, Massachusetts where he set up the first Baptist church in the state. He also took with him the Ilston Church Book, now preserved in America, in which he recorded that the first two converts in Ilston were women. He found this disappointing but consoled himself by believing that the Lord was ‘thereby teaching us not to despise the day of small things’!)

And with that, let's continue on our way. The path is flat and edged by a few astilbe struggling to survive in amongst the invasive Himalayan Balsam.

It looks pretty but is taking over everywhere.

A little further on and we come to a fork in the path.

Neither path looks well-travelled but the one to the left crosses a bridge and all the articles I've read about the walk say there are a number of bridges so we go left and follow the path up. And up and up and up. Until it brings us out at the top. In a field. With no sign of a church anywhere.

"Come on Tobe, back down we go."

Another path follows the mostly-dry river-bed, whether that's through lack of rain or a diverted course I don't know.

And through a guard of honour of tall thin trees.

And so we continue on until we reach our destination, St. Iltyd's Church.

Most of the church dates from the thirteenth century.

I do love an old graveyard although most of the graves I saw were nineteenth century or later

I couldn't get at these, and probably wouldn't have been able to read them anyway.

The yew in the church grounds is said to be as old as the church itself.

I didn't want to take Toby inside so we turned around and made our way back to the car park. Excluding getting lost exploring the area, the route took about half an hour each way, and was very lovely.

Yesterday I saw a post telling how to distinguish between hemlock (poisonous) and Queen Anne's Lace. 

But I couldn't remember! I think this is Queen Anne's Lace.

Postscript

I had to go to Mumbles and while I was out Husband decided to pick-axe the root.

He lost his balance, cut his leg, and threw soil all over himself. 

I call it karma. And the root remains.

Meanwhile the library will be closing for at least three weeks from Saturday for necessary work to the children's library. The library was built in 1935 and is a listed building so they're having to find the same plaster as was used then to replace it. If work at Zac's is anything to go by it will be longer than three weeks.

On my way home from the library I wasn't listening to the radio - I had the windows open and it was too noisy - but its display was showing. A synopsis of what was currently being broadcast:

Socrates flees his wife who faints when she feels Plato's legs.

You want to listen to that now, don't you?

Oh yes, and back in the garden.

I first planted this in the shady side bed. It was always being dug up or trampled on and was looking very pathetic so I transplanted it to a pot for some special care. It did well and I was able to put it back into the garden, in a better bit of soil, and look how it's flourishing today. I don't have many great success stories so I have to make the most of them when I do.

Speaking of non-success stories I have lost yet another pillow case. I have given up and ordered eight white pillowcases and two white fitted sheets.

The never-ending story

From your comments on my previous post I assume wandering cattle aren't a normal sight where you are. They are here. They're often over the golf course or even down on the beach. There is a lot of common land in Gower and the farmers seem happy to let their animals roam.

Daughter's front garden wall was knocked over by a cow but there was no recompense. The cows will belong to several farmers and there's no knowing which is whose. 

Now back to the never-ending story of The Gardener and the Bamboo. 

I bought me a riddle, which seems an appropriately gold-prospector way of saying it, and I've been sitting in soil sieving it. 

As well the bamboo roots and the bush roots, I uncovered another deep root that doesn't seem to belong to anything. In fact, it might not even be a root; it could be an ancient relic, the hull of a Norman ship perhaps.

I decided I was going to dig this thing up. Like the bush I couldn't pull it up from the top so I'd dig it up from the bottom. Then Husband came along and said, "You should be using the pickaxe." He never learns, does he?

So it was a matter of pride to me that I should succeed in my endeavour. 

After about half an hour I decided pride was over-rated. I went in and told Husband he could dig it up with the pick-axe. "Are you grumpy with me?" he said.
"Whatever makes you think that, dear?"

However while I was, as I like to think of it, prospecting for treasure, my mind wandered to the California Gold Rush. I wondered how many people found gold, how many of them became rich, and how many died in the attempt?

Around 300,000 people travelled to California to look for gold following its discovery there in 1848.

Although an estimated 750 tons of gold were extracted very few people made a fortune. Shops selling shovels did well! As did Levi Strauss who came up with his riveted blue jeans idea.

It's estimated that 100,000 people died during the Gold Rush, of starvation, disease, accidents, and violence.

One other interesting detail - well, I think it's interesting. I found myself talking to myself in Moira Rose's voice. (We're rewatching Schitt's Creek.) In my head I sounded great.

Barbecue surprise

My plan for dinner has once again been thwarted by my own ineptitude. I suppose I could make ribs in barbecue sauce surprise, the surprise being there are no ribs. I know I looked at them when I was doing my order; I must have forgotten to press the button.

Gnocchi and veg it is then.

* * * * *

A lovely walk again today from Southgate to Pwll Du and back. A long walk - why is the hill so much longer on the way back? And once again regretted not taking our bathing things. The dogs had a wonderful time though and I only panicked briefly when Toby began swimming out to sea.

Stopped for a drink and cake on the way back. A mum and baby were comfortable on the roundabout.

But then as we were setting off for home . . . Rawhide!

Some sort of cattle drive was in progress although that implies cowboys rounding them up, and there wasn't a single, "Yup, giddup." It was just a load of cows - with a bull at the front - out for a stroll. This is just the back end of the herd. And, yes, it was definitely a bull: it had a willy.

They just kept on coming and even when we thought they'd finished and began walking home we had to take cover again as more came from the side street, and then even more down the main road.

Mummy cows are very protective of their babies and can be nasty if they feel threatened, especially by dogs, so we kept well out of their way.

* * * * *

Yesterday I did a bit more bamboo-battling. I was plugging away at it when Husband came along and said, "You should have started the other end."

He has survived heart attacks and cancer; he is lucky to survive a hot, sweaty, grumpy, wife.

Silly bird

So Husband dug up this bamboo root with barely a shortage of breath.

While I continue plugging away at the smaller roots.

When I dug up the first big stone slab I wasn't concerned; I've since dug up another eight and I'm beginning to wonder: were they there for a purpose? It is a raised bed but you wouldn't use big expensive stones for the base, would you? 

As I'm sitting there digging away I think, it's okay, it'll be fine. I'm very much a glass half full person. It's not as if I'm endangering the foundations of the house. The worst that could happen is that a giant crater appears and I'll fall into it and find myself at the bottom of a pit. There used to be mining in this area and probably underneath our garden.

As I'm sitting there I also notice a blackbird in the greenhouse, or more correctly, trying to out of the greenhouse. I keep shouting, "Just move over a bit to where the gap is. You got in, you must be able to get out again." But apparently not: I had to open the door wide for him.

Earlier Husband showed me the remains of a fig.

He'd seen a bird, probably a sparrow eating it. It seems sparrows and blackbirds will do anything for a tasty fig. Silly birds. Much like someone who left her phone out in the rain overnight. (It's fine.)

Puff, puff, puffin

Thirteen years ago Husband and I visited Skomer, a tiny island off the coast of Wales. We were in search of puffins. I mention this because of Arctic Fox's blog post - you really should watch his wife's video of puffins. 

There were thousands of them, all over the place. Obviously used to humans they wandered across the paths in front of us quite happily.

* * * * *

Less happily we discovered that the rugby game between the Lions and an Australian side wasn't on live television this morning. Sky has the contract but an arrangement is in place whereby S4C, the Welsh channel, can show the games, which is how we were able to watch last Friday's game against Argentina in Dublin. But today's is the first game of the official tour so maybe the rules are tighter. It's on tonight at 8.00 pm so we are both resolutely attempting to avoid finding out the score until we can watch it.

Did she or didn't she?

Morning in Zac's cleaning and sorting out clothes resulting in another eight bags to go to the charity shop. The stuff I sent for recycling? Turns out it failed quality control. So we didn't get paid for it but at least it's gone.

I think the company I originally contacted has been taken over by a larger firm and they've narrowed their requirements. Annoying but nothing to do about it.

Afternoon a couple of hours in the garden starting the job of clearing bamboo roots. While I know I'll never get rid of them completely I can let them know they've got a fight on their hands.

No treasure again but one glass jar and two large stone slabs.

Then when I got too hot I sat down in the sunshine and read my book. I am engrossed in it! It's called The Girl in Cell A by Vaseem Khan. A girl found guilty of murder when she was seventeen is released and returns to her home town. She has dissociative amnesia and can't remember what happened but believes that she is innocent. So half the story covers the sessions with the psychologist trying to release the memories. I should finish it this evening. I so hope she finds she is innocent. 

Oh yes, and the insurance taken out by Uncle in 1965 and forgotten about will be paid to me. It's less than a thousand but still a pleasant surprise.

Am I a hobbit?

We have a family whatsapp page and Younger Son posted this image the other day.

Both GrandSon1 and GrandDaughter2 asked, independently, "Is that Granny as a lion?"

* * * * *

Hundreds of small jellyfish washed up on Pobbles today.

* * * * *

Commenting on the previous post, pbfurn noticed that I had clinodactyly.

Well, first I had to look that up. 

And, yes, it's true, I do have clinodactyly, meaning a bent finger, especially the little pinky. Both my pinkies are slightly bent as are several other fingers. I never knew it was a 'thing' though. I thought I just had bent fingers.

Apparently between 1% and 20% of the population have this abnormality, and it's one of the physical anomalies significantly associated with ADHD. Strangely enough Daughter and I were discussing autism, ADHD, and OCD today, and concluding that most of us are somewhere on some spectrum. I heard a recommendation on the radio that rather than call people atypical the so-called normal ones should be called zerotypical. But I can't believe anyone is completely zerotypical.

Of course I also have eleven toes so that combined probably makes me a hobbit at least.