Zig-zag

Nothing in my life ever moves in a straight line.  Every time I think I've ironed it out and am steering a straight course for my goal something comes up.  It's not a complaint, just an observation. 

Take the last couple of weeks for example.  There I was gaily motoring though the gardening and looking forward to the summer holidays when I will really get a chance to get stuck in, not to mention all the art and poetry I am going to make while I am about it. (Yes I know, I do set myself impossible goals!)  When all of a sudden I had to drop it all and shoot off to Ireland.  Not that it wasn't planned, but I kept trying to push the travel date away as I am not the keenest of flyers and anyway I wanted to get all the garden shredding done first. 

On the other hand it was a very nice visit.  The occasion was the launch of my WB Yeats coin by the Central Bank of Ireland at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  I went with some trepidation as I had not seen the finished coin and there were some minor hiccoughs along the way with the making of the design.  When I saw the coin I was absolutely delighted.  It has turned out beautifully and I felt very proud to be the centre of attention at the party.  I had to give a little speech and even though I had written it on the plane in a bit of a rush I was quite pleased with it and it was well received by the people attending.  It was a lovely affair, with poetry readings, speeches and songs.  There was food and wine in abundance and I met some old acquaintances and made some new ones.

I was very pleased with the result

Not wasting a moment after the launch, I had a lift to Cork with some dear friends of mine who had taken the time to come up and support me.  So after a 6.00am wake-up call and a long day flying and launching I arrived in Cork at around 11.30 at night.  Of course I could not go straight to bed, instead I had to share a glass of wine with my daughter, Kate, AKA 'the couch potato', Looki's best friend.

We spent the next few days gaily chatting, shopping, cooking, chatting, eating, receiving visitors and chatting and on Sunday I was once again speeding back home to write my usual weekly lesson plans and pick up where I had left off.  It has taken me the whole week to get somewhat back on track.  It is always the same, once you are knocked off course it is very hard to get back onto it as there are always a million and one other little things to attend to before you are cruising again. 

On arrival the Westies had to be received of course.  This time they had stayed with the lovely Lourdes and her husband Rob.  Before this they have gone to Posh Pets, where, I hasten to say, they are very well looked after, but Lourdes and Rob mind them in their own home and they get to sleep on sofas in the house, which is of course what my pampered pooches are used to.  Lesson plans had to be written as I mentioned, emails caught up on, unpacking and washing of clothes, stowing away of items and supplies purchased in Ireland - the important things like poo bags and selfie sticks.  The latter was a gift from Kate.  I still have not used it, nor even worked out how to, but that is something that I can do in my own time, no rush.  I don’t really have time for any navel gazing right now.  When will I ever?

Not that they are hard done by at Posh Pets - this was their last grooming day and the two girls seem right at home!

Inevitably the Westies needed and still need lots and lots of cuddles to make up for my absence.  It was plain that they had had a lovely time though.  Lourdes and Rob lost their two Westies earlier this year.  They were quite old, but it was a bit of a shock for them both to go so close together.  I think that they enjoyed having my naughty crew.  They took photos of them and kept seeing things that their two, Merlin and Chloe, used to do.  They could all have been cast from the same mould, except for Candy of course, luckily they threw away the mould when they made her. 

One of Lourdes' photos - They seem quite happy in their home-from-home

She is a one off for sure and I don’t think the world could take another Candy.  She is always causing some ruckus or other.  Today for example she had a tummy upset.  She did not eat this morning and all day long her tummy was making ominous gurglings.  Without going into too much detail, she managed to expel whatever it was finally and had a late lunch.  Just before my Irish trip she had managed to hurt her foot.  I don’t know if she had a thorn stuck in it (I could see nothing) or had twisted it, but she was quite lame and licking at it all the time.  One morning I even left her at home while I walked the other two as she was so bad, but after a couple of days, just when I thought I may have to take her to the vet, she was right as rain again.  The day after I returned she managed to fall from the upper garden level (perhaps a height of two to three metres), probably chasing that darned rat.  Luckily she slithered all the way down, rather than falling and as I was below, picking up poo as it happens, I managed to extricate her from the ledge she became wedged on.  Nothing was broken.

Candy, they broke the mould!  At Lourdes' and Rob's

In spite of all the extra-curricular stuff in my life I seem to have got the gardening somewhat back on track.  Of course now I have to attack the weeds again as suddenly they are up to my knees once more.  But at least I seem to have got the hang of the shredder in spite of my initial fears.  In fact it was not as horrific as I had thought at all.  You do have to be patient and careful not to overfeed it.  It is also a good idea to have a bit of a mixture of stuff, grasses and thicker twigs and branches.  If it seems to have a bit of trouble digesting a hard twig for example a bit of dry grass helps it go through and vice versa.  Nothing happens quickly but on the other hand I suddenly have, as if from nowhere, 17 large, builder-size, buckets of mulch and my new flowerbed is fast filling with a nice layer of humus.  Topsoil is ordered and next weekend may indeed see me filling the new bed with the little trees and cuttings that are waiting in line.

A bucket of mulch

With a bit of luck we may also be free of fiestas next weekend.  Not that I don't enjoy them but it’s the darned rockets that go off every hour on the hour.  This weekend has been 'Día de Jesús.'  Jesus' Day.  We have already had one Día de Jesús this year, but that was organized by the Green Church.  This one was organized by the Purple Church.  (There are three churches in our town, a topic for another day I think.) Jesus' Day can last between three to five days!!  If the Greens let off rockets every two hours, starting at nine in the morning, the Purples have to let theirs off every hour, starting at half past seven!  The Greens finished their 'day' with a full firework display if I remember rightly, so tonight we may be in store for some of the same.*  The two churches are always in competition with each other.  If one fires ten rockets the other has to fire twenty. 

Luckily we get up early for our walk this weather because once the rockets start, Kerry takes to the downstairs loo where she spend all day squished between the side-wall and the pedestal.   When I stop in passing to say hello she looks at me with haunted little eyes and a pinched face as if to say "when will this all be over mum?"  It is starting to smell like a zoo in there.  Candy does her maniacal running up and down the house, barking and bouncing on her two back legs at every rocket.  Yesterday she even did a poo in the hall from a combination of sheer fright and violent bouncing.  She must be exhausted from it.  Looki goes under the couch if I am on it, the bed if I am in it or under the kitchen cabinets if I am cooking.  He also looks at me with his big soulful eyes more often and extricates from me lots of extra cuddles.  They are all good at that though.

And through it all I weed and I shred, I blog and I try to write some poetry.  The perpetual lesson plans have to be written of course and bingo games made for the kiddies, though gleefully this is our last week before we break up for our summer hols which means eleven glorious weeks of garden time, Westie time and creative time.  But do you know something? In spite of all the great lurches and sideswipes and ups and downs of this life, every day I wake up with a smile on my face.  My life is good and I am happier than I have ever been.  But then who would not be happy if the first thing they saw every morning was a grinning Westie face just before it tries to burrow into your side and push you out of bed.  Happy days!

*and yes indeed!  We got a magnificent and noisy firework display after two in the morning!  At least after that everything went blissfully quiet and we all got some sleep.

My very first Agapanthus flower.  Just waiting for its bucket of mulch