sheepy visitor

Yesterday P found a lamb under the pile of piquets, obviously very young and seeing as the sheep had left the neighbouring field on the Sat, very hungry.

We brought him up to the house, he was pathetically light and skinny and still appeared to have him umbilical cord.

P tried to get some milk down him using a rubber glove that didn't work but then we found a technique involving a pipette and a choice of fingers.

Bless him was very shaky and fell asleep in my arms several times but perked up and followed me around the house. We drove him over to Robin's to try and find the shepherd.. who wasn't there. It was the most astonishing house though with loads of dogs, puppys with their eyes still shut, the bigest pig I've ever seen and a stupendously ugly turkey. I wasn't going to leave him there with no sign of his mother so he came home again.

To cut the story short I managed to call the shepherd and they turned up to collect him at 11pm.

We called him Norbert, and we hope he's ok and his mother has welcomed him back!

Walking and fed up

We went with our randonnage group this afternoon and had a lovely walk around a village near St Emillion. The whole area reeks of money and backache, all the vines are really really low to the ground and all those working them must have rubbish backs and knees.

Fed up because we placed an order with our currency guys over 10 days ago and the money left our account the same day and has failed to make it to our french account yet... so much for buying an oven tomorrow... and will have to spend the morning arguing with the poncy tossers. Its not the first time this has happened with them and we'll be be charged lots by our bank for being overdrawn... I hate money problems it makes me feel miserable.

Ho hum.

L'hirondelle

They're back and busy nest negotiating and shouting at each other. I love the swallows and will have to remind Y.U that there is to be NO snacking on them.

We are busy tidying up the latts and piquets before arraching the vines hopefully next week. I've had the hammock up for the past couple of days and the view up through the cherry blossom might just be the best in the world.

We are going to have to get a second hammock soon to put an end to the unsightly scramble for it after lunch and the fighting...

Done pruning

Well it's done and we are now worried or rather we have been for the last week. Despite having finished quicker than last year it has been warmer this year and the vines are bleeding or rather crying as they say in french.

We now have our fingers and toes crossed that it wont affect them too badly.

Next year we will be starting early to avoid this and to ensure that we dont have to do three weeks hard manual labour at 9 hrs a day to get it done.

I feel like I've been steamrollered!

On the plus side I now feel like I can enjoy the springtime fuzzyness.

The Cranes are back, in all their noisyness...