Red sky at night........

 

The old saying goes....

'Red sky at night, shepherd's delight' which means a good weather tomorrow.

'Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning' which means not so good weather ahead.

 

We were late back from band practice last night. It was a hard drive all round. Blackness, rain, fog, up and down through wooded hills and valleys avoiding the frogs as best we could, with one headlight deciding not to work.

 

It had rained hard while we were out.

The courtyard was wet, particularly by the entrance gates, where the water tends to lay in a pool, fed by the slope of the drive and the roof of the porch which does not have a gutter, it being the original roof so just drips water along its length.

When it rains, it is like going through a waterfall.

When it stops raining we have a wide muck of muddiness through which we have to walk.

We never have non-muddy shoes in the wet weather,

which is not so bad if one is going shopping,

but when one is wanting to be tidy, and indeed does look quite tidy, the mud splattered shoes at the end of one's body does spoil the overall effect, particularly when the shoes dry off. Then there is a quantity of dried farm mud scattered on the floor around the area  where one is sitting in.

 

Anyway, it was a good band practice, which was a surprise because I had lost interest with playing the accordion these past three weeks and thought my time was done with playing it. Not so. As soon as I strapped the accordion up on my chest I felt a swoon of affection for this red beast of an instrument. So, no, I had not given up playing it for ever and ever, we were taking time out from each other, that was all.

 

As I was saying, we were late back last night.

So up late this morning.

Dogs out for pee and poo.

And oh wow! The sky was smashed through with a redness which made the sky look like it was oozing blood. I took photos, none of which could even come close to the magnificence of those skies, but I took them anyway.

 

'Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning......'

so had a look at Meteo, the French weather forecasting station.

Oh.

It would seem that we are to have the mud in the courtyard refreshed in quantity,

because it looks like we are to have loads of rain coming our way.

Not to worry, as I said yesterday, it is our turn to have some difficult weather.

 

But what did sent a shiver down my spine was the news that we might be expecting a 'tempete' Sunday night.

'Tempetes' are bad news for us.

Last time we had one we ended up like this:

 

.....January 2009, amazed that we got through in one piece, stamped in our memory as not one of our better times, smiles still up on our faces but only just.

But we do have a house now, so we are more sheltered, as are all our animals except the chickens who still insist on sleeping up the fig tree.

We had huge gusts of wind the other night.

I was surprised to see the chickens hanging around for their breakfasts in the morning.

I had thought them all blown away.

We keep telling them to roost in the tractor and hay shed, but chickens are chickens so do their own thing, and they insist on climbing up on to the higher branches of the fig so we can't reach to get them down unless they want to come down on their own.

 

So I am disregarding Meteo's news of a possible 'tempete' for the moment. Hopefully it will just be a big storm and not like the hurricane which nearly blew us to pieces in 2009.

 

Cheese making day today.

Might have a nap first though, it was 1.30 this morning before we got to bed.

As I say, it was a late night!

 

Boolie is sleeping at my feet. His tummy is rumbling something fierce. He needs to go to the loo. I wish I could do something about the tumour on his ear, because it has taken to doing thin spurts of blood sufficient to leave pools of blood everywhere. The tumour does not leak if left alone, but it is when our rottweiller girls decide to involve him in a romp, especially when Blue paddles her feet at him, or when Maz decides to give the lump a love-up, that is when the tumour will spurt blood.

And yet he is not in pain.

I cannot understand this.

Perhaps it is my prayers which are keeping him pain free.

It is a shame that my prayers are not able to remove the lump completely.

Ah well, it is as it is.

Righty-ho, let's get him outside before it starts raining.

 

Saying 'bye for now'

Vx

 

PS. Lester has just come in from milking.

Apparently Lissie has just tried to mount him.

So, time for artificial insemination again.

C'est la vie!