Currently I’m flat out. The raspberries have gone slightly mad so I’m out there picking first thing in the morning and again in late afternoon most days. Short story plots have been breeding like rabbits, and I’ve written three new stories in the past week with another three to go which I hope to clear …
Category: Comments from Farside
The Rural Delivery
My rural delivery people, Cath and Denis, are wonderful. They deliver mail, groceries, hen food, odd items from Mitre 10, and never fail to deliver me a Christmas card personally from them to me. But the best thing is that they aren’t bothered by my gaggle. I have five geese, that is, three girls, plus …
Making faces
I came back from a Christmas luncheon yesterday to find Ellie-Mae the sheep standing by the fence staring at the entire gaggle – who were staring back, shrieking abuse, and looking as if they were about to attack. I halted to watch, and after a couple more screams at Ellie they wandered off. I haven’t …
Weeping on the Lawn
No, not me. But to start from the beginning, last Saturday morning my sheep were sheared and then let out onto my large front lawn to graze that down before the ankle-deep grass rose much higher. The sheep aren’t always keen on being sheared but it’s a lot better than being encased in solid wool …
All That Good Weather
The last three years have been wetter than usual which has resulted in more available food for creatures. Last summer the small birds around my farmlet nested three times and produced a fountain of babies. The single yellowhammer (or his descendant) that has appeared regularly for two decades, multiplied, and for the frst time ever …
JPEGS and Holdups
It’s been something of a hassle this past few weeks as I tried to get an assortment of artwork for my newest DAZE book through to my publisher. The jpegs range from around 700kb to well over 2000kb and as I’m on dialup, this can take not only forever for the smaller ones, but the …
My, My, My, It’s Beautiful Day
It is too, and so that we get the message about summer being on the way, today has decided to give us a foretaste of that with a brilliant cloudless sky, and temperatures forecast to hit 27 degrees by early afternoon. They were already into the 20s when I finished breakfast around 8.30. So, for …
Finding the Time
A friend congratulating me the other day on my book being sold, said that she wonders where I find the time to write as much as I do. There are times when I do too. Although, really, when you look at the fact that I’m retired, live alone, and, allowing for sleep and meals, have …
Firewood, Gales, and Geese.
And the gales have been back much of the week, it’s a real pain listening to the wind screaming in the trees and worrying if it’ll become too much for one of them which may then fall on the house. It’s why whenever the wind level gets too high, I let the fire go out. …
Sheepishly
19 January 2013
2012 was the year in which I was twice thumped by a sheep. Once just before our National SF Convention, and again by that darned ram. (Both thumpers have now gone the way of all flesh. It does not pay to thump your shepherd.) But on New year’s day I opened my newspaper to see …
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