Town and Country

We're all going on a summer holiday ... Yeah, right.

On my bench top is a bowl of flour and water mix, just beginning to bubble. The friendly wild yeasts that hang around my kitchen are moving in, ready for me to bake sourdough bread unlike anyone else's.

For the third year in a row, our sheep have gone wild. They are roaming the property willy-nilly, but this weekend I plan to stop them in their tracks.

Christmas is coming; buy, buy, buy. Never mind about a budget. Pay later, pay next year or the year after. Shop til you drop. They make it, we need to buy it. Or do we?

When a great big anticyclone parks overhead for days on end, my thoughts turn to the beach, and our wee beach house that has been mostly empty for ages.

It might be Labour Day but my tomatoes are not planted. Even in the greenhouse, I have never found it worth the effort to plant them so early in this Southern climate. They'll fruit just as well if they go in next month.

Poor wee Skinny Mini is no more. I suspected as much when I didn't see her at the morning hay fight, and then realised I couldn't recall seeing her for a few days.

Well, the lambs might have come as a surprise, but the mud hasn't.

Spring on the farm means lambs, daffodils and blossom, right? Well, it wasn't supposed to this year - not for us.

Water, water everywhere. That's what I'll be having soon.