Two black mice and one white

Two black mice, one white; a green crocodile, a pink elephant and a white ball. Her play times (of at least an hour) each day. And she checks that all her toys are there. These exercise sessions are essential for her paralysed arm according to our vet, who tells us this evening that she may put a metal plate in Tikka's paw to straighten it. We're not sure though, don't want to distress her. On the subject of distress, I was bringing my paintings back from the Perugia show yesterday evening when the car went dead on me. Sunday evening. 9pm in the middle of nowhere and the other side of the mountains. Went back today to retrieve it. Thankfully car intact and all paintings inside. 31C and frying in the heat I was and I was helped by angels to get the car to a place of safety. Real angels.






Witchcraft tips







In the evening of the full moon, wander down to the forest with Bessie for protection and collect handfalls of wild rose petals from the wood below the hunters lodge, yellow ginestra flowers from a little lower down (but don't wander too far, dear). Then, when you are safely home, soak them in cold spring water from the magic fountain at Rustici, over night under the light of the full moon. In the morning splash your body, in particular your hair and head with the cold flower infused water...and this will sharpen your mind and body and protect you from spells and periods of depression.

Witchcraft

Witchcraft.
Funny, I've only just remembered that I did my thesis at Art College on Witchcraft. Don't ask me why, just something that fascinated me at the time. Not by chance then, you might say, that I find myself living in one of the witchiest places in Europe.
Here are some witchy things to contemplate.
Fred.
This is Fred










Fred emerges at this time every year and frolicks with the fireflies, eats then too I imagine. How old is Fred would you say? Twelve years old possibly, maybe ten?
Forget it, you'll never get near it. He's 164.
None of our seven animals take any notice of him because of his invisibilty. this BTW is Lili's notion, i.e that he only makes himself visible to us as a kind of thank you for bringing him back to the World after he'd made that dreadful mistake (being in the wrong place at the wrong time... in the cattle stalle when they were laying the floor in 1850)
I'd written about this rospo miracle some years back but seeing him on our doorstep last night makes it worth a retell,
I was digging out some crumbling brick tiles from the floor of the old stalle
(now my studio). Dave was giving me a hand and there were two or three bricks which were in pieces but difficult to dislodge. We tried bashing and levering not to no avail, so we had to prise every broken bit out with a screwdriver. I'd taken out the whole of one brick and was removing the mortar beneath when I saw an eye open within the mortar dust; then a slight movement and then 'Yipes!' And we watched, mesmerised, as a toad pulled himself out of the debris, shook himself, gave us both a cursory glance, and wandered out of the door into the garden and into the 21st Century.
That's Fred.

videos and assassins

Today I've been out in the garden aligning my sacred stones. Now what else would you do on the solstice?

Up at dawn I was, at 5.30 to check my alignments and listen to the bird song (what bird song? Socksie has eaten most of them...we twigged this when we saw him with a different bird in his mouth at any one time. He is, in short, an assassin and we don't know what to do about it)
Well, eager ears, my dawn stone alignment proved to be a complete success, by which I mean that I can confirm that our planet still is tilted at the same angle and hasn't change its orbit around our sun.
Not so with my westerly alignment at sunset. It was out by 7 degrees. Now this means, either we are heading towards Mars at a rate of thousands of K per second, or that Lilla (Socksie's sister) had jumped on it (as was her habit during the winter for some unknown reason) and Lili had just just stood it up again not respecting my cosmic organisation. Anyway, both deny it.
So equipped with just a garden fork, and under my barked instructions, Lili hopped from left to right as I set my sights from my main mini Stonehenge stone against the westering one, dipping as it was at that moment under the Sibillas' torso.
A passing outsider might have mistaken her movements for a solsticial pagan dance ritual ( Aaah! ..so legends and myths are born I hear you whisper)
But success, westering stone re- aligned and cosmic order (at least in our garden) restored.
Apart, I should emphasise, from the murder of birds, mice , bees and butterflies which is going on faster than Americans eat hambugers. (I mean, are we not feeding them at home that they behave so?)

Summer's here at last. Arrived on same mid summer day after weeks of rain and low temperatures. Now we get 30C by day and it looks to stay that way for a while. And look at the lavender!


And the profusion of butterflies. The live ones that is , not the fallen one-winged victims of Tikka's right paw. Bees a-buzzin too and a heady mixture of a thousand scents fill the air.
Everything good in the garden.
And in the fields around us, Quinto, Graziella and Renzo are cutting and bailing hay.
I like the noise they make and to hear them shouting to each other.
You ask about Tikka.









Still no feeling in her left paw, so we will try another trip to the vets, just to see if anything can be done, although she is getting around just fine. We just worry about when the sheep dogs do their weekly raid and that she might be outside alone in the garden and not be able to escape fast enough. She can't climb trees you see. Built her a ladder though, although when they attack, they are fast and brutal. Bessie does her best as her guardian, but she's getting on in years. Our garden, our garden.

Hey! Look at these
http://turismo.comune.perugia.it/canale.asp?id=465


http://sette-bello.blogspot.com/2008/06/portrait-of-artist-as-young-man.html

Now, if you're in Perugia Sat 21st or 28th, I'll be there at the show and I'll buy you a coffee and a cake

June deep green

Just look at that green! It's supposed to be summer in Le Marche and I should be out there watering for an hour every evening, relaxing after dull day and lit up rouge by the glow of the westering sun, with a bottle of beer and a packet of crisps. But it has rained for almost two weeks now and the only life form getting any benefit on our property are the trees and plants, oh and a worm or two I would imagine and of course a fish would too(if we had one). Hmm, other pluses too now I think about it; reservoirs full, water bills bearable, no dust in the house from passing cars and a great year for trout (which you can fish for E10 a day up near Franco's place on the river Ambro just below the Abbey)
Tomorrow we have to drive across the mountains to Perugia to put up my show of paintings so I do hope it's not bucketing down like it is at this very moment.








You were asking about Tikka
We scoured all the websites for info about nerve damage and made endless trips to the vet but poor Tikka still has no feeling in her left paw. Seems it depends on what sort of damage there is to the nerve, poor mite. So if anybody out there has any info on this front?