Poor Henry

Henry is pretty poorly. I had thought that he had got old over the last few weeks and Ian said that Henry had stopped eating his tea last week. As Henry has never been a big eater we weren't unduly worried by this, however when we trimmed him on Friday, we noticed that he had a largish lump at the top of his back leg.

We took him to the vet yesterday, and the vet x-rayed him and while she doesn't really know what it is, she thinks it is either a tumor or the result of a trauma. As we are pretty certain that Henry hasn't had a bump, we're preparing for the worst. I took him out for a walk this morning, and he was slow, but enjoyed wandering and sniffing. We went on our first asparagus hunt this afternoon, and took him there too, and he was happy to mooch around.We carried him a few times, not because he needed it, but because we think we saw some precessionary caterpillars which are very dangerous for dogs.

Here's Henry today walking down the lane.

Here's Henry at Christmas, with the others on MY beanbag!

And here's Henry yesterday wearing his jumper as he is chilly after he'd been trimmed. He is on the beanbag again and looks pretty alert and doesn't seem to be in any form of pain.

I'm a little sad as we have just decided to adopt a new puppy and the timing might be poignant as it might feel like we are replacing Henry, however we made the decision before we realized that Henry was ill.

New pup is a cross of a Pastor Leonese de Carrea, which is a sheep dog from Castille and Leon, the next principality up - although looking at the photos she may be more cross than Pastor. What makes her special is that she is blind and deaf. The refuge who are rehoming her think that she'll be medium size, so between Sam and Rosie. We thought long and hard about this, and it was her size that made us happy about adopting her. Little Herbie was blind and deaf, he was very capable but he was so small we had to watch him constantly as even Tinks could bowl him over. New pup (whose current name is Queeny) will grow to be a good size, not too big and not too small. We've seen videos of her playing with other dogs and she seems a capable little thing - although judging by the photo below, she may not have the hang of food yet!

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Into The Workshop

I popped into the workshop to get something for Kate and was greeted by this sight. Mushrooms for tea then!

Sun!

For the first time in a while we're looking out at nice bright sun. Although we haven't had the storms that they've had in the north of Spain or the UK, but we caught the tail end of them and have had some rain - but not 'Extremaduran-bucket-over-your-head' type rain, instead drizzly rain that has gone on for days.

It's been a mild winter and we're hoping that the recent rain, plus the sun forecast for next week will mean that we are now just days away from asparagusing. Which reminds me, we must clear the freezer to get ready for this year's horde. Our freezer is mainly full of little bits of bread, so bread based pie must be on the cards over the next few days. This will be down to me, because, as excellent a cook as Ian is, he has a blind spot when it comes to left overs. He will open the fridge and see half a tin of tomatoes, a bowl of left over veg and a plate of left over pasta and declare that we have nothing to eat, whereas I will look at it and declare that we have the ingredients for pie ('pie' being a good catch-all name for a dish where I don't want to commit myself too early on to the precise nature of the end result).

Ian has started to clear out the space upstairs. With an aim of taking a bag to the bin every day or so. We need to decide whether to dispose of our very large cardboard box collection or keep it for packing things when we move. We've also got to make a decision on some of our 'treasures' that we (I) have collected with a view to creating something wonderful with them. As I hope that an end result of our move is that I have more time to create wonderful things, I am tempted to keep them, however as an end result might also be we are in a smaller place, this may not be practicable. Ah, well, it's not a decision that needs to be made yet...

Punishment

I was a little bemused that one of my very young students wasn't allowed to attend class this week as a punishment for bad behaviour. I am sure that if you asked most of my students they would say that coming to classes was a punishment. I was bemused and a tad cross, I also got punished because I didn't get paid for the class. I am a little surprised that current parental thought is that their youngsters enjoy class so much that not coming to class is a punishment. I can't help thinking that this little 6 year old had the upper hand as she quickly worked out which after school activity she'd like to miss the most and then told her parent's that missing this would be her biggest punishment...

I had another tricky situation this week, when one of the little 5 year old boys, Hugo, asked me 'what do you think about God'. I panicked slightly, as he stared at me with beady eyes, a runny nose and a biroed moustache, so I took a sensible course of action which was to become engrossed in a highly interesting piece of paper lurking under my computer. So Hugo turned to Javi, one of my older students who was there.  Javi also panicked and asked me what to say - I said, 'just say you don't understand', which always works for me. Javi was about to give this as a response and then turned to me, pointing out the flaw in my plan, in so much as Javi, being Spanish could not share my response, so I resorted to my divert-attention-from-what-they-shouldn't-be-doing plan which is to break into Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, which is enthusiastically embraced by all under the age of 10.

We do Head Shoulders Knees and Toes to this video - they love it, joining in with el papa (the pope, not Bono).

The Nave

This shows the two barns from behind and the cove that it sits by. Obviously it would need some work to convert to a house, but the location is good and it should be possible.

Banana

I had a very vivid dream that Ian and I were arguing over whether it is possible to say the word 'banana' in single syllables where none of the syllables rhymed. I told Ian about it when I woke up - and we then proceeded to have an argument about whether it is possible to say the word 'banana' in single syllables where none of the syllables rhymed. A topic that probably wasn't worth the time we spent on it...

It rained a bit last week - not very much but the first real rain we've had in a while, so we decided to go to the embalse at Orellana to take a look at it after rain so we could see what the rain did to the access roads. There were two properties we specifically wanted to see while we were there. The tracks weren't unduly muddy and the surfaces weren't too bad, but we'd probably want a 4x4 vehicle if we lived in either of the two properties we saw.  The two properties were in the same area, on a little peninsular that has a few houses on it. Both could see the dam and we were pleased to note looked down on the dam - which is a good thing! They are near the sailing center and the Orellana 'beach' which is both good and bad (might make the water busy in the summer). The lakes are called the Costa Dulce which means fresh water coast and the beaches have the blue flag award.

One property is basically two prefab barns, one of which is used as a house. It is in a little inlet and looks like it has it's own cove, there is a hectare of land which is planted with olives. They are young trees, and my inexperienced eye thinks that they are a couple of years away from production.

The second property was the exact opposite, at the top of a hill jutting into the water and at the moment just a set of foundations exist. The land was quite steep and would need to be terraced, but it had its own 'beach'.

Both were great. The first would be a fantastic property when turned into a house, the second, however, would be a real WOW property with great views and all day sun. Both would be great for fishermen (we're now thinking of chalets for fishermen instead of yurts for yuppies), and they could fish from their bedrooms!

 This is where the properties are in relation to the municipal beach and to the town of Orellana

This is where they are in relation to the whole lakes

 This is property two which is just the foundations

This is a view to the left of the foundations.

But obviously need to sell here first...