Little man, you've had a busy day

Thomas and Jiro on the alert

Busy day for the baby boy today. Thomas has accepted him, albeit grudgingly, and they've been chasing around the garden, disputing ownership of the deckchair. Jiro spent a lot of time right at the top of the pear tree, observing the birds coming in to feast on the pears. Fascinating! He was also introduced to the joys of gardening, the wonder of watering, and had a brief contretemps with the neighbours' cat. He's sitting on my lap right now, observing the cursor and the appearance of the string of words. I've been making plum sauce and bottling pears, plums and nectarines; the fruit garden has been very good this year, unlike the vegetables which have suffered from a slow, cold start to summer, followed by a drought. I'm on holiday for the next two weeks, hope to get all the fruit squirrelled away and the winter veges started.

New cat!

Here is my new cat! I've finally succumbed to temptation and got this little black boy from the SPCA. His name is Jiro, after Jiro in "The wind rises" an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) which I was watching the night before I collected him. The name Jiro appropriately means 'second son' in Japanese. Thomas is not very happy with having Jiro here at the moment, but they did have a little meet and greet today at which both cats were well behaved. Jiro is super smoochy and energetic, a real cutie, needless to say he picked me, throwing himself at me against the bars of his cage. He's about 3 or 4 months old, older than most of the kittens there, like Thomas was, and like Thomas, was found abandoned. He was roaming around a shopping mall carpark, and the SPCA advertised for his owners but no one came forward. 
  It's quite a lot of work having two cats. There's the older one to reassure and fuss over and play with and the younger one to entertain and change poopie trays for. Jiro is fully house trained, thank goodness, and knows what the tray is for, although he did pee in the bath on my shower mat, but at least that's easy to clean.
  So, not much is getting done housework and garden-wise. I've got fruit to bottle and plum sauce to make, but.... it's more fun playing with the little boy.

I'm on a break

I'm going to take a break from blogging for a little while, a couple of weeks to a month probably. I'm starting to repeat myself, I find, and am not very interesting at the moment, feeling very tired and lacklustre, due to some health problem that has to be sorted out. I've consulted Doctor Google and come up with anaemia, diabetes 2, bladder infection and worse, of course. Thankfully, I probably do not have bilharzia, yaws or kuru. Hopefully will see a real doctor tomorrow and get some answers. It will probably come down to somatized depression ie. it's all in my head. Still, it should be investigated.
  I'll leave you with some pictures from my very first visit to Italy in 2002, when I walked part of Tuscany with a group. These are photos of photos, taken with an old film camera (digital cameras were beyond my budget then), so they look a little olde-worlde.

Church of San Giovanni Battista, Pernina. I had not noted the name or location of this church, so searched for it last night on Google Maps. I knew it was near the Villa Cetinale, so googled Cetinale and google came up with the precise site I was looking for. Very synchronicitous. We had lunch here, overlooking Siena in the distance.

The front of the church - pure Piero della Francesca. The little dove didn't move away, but sat there quite happily.

Tower of the church. Built originally in 1074.

Lunch spot in front of old buildings next to the church

A view from the Romitorio or Hermitage, a little further on. It was  inhabited by monks whose vocation was to tend the dying...

...after the dying had crawled up these steps in penance. (The hermitage can just be seen on the hill). If you weren't dying at the bottom of the steps, you'd be pretty near it when you got to the top.

A back view of the famous Villa Cetinale, the gardens built on a strong axial plan that embraces the steps up to the Romitorio. I think it was used as the location for the movie "Up at the villa".

       Yes, I would like to go to Italy again.

"Big with rich increase"

It's been really hot the last week, a couple of days in the 30C range. Everything has dried up in the garden, although the lawn is still fairly green. I've experimented with not mowing it this year, and it seems to have kept fresher looking, although there's quite a lot of seed heads from the grasses. The pears are starting to fall, and I've had some plums too, so it's the start of the silly season, when lots of bottling and preserving goes on. I love having my own fruit in the middle of winter, in pies and crumbles, so I don't begrudge the time too much.

And of course, the zucchini have become marrows, just as I knew they would! It's a great year for zucchini, and everyone who has a garden has more than they know what to do with. You can't give the wretched things away. I'll probably cut these into cubes, blanch them and freeze them for ekeing out winter casseroles.

With the hot weather, we've had some grass fires here in Canterbury, and just yesterday some homes were burned down on the western outskirts of the city. Nothing like the Australian bushfires, but quite scary and close to  the suburbs. Terrible for the people; there was nothing they could do but run, the wind was gale-force and the fire was racing away.

Tomorrow is Waitangi Day, our equivalent of Fourth of July or Australia Day, commemorating the signing between Maori and the British Crown of a treaty that has ever since been the source of huge controversy, which it would take pages of blog to tell you about. Anyway, the weather is supposed to be cooler tomorrow, so I may make some spicy plum sauce with the first gathering of the plums.