Spring has sprung

At last spring has come to Snowdonia. We have ewes popping lambs all over the place and the sun has been shining for a week. The field where of late I have been exercising the dogs has returned to its proper use as a maternity unit.

I'm teaching this week so don't have a lot of time but have managed to flatten the worst of Silver's ravages. Obviously it will require much deviousness to prevent her from reducing the lawn to a battlefield again. I have placed the dog jumps strategically across her original circle and will put some tubs of flowers at various points and move them as a new track starts appearing. At least she'll have pause and manoeuvre as she goes.
The ducks are enjoying life. One is sitting anf one Muscovy lady has vanished. I don't know if she has been eaten or found a nice secret place to nest. I hope the latter but wish she'd decided to do it inside the night time run.

Creature Comforts

Locally we have one email swapshop and one freecycle. Someone on the latter gave me an enormous carpet with underlay and
everything. They are going to have a wooden floor so the carpet was unwanted, practically new and very thick. The first peoblem
was that the people who were giving it to me needed it out of the way quickly and simultaneously with being offered the carpet I
got snowed in during our last serious wether problems. Clearly even if I could get out I couldn’t lift it into my trailer so I sent out
an SOS to Julian and co. Although they live practically at sea level, this time they were snowed in too. Fortunately the people
were understanding and as soon as the snow there permitted the ganf set out with a trailer and Twm’s beloved landrover. Thus
equipped they got up my lane and piled it all into the dining room.
When the weather finally let up the whole family came and laid the carpet in the sitting room, which is now luxurious. My feet
hardly know themselves. The dogs like it too, especially as I spent a good part of Christmas making nice soft covers for their
beds. The carpet is a plain light salmon colour, not suited to 12 muddy paws, but fortunately the dogs usually head for the other
end of the house where they expect to find me, so they mostly don’t go in there with muddy paws.
There was a lot left over and at first I thought of the dining room but then I thought that, since the layout of this house is such
that the dining room is the main thoroughfare for humans and dogs, that seems asking a bit much of such a nice clean carpet. So
Emma and Phil came up the other day and laid it in my study and I now have warm feet while I work.
In the picture above, Dyfi has been awoken from his post-field nap and is wondering why I suddenly need to take a photo. It is to
show a bit of the carpet but doesn’t really do it justice.

Some days later Emma and Phil came and laid the rest of the carpet in my study. Now that is cosy too. What's more, because the combination of underlay and carpet is so thick my office chair does not slide back when I heave myself out of it. Things are really getting better around this house,

Meet My Dogs

I have three border collies, Jess, Dyfi and Silver. They are all rescue dogs in various ways. Jess came to me because she was afraid of her owners toddler grandchildren and looked as if she might snap from sheer fear. She never did and has met plenty of children since, but rather older ones.
Dyfi came because a farmer gave him to me and I was foolish enough not to ask why he didn't want him. The reason soon became apparent as he is an inveterate sheep chaser. I have managed to teach him to behave with my three pets but can't trust him with other people's sheep. To go down the lane he wears a muzzle and is attached to Jess, whi is better behaved.
Silver was from a dog rescue place where she had been handed in as 'no good'. Actually she is very good with sheep but excessively nervous of the world in general.
Here are some photos of them

Introducing me

This is me as I appear as writer of the month on Ukauthors website for November

Born in 1932 in Kent [the bit that got swallowed up in Greater London]. Has been writing on and off all her life in between earning a precarious living mostly as a language teacher, and for 20 years running an international centre in Exeter – a spare time job that involved a 365 day working year, no money, impossible invitations to everywhere in the world and meeting an amazing variety of interesting people .
I moved to Wales in 1985 thus fulfilling a long cherished dream and now live in an ancient farmhouse in Cwm Prysor with two sheepdogs, four cats, three sheep and assorted ducks. I still teach [occasionally], paint and write. My adopted land seems to have reawakened my muse.

Here is my home page there http://www.ukauthors.com/modules.php?name=Your_Account&op=userinfo&bypass=1&uname=teifii

and here is my website with my books and collie dogs http://www.merilang.com