Thanks for my gift - NOT!!

Neither our body clocks or those of the fab four felines have adjusted to the change in the hour so we are waking at our previously normal time around 6.30am-7.00am which is now 5.30am-6.00am and do you know that it is dark in fact it is now dark at both 6 o'clocks - AM and PM.  Wow in the blink of an eye we have gone from Summer to Winter.  Generally the weather seems to change after the clock change but this year it did so beforehand and we are hoping that we are not going to get a repeat of last year's wet wet wet conditions.  This morning once daylight was upon us it started out dry and fine and bright but sadly did not stay that way.

One or other of the cats left us with a gift today - I actually had to do a double take because when I sat down in the lounge to check the emails it was most definitely not by the TV - I am sure of that but when I got up to leave and go to art I did a double take because I could not believe my eyes!!!  This was one hell of a large rat and it was perfect - no sign of puncture wound or evidence of poison it just looked like it was asleep - so much so that I went to scoop it into the dustpan and then just couldn't - I had to get John to do it as I had visions of the bloody thing waking up and running off.  I don't know who left it there and I cannot be sure when it came into the house because I seem to remember Mr Boo being super curious about something under the kitchen cabinets - I took a look but couldn't see anything at the time so maybe it was lurking.

I drove down to art and called into the cemetery for my regular chat with Dad - all is good at his spot - Mum went yesterday anyway.  I decided to remove the empty beer bottles which had held the roses that JJ&S had left for Dad and Elena.  They looked ok as a vase - they looked slightly odd just empty on the grave like some old wino had left them there.

Next door at Ivan's there is a solitary chrysanthemum valiantly flowering - we thought that it had self seeded from the plant that had been on Dad's grave but as it is a completely different colour then it must have come courtesy of a bird or something.

I was surprised that there were no weeds growing there as we have had quite a bit of rain over the last couple of days but Klaus said he was responsible for that bless him so now even though Ivan's grave is still a mound of soil with a simple cross it looks neat and tidy.  We don't recognise his surname which we think might be Russian so don't know if there is anyone here on the island that comes to pay their respects.  We are also quite surprised that even after the weather we have just had the grave has not sunk any.  I remember after the first heavy rains of the Autumn after Dad had died that we went up and were somewhat taken aback by the once mounded soil no longer being mounded.

Sheila and I had a productive morning - we must have been busy because we didn't seem to chat very much.

I am still working on my picture of the house leek.  I was pretty cross eyed by the time I stopped having been given my 15 minute warning from Chef Klaus!!

It's amazing when you actually step back and take a look - I can see that there is a leaf right in the middle that I thought I had finished and now I can see that it really needs a bit more colour in it.  The two pictures shows the difference after my two hours work this morning.  It is a slow process!!

John was somewhat miffed, to put it mildly, that he had allocated the majority of his day to applying the waterproofing solution everywhere where he had not put it previously including sealing the grouting on the tiling on the flat roof but this all had to be abandoned when the weather deteriorated and we had more rain.

There was nothing much more we could do with our day save adopt the position, in front of the TV, and catch up with World on Fire before we have to restart because we have lost the plot!!