The Coptic arrives

The coptic storm has arrived and it is warm, very warm, very windy and the sky is laden with red Saharan sand.  I do not know why we are surprised because these coptic storms are a known regular annual occurrence and they are regular give or take a couple of days - a week at the most.  You can find the coptic storm chart on a tab on this blog if you want to see when they occur and what type they are.

As a result when I got up this morning I could see that a whole load of crap had been blown in under the front door and then on closer inspection it was a mix of crap and a colony of ants - they got short shrift and removed - I am loathe to put down ant powder any more having read that it contains chemicals that can be devastating to cats - I found this out after Chivers passed away having ingested something toxic - I wanted to find the cause, I needed to have an answer as to what happened to him - we will never get that but we can be even more vigilant with the others (if that is at all possible).

We had a second ant colony trying to come indoors through the sliding patio doors and they also had to go and in so doing we realised that the runners were disgusting and harbouring an impressive collection of long dead beetles and woodlice which manage to get stuck in the narrowest of the runners which even I cannot get my little finder in so we have to find all sorts of sticks and bendy things to clean them out.  Richard the window-cleaner did them last time and I shall leave it for him to do again because was was, according to John, a 'five minute job' turned into two hours and I was hot, sticky and filthy by the time we finished but we had sparkling runners and a clean floor.

Spurred on by domestic goddesstry I gave the conservatory a good clean - the rugs were consigned to the garden for a beating and everthing else got a good old polish until it was all done and dusted!! We are still in discussion about the additional sofa in there - we have temporarily stowed the tub chairs but to be fair they are tatty and owe us nothing.  We have a broken arm on one of the leather sofas so we are undecided as to whether to get rid of that and keep the red.  The red is great but gets dirty so quickly and the arms never quite get clean anymore.  The reason for the discussion is that in the summer we like to have the sliding doors fully open but the pool is directly behind so if anyone goes in and splashes the red sofa the fabric would get wet - that's not so important on the leather one.

This is the view to the right of the pool - this is my tranquil oriental area which in the summer is quite minimalist but now has all the spring flowers about to go bonkers and I never like to pull them out - I will let them flower, self seed for next year and then clear the space - I am torn between the minimalist and the lush and not helped by the fact that if I see something growing I just cannot pull it up - this time of year we have poppies appearing everywhere in all colours and sizes from teeny tiny to big and blowsy and then there will be blue Nigella (love-in-the-mist) and then hopefully the larkspur which come in shades of white, pink, blue and purple.  They are short-lived and then gone and then I can pull them up safe in the knowledge that they will reappear again next year.

The goats are back - walked through the field next door every day twice a day.  We had a bit of an 'incident' this week when two or three were fighting and I mean fighting and when John peered over the wall the goat herd had out one but was (in our opinion) manhandling it roughly and hitting it with a stick.  The goat was lying down in the field and the herder seemed to be leaving it behind - we thought to die and we didn't want a dead goat in the field nor did we want the goat to die in pain if that was the case.  John shot over into the field to see what was happening.  The goat was still alive but probably winded with some blood coming from its nose - we didn't know if this had been caused by the stick or the fight but whatever John wasn't prepared for it to be left there.  There then ensued an awkward exchange between John and the herder - awkward because they failed to find a common language but I think the gist of it was that he was going to take the remainder of the herd home and then come back for the one goat.  He disappeared off and the goat did eventually rally and start eating grass and got up and then shortly afterwards the herder returned with a truck and the goat was taken away.  I really hope the poor thing is ok.