Week 6 theme - love 52 images for 2011 flickr group

For this week's theme I wanted to capture the essence of the word love as an emotion, rather than a symbolic reference through hearts or flowers, it has just taken me all week to get round to doing it.



In the end I found myself struggling again with the image for the theme.

I was going to take a hand clasp image, inspired by the photo I took at a wedding last year:

 

but as the group is about taking new photos and not just recycling stock ones, thank you to my beautiful models on Friday for this image

 

unfortunately someone had already posted a hand clasp image and I did not want to replicate the entry, so had to scout around for something new.

I was considering something along these lines:

 

but again this is a photo I took a while ago and not during the week of the theme - although it does reflect the theme of love from all angles, Ferguson and his sister Pond are very loving and utterly lovable too.

But from there my thoughts led me to ideas of first loves, and so I decided on the following:

 

for most children their first experience of love is their pet, and there is nothing quite so rewarding as the unconditional love offered by a loyal dog.

Where did the road go?

As this is the view at the rear of our farmhouse, and Arthur is positioned to show where the edge of the lane should be, it is probably no surprise that on Friday I became chief picker upper and dropper off in my Land Rover.

Every year two events happen locally, one is a charity telethon held in Pontaumur, our nearest town, to which (normally) kids and parents flock to play table games and buy raffle tickets for cakes etc. On Friday I did the cake round, fetching all the lovely choccie, sweet and gooey goodies and ferrying them down for others to win. And no - I did not pretend I got stuck in the snow and had to eat the scrumptious goods to keep my strength up.

It is currently reading -1°C in my studio so I have not been hanging out much in there.

The second event is held by our commune, the village that we are part of. The centre of the village is decorated with nativity scenes from around the world and people flock to take a tour of the scenes in the snow, drink a glass of warm fortifying mulled wine and a slice of gateau.

   http://www.landogne.fr/attachments/106_105_depliant_creches.pdf

Brendan and I have been involved every winter we have been here, putting up Christmas trees, decorating them, setting up nativity scenes and helping out in the bar. Friday afternoon I took my contingent of helpers down to the village to get our huge nativity scene set up, it features a village in Provence complete with working windmills, automated characters drinking wine, grinding coffe, making bread and hanging out the washing. It has 8 large buildings, and over 20 characters. It took 4 of us most of the afternoon to set up the buildings and the backdrops and we are nowhere near finished yet.  I have another building to make over the weekend as well as some repairs to hands, feet, and clothing.

Saturday was very very very cold, -12°C when I let the chickens out (they were not impressed I have to say), -7°C in the middle of the day was the highlight.

But on the up side it was sunny and looked very pretty and the first weekend of December is our family's traditional time for putting up the decorations so now the inside of the house is also pretty with twinkley lights and fluffy feathery decorations.

Bring on Christmas.

On the flip side, Arthur seems to have developed a serious addiction to snow.

Yesterday's chick project stands up to foxy scrutiny.

Yesterday you may have noticed that I moved the chicks from their rabbit hutch home into their own space, namely a piglet rearing room as was, now pretty derelict and unused, the sow's section is the feeding room with several large bins of wheat and barley for the animals.

Being the overly cautious and undeniable Virgo that I am, I gave the chicks the large dog cage to sleep in, as I can close them up in there securely for the night, then added a couple of surplus wire cages on top to block the doorway in fully.

Then because I am a real Virgo through and through, I also added a spare rabbit hutch door, which I wedged in against the hinges of the wooden door to the room, effectively blocking off all the gaps above the cage and the gap under the door too.

Feeling that they were locked in pretty tightly I went off to bed quite happy.

At 1.30am this morning I was rudely awakened by the cries of a fox, and our numpty dog barking his little empty head off.  I released said numpty into the night, and he actually ran in the right direction and managed to chase the fox off.  I checked on all our birdies and bunnies and they were all in one piece but by the door of the piglet room I could see that the rabbit hutch door wedged in place had been disturbed, but unbreached.  Score one for the Virgo traits within.

Speaking of our numpty dog, he will be 4 tomorrow.  He is a Border Collie who appears not to have inherited any of the intelligent traits common in collies but all of the bouncy energetic nature.

I know Borders can be difficult dogs to own, hard to train and control and they do have several down sides to their intelligence, but we have been very fortunate in our dog's temperament, and he makes a wonderful pet.  He has never worked as a herd dog, his natural inclination is to be herdee not herder, he has a small repetoire of tricks, and he is very conscious of his territory but not a guard dog as such, being more inclined to run back to you barking rather than seeing anything off his patch.

Anyway last night at 1.30 we were wandering around with a torch listening to the fox shouting at us from various fields.  One of Arthur's tricks is to bark, run a tight circle and return on command, so we were wandering the lanes and I was sending him into fields randomly with him barking his happy little head off then coming back and being sent off again.  I think he thought his birthday had come early.

Needless to say he is doing the sleep of the dead now, taking on the appearance of a great big smelly rug across the front door.  May have to consider some form of fox chasing reward for his birthday treat tomorrow.

Today's gardening projects already completed, garden weeded, potatoes treated, colorado beetles squished, tomatoes transplanted, next lot of peas collected and frozen, poppy and sweet william seeds collected and redistributed throughout  the flower beds ready for next year.  Time for breakfast now.