Dogs swimming pics

Jessy's lump has gone down a bit but the vet is waiting till next Thursday to decide what the next step is, she has not sent away the samples yet incase the swelling goes down. She keeps scratching the lump with her back paw and making it bleed which is a pain as she is indoors a lot anyway I took her down with the other two for a swim I don't think salt water will do a scratch any harm.

In the pic below you can see the bit that was shaved and what is left of the lump

I should be out with the strimmer, cutting back some out of control garden instead of blogging as I have been kind of slack garden wise this last couple of weeks, its been so hot I just melt and cant shed clothes or I get bitten to bits by clegs so its not the most enjoyable task.

There was a murmmer that John might come up this afternoon for a couple of days but the murrmer started during an afternoon session on the beer so it may have been doing the talking.

Heres whats flowering just now in the garden

Jessy under the knife

Jessy has a solid lump on her throat, quite disturbingly large, so I took her in to the vets this morning. She had a wee operation and an xray to inspect and is getting out tonight with strong anti biotics. The vet isn't sure what is up and they took a sample for biopsy I think in case its cancerous. The lump grew really quickly and hopefully its just swelling due to a bit or something and not a tumor as the vet was saying if it was a tumor it would be a huge operation and we probably wouldn't go down that track. Anyway fingers crossed for her.

Today was dry and sunny and I got some grass/ thistles/ bushes cut along the roadside, I havent been doing much in the garden in the hot weather and it is growing like mad after that rain we had over the last couple of days. I,ve been kind of weary myself this last week or so and am in for an MOT with the DR next Tuesday for blood checks. Its not like me to be lethargic.

Having a lamb stew for dinner with celerac mash, califlower and new spuds from the plot. They have been really tasty the spuds and we have been enjoying onions peas and courgette from the garden too.

The fridge is dead long live the new fridge

Well the fridge expired so Angie went and bought another, it gets delivered on Friday, she also took back an electric kettle that was leaking and still under warranty so they replaced it with a nice new red one. The salesman told her it was a common failing, the welds weaken when the kettle is boiled and then filled with cold water. Excuse me if I,m wrong but is that not what you are meant to do to boil water? you would think that the whole product range should be recalled mind you all they need is for the welds to last until just after the warranty expires to have a great product range ehh.

So with the new cooker,new kettle, new tops and a new fridge the kitchen feels like a brand new one.  

There is a fine drizzle of rain this afternoon drying before it wets the ground, this is the first percipitation for weeks and the ground could really do with a bit heavier rain my pond is like Lake George in Australia near Canberra. Lake George dried out completely in November 2002 and remained so until February 2010 when it started filling.

Ireland has sold out of fans, the one we had gave up the ghost, sort of trend forming here ehh, there is not a one to be had in Galway thanks to the huge temps we have been having.

The batteries have been charging on the yacht overnight so it will be interesting to see if they stay charged.

Snow in July

Spent yesterday evening with a bowl of ice water and a face cloth cooling off, only to find a fresh dump of snow on the bushes this morning, well it sort of looked like snow anyway.

The bushes are covered in wee white flowers, they didn't flower last year as far as I can remember they must like dry hot weather. Just back from swimming again the tide was out when we were down at the boat ramp today so it wasn't as nice as it has been when the tide is high but that didn't stop the whole family having a loll around in the water.

My echo sounder stopped working yesterday and it appears the battery's are low so I have a charger on them for tonight hopefully I have enough credit to run the charger all night, not sure whats up there as the solar panel has been keeping them charged fine and I ran the engine for a few hours yesterday as there was no wind when we were out looking for a beach with no one on it. The only thing I can think of is that there are two isolator switches on the boat and I thought if I open the both of them maybe the one on the column near the engine controls needs to be left isolated instead. I will give that a try.

Its overcast today and very Close, feels thundery and its very still again.

I smoked some mackerel we caught yesterday on the barbeque this morning and we will have to eat them as the fridge seems to have given up the ghost the top section anyway the freezer is still going, I have a load of ice blocks freezing and will try and cool the top bit off with them until we can get a new fridge. Just this alarm goes off ever eight hours or so which is a pain at 0300.

Another day on the water

You wouldn't believe the weather we are having at the moment its like the Greek islands, today I spent fishing with my friend Ron on his wee boat away offshore, caught about 20 pollack a gurnard a wrasse and some mackerel. The temps have been hovering around 30 degrees C in the shade, when i got home we took the dogs for a swim again in the sea which is a great temp at the moment especially if you go at high tide on a sandy beach.

The beaches are busy with swimmers and we saw a minke whale the other day when we were sailing

and there are heaps of dolphins around. Angie was scared a seal, at the place we were swimming at would attack the dogs sometimes I wonder about her, one time we picked up this cuttlefish cuttlebone, which is porous and is made of aragonite. This provides it with buoyancy, which it regulates by changing the gas-to-liquid ratio in the chambered cuttlebone via the ventral siphuncle. Each species' cuttlebone has a distinct shape, size, and pattern of ridges or texture. tough material given to parakeets and other caged birds as a source of dietary calcium. Anyway she said "ohh thats the thing parrots use for their teeth" hmmm parrots have a beak Angie.

Swimming in the Costello river

Been swimming in the sea and the river lately, the river is warm and the sea is about 17C and a bit warmer on sandy beaches that have an incoming tide. Went for a sail yesterday and caught a few mackerel and had a ling for dinner.

Angie in her element with her three dogs.

What do Pikies do on a sunny Sunday afternoon, they put deckchairs out on the road and cuss at passing cars as they are an inconvenience, cant blame them really I mean I wouldn't like someone driving across my lawn, thing is you cant walk down the road either or you get attacked by their wee guard lap dogs.

Forecast is for yet another seven dry sunny days with the heat climbing to 31C next Saturday, I shall have to invest in a fan before then as the last one didn't, last that is. Either that or I get a red van and a deckchair. 

Boiling temps

This is the readout from my weather station today, as you can see it has 35.6C outside temp and 24.7 in the house and very little breeze. Yesterday was the same and I think I had a mild case of heat stroke, had three cold showers during the day to cool off and drank liters of water but still had a mega headache by the evening which didnt go away overnight. Anyway I shouldn't complain about sunny dry weather as we dont get much of it here. I,m not doing any manual gardening today.

The traveling folk are back, they shifted a load of boulders the council had placed to stop them parking their caravans in a lay by about quarter of a mile from the house here. If I go out anywhere I need to lock everything up as they are not immune to helping themselves unfortunately.

Forecast was right

Well the forecast for calm and sunny / hot weather was right, I dropped Alan and Angie off at the bus station about eight thirty yesterday morning in the drizzle and by the time I had driven half way home the sun was out, the day got progressively better until the sun set in a blaze of red. This morning has crystal clear skies a gentle breeze and the temp is in the high twenties.

Cut the big lawn this morning and the midgies had been replaced by clegs or horse flies their bites are horrendous and I spent the hour and a bit it takes to cut that lawn swatting them, punched myself in the face twice and once in the groin, you only swat horse flies on your groin once before learning the lesson the head takes two strikes. I will do the edges on that lawn and the other small one at the south end of the house a bit later on when it cools down a bit. It looks like sunny warm weather all week so I shall spread the lawn mowing over a couple of days. Hopefully Ron will be coming up this week so I will have company if I go fishing, infact if it is calm like this his wee boat would get to the west side of the Arans quickly and we could get into some really big fish.

The bushes on the driveway at the front of the house are out in bloom now they are covered in yellow flowers and look really summery.

It has been a great weekend for sport over here with the Lions thrashing Australia at rugby and Murray doing the same at the tennis, the next big sports thing is the cricket which I cant be bothered with so the TV will be freed up for Inspector Morse apart for the odd game of super rugby from the southern hemisphere until my fox sports subscription runs out.

Well done lions

Alan and I set up the projector and screen plugged the tv and surround sound in and watched the Lions demolish Australia on an 8 ft screen lol was a brilliant game. We are in recovery mode after having a good day yesterday which ended up tippling on poteen after swapping mackerel we caught for Guinness at the local pub, wtg the barter system.

It was still windy yesterday but we had a good sail and chased the feeding birds till we hit on a shoal of fish. The weather wasn't the best this week but we did manage out twice, as soon as he leaves the forecast is hot and calm weather lol. Ohh well maybe next weekend I will get away cruising. Angie is heading across to Scotland then working in England this week till Thursday.

Fishing and fitting kitchen bench tops

Alan gave me a hand replace the kitchen bench tops yesterday and we finished the job off or nearly anyway today after we got back ashore. The have come up great and it was really good to have someone who knew what hey were doing helping me.

It was raining yesterday but today was dry and the wind down a bit so we braved the elements and went fishing, came home with three nice mackerel and three pollack which I pan fried in butter and had with mashed potatoes, green beens and sweet corn and a sauce made with capers, lemon juice, shallots and chicken stock, was very tasty. There was quite a swell running after the strong winds we have had recently and it was still breezy but we had a good sail.

Asleep on a train

I went into galway to pick up Alan off the train from Kildare where he should have changed trains but slept through the station so he was 3 hrs late lol. Angie was all for me abandoning him but I went to the movies to pass the time till he arrived, saw a black comedy called "this is the end" about the apocalypse, it was faintly amusing but I didn't fall asleep so it must have been better than catching a train from Waterford lol.

I saw there was Galway hooker racing on today at killkearan which is about half an hours drive from the house so Alan and I went to see that, being Ireland it had been cancelled or they had forgotten what day it was and so that was almost a wasted trip, when I say almost we were chatting to a bloke on the pier and he mentioned there was a boat jumble sale on in Inverin so we went to that and got some electrical spares for the yacht a crab trap and some fishing gear.

The weather looks ordinary and there is a 4 meter sea running today with westerly force six so I am not sure when we will get out fishing.