November has been an amazing month, lots of sun shine, lots of mellow golden days and cold clear star-lit nights. And the sunsets ... and sunrises ... gosh it was all so amazing. I just love November, heck I just love autumn and winter. While most folks get winter depression I seem to get winter passion :) I love to sit and relax in the garden surrounded by my dogs and watch the passing of light, the one hour between day and night when everything turns blue and then the sky is ablaze (well, on a clear day). And this particularly soothing golden light through the autumn foliage .. I love it!!!
While I write this the Eastern horizon is very gently turning from black to these amazing touches of magenta and I hope I can catch another wonderful sunrise on camera later on.
Anyway, life has been fabulous, even though it is strenuous and busy and most of the time I only remember which day it is when the garbage folks come (we have three days a week where all sorts of garbage is picked up ... Wednesdays is for bio/green garbage; Thursdays for either plastic/metal or paper and Fridays is for all the rest that doesn't fit the first two and you know what? Our trash can is tiny ... yes, TINY! It is bucket sized, well a big bucket, but still .. bucket sized. It is really amazing how much plastic and metal, but especially plastic stuff we are buying with our food. Plastic packages for sausages, meats, even vegetables and fruits. What happened to the good old newspaper or brown paper wraps?
As we are changing our way of living and especially eating, I have started to take empty tupperware with me when I go grocery shopping. First the supermarkets were a bit put off but as we are buying less and less there (during summer we got all of our fruits and vegetables from the garden and we've never eaten so healthily nor so fresh in all our lives) and go to the extra length to buy ecologically sustainable and free range dairy products and meats now. Yes, it is costlier, but then again we do not eat so much meat anymore anyway, so it doesn't affect our purses too much.
Luckily we have a couple of bio/eco farms around here so I can phone them up, ask what they have some particular offers that week and then I go there with my tupperware. And the butcher can portion all off already so you just need to label your boxes and chuck them into the freezer for further use. It's wonderful.
A couple of women here are already thinking of buying a pig or two next year and feed it for a year before having them slaughtered.I guess we have all seen the River Cottage DVDs one too many times LOL But the RC team would be proud of us. I have already asked the farmer down the road and he would offer us stabling free of charge for half a pig (no matter how many pigs we will eventually get). Another woman has re-activated her goat herd with a male goat and we have been experimenting with making goat's cheese already. Could be that we will have a couple of mini-goat's in the new year as well ... we will see.
Our dogs are striving and are still as cheeky as ever. Our two foster dogs are slowly but gradually, especially Sammy, learning to enjoy their new lives and I'm particularly proud of Lir who gave the impression to never learn how to walk on a leash, as he was so afraid of the harness and the leash itself. But he has now mastered like he had never done anything else in his life. We even can now walk through the village without me having to drag a 30 kg dog along. He even walks without a leash now when we are on the fields and the woods.
It is still very painful and frustrating to watch any progress with Sammy. At least she now walks within two feet of us and doesn't take flight immediately. Still ... she doesn't like to be touched, doesn't like any kind of harness or collar but there is progress. She now knows she is called Sammy or Sam Sam by us. If I call her she slowly approaches and waits what I have in store for her. We feed her by hand and she slowly, very slowly allows us to treat her like one of our dogs. But I don't see her moving into her forever family just yet. She will need at least another year if progress continues to be as it is up till now.
And the rest of the pack are all happy and healthy and fully demand our attention :)
Chandini looking like a miniature bobtail :)
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