So here's the craic, my grandad died a few years ago, a few years after my nana. His house has been up for sale ever since, its not in bad nick (just a bit old fashioned) basically its solid and just needs a few non-major things doing to it. Its been on the market for 3 years and nobody has been interested enough to offer us a decent price. There was a frankly cheeky old whore of a woman who recently offered £55,000 for it which the olds quite rightly immediately declined. Its up for about 70, and before that, at the very beginning it was up for around 90.
Anyway boring house stuff aside, recently my mam and auntie (and my other auntie who doesn't live round here any more but who's been up once or twice to help out) have started giving it a good going over, stripping and painting all the walls, fixing the little bits that needed fixing and all that sort of thing.
Today we tackled the garden. It was miserable and cold and grey and drizzling. In the little square patch of garden in the corner is an old rose bush which is starting to bloom and looks so beautiful, and some honeysuckle my mam had planted years ago. We hacked down the honeysuckle cause it was just crawling all over the roses and generally taking over the area and was all brown and dead underneath anyway. As a result my hands are covered in loads of thorn scratches, those little buggers like to fight you off. This evening I was contemplating how little cuts and scratches are more painful than big ones. Then it occurred to me that I've not really had a big cut or bloody injury, and really that's probably not the case.
On one last gardening note (for this entry at least), yesterday all three of us, plus a handyman my auntie knows who's fixing some things up, were having a tea break in the yard. I was in said square patch with the rosebush, digging up a dandelion with the garden hoe, when I came across one of these. Warning, if you don't like gross things, then don't click this link.
http://somethingscrawlinginmyhair.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/gray.moth.pupa_.jpg
I tentatively picked it up on the end of my hoe, and then not so tentatively dropped it into the middle of the yard for everyones inspection. "What the hell is this?" or something like that, I said. I had never ever seen anything remotely like this at all, my first thoughts were that it was some sort of weird plant bud or a dead cockroach, I guess I knew it wasn't a roach because firstly my grandads house and garden are nice and clean and tidy and secondly I didn't really think we got those big juicy ones even in this country. Still, I knew it wasn't quite right. "Its a cocoon" piped up the handyman. I was impressed! And relieved. And then I felt guilty for sort of dropping it on the floor before I had known what it was. So I tried to put it back where I found it using the hoe and a wallpaper scraper, but let me tell you, those things are tricky to pick up especially when you're scared of handling it and don't want to pick it up with your own fingers. It kept on rolling off, only from a height of a few inches so I knew it wouldn't be damaged, but I obviously "woke" it up or something, cause it started slowly wriggling about. Then I got even more scared. Anyway managed it in the end and all was well and good.
I googled it when I got home and I thiiink, I'm fairly sure its a moth pupae. Sort of disappointing that its not going to be a glorious magnificent monarch butterfly or anything, but I like moths anyway so its still pretty good. How cool are cocoons though? Nature never fails to amaze me with its ingenuity. I checked on it today, it was still there, I hope I didn't kill or damage it. Part of me wanted to put it in a container and bring it home and raise it, but to be honest, I am still scared of it. It does still LOOK like a roach after all.
In other news, my mams friend at her work keeps giving us vienetta. Vienetta is mint, I am very pleased with this development.
1 comment:
omg those vienettas look good!!
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