Sunday 19 June – Summer?

That will teach me to write in last week’s blog that the hot and sunny weather has made cutting the new flower bed more difficult as, almost ever since the blog was published it has been raining and very un-June-like weather.

Of the three tasks I had listed that I wanted to complete last week due to the weather I have only achieved one – planting the 120 buxus plants around our champignon flower beds behind Priory they look great and they have been well watered in!  The remainder of the week has again been more administrative in the house while avoiding the weather which doesn’t make for good photos.

The advantage of the wet weather is that it allows us to play with Brandon and Garratt together – and they have been able to play together and get to become friends (outside is a different story as, for those who know Garratt, he is so fixated on chasing tennis balls that he can’t even be distracted by a small puppy.)  Garratt has now accepted that Brandon is here to stay and he even seems to enjoy having him around to the point that he shares his own den – previously sacrosanct – as a cosy place to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also started Brandon’s training very gently and, as we did with Garratt, have worked on making him wait for his meals – with some success even though, for 2 of his meals each day, he has the added temptation of Garratt’s food to be eaten – which he has, generally, avoided.

While we knew that spaniels are supposed to be an intelligent breed, we were really impressed with Garratt’s ability to learn and thought that there was no way Brandon would be the same, in fact, if anything it meant that he would be a nightmare to achieve some sort of balance!  However, so far so good.  We have very few little ‘accidents’ in the first 2 weeks and, while one of the spaniel books written by ‘experts’ says that when they are 9 months old they should get to the point of no night-time accidents, in the first 2 weeks we haven’t yet had a wet night (of course that has now jinxed it completely!)

While I may have achieved only one of my hoped for tasks David has had a very busy week.  His catering continues to prove very popular and this week he has broken records by cooking a 3 course dinner for our guests every day since Tuesday – all of which have been very well received.  The massive advantage for me is that when he cooks for our guests it is much more efficient to cook a little more for us as well (and it is always well received by me!)

It was also David’s first week teaching his 8 different classes at New York Gym in Morlaix – which are also equally well received and every week they want to offer him more and more work – I get the impression the classes have never been pushed quite so hard!  Thankfully they are very good at filming Dave at work.

Next week lots more to achieve as other things continue to get added to the list so on top of the boot room and fence which are outstanding, all the hedges need to be cut now and the gate we bought some weeks ago is still leaning up against the gym …

À bientôt.