It’s Brightening Up – Somewhere!

February 27^th Grumpy was back this morning, well maybe more dozy than grumpy. Last night was a night of dreams, strange ones at that. They were not scary and I quite enjoyed them but after each one, (the two I remember), just like the cinema, a bathroom break was needed. I agreed with the Minister of the Interior that we would go out after lunch and I would prepare our dinner in the morning.

We were not really sure about the weather, the sun had gone off for a rest somewhere, the clouds were all around and the humidity was high. A promise is a promise though! Our first picture was a lonely chicken on guard outside the byre; the gate was open so the cows were out.

Soon we were on our way to the river, the path you probably know like the back of your hand. On the way we passed a family of chickens, a different breed perhaps.

Having spotted chickens of different colours a reddish-purplish pineapple was next. I bet this would cost a lot on a pizza; I’ll have to ask #1 son, see what he thinks.

On this occasion we thought you might like a river collage for a change.

Chickens reared their heads again; I did my best not to disturb them.

Our first flora of the day appears to be a dangerous one. It is sometimes known as the castor-oil plant and it is where we get castor oil from. Who remembers their mother forcing them to drink it as children? However, it is also where the poison ricin comes from so definitely do not eat the seeds. In fact beware the touch too! You can look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus or here https://www.britannica.com/plant/castor-oil-plant for more information.

Staying with flora this one may be alpinia; I am not 100% sure. There are so many different genera and identifying exactly which one is not easy. This one was being visited by bees so I am going with alpinia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpinia

It’s time we had a view or two, we do live in a beautiful part of the world.

Soon I was trying to find a turkey for Huan with little success. There is one in there, towards the back you can see its tail feathers fanned out. There was no good camera angle though.

Another bike, no logo this time, just a name, bobo. Do you think I could lay claim to it?

The empty bike was followed by an occupied one, a three wheeler with cargo bed. Here the driver had just told me not to touch the dog you can see in the background, it was sick and losing its fur. Look closely you will see that I am telling him that I am losing my fur too!

Soon we were heading back into town and we each went a different way. Here is the boss. The stairway she is aiming for is somewhere underneath the dark green leaves.

As for me, I had no stairs.

I had no access to the road either!

And surprise, surprise, we are back to flora again. What surprised is here was the lack of any leaves or flowers on this tree, it only had the fruits. The fruits do not turn into food, instead they turn into cotton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceiba_pentandra

Making a detour over little island we just got our ten kilometres in. Mind you, this month’s total is nothing to write home about. Once home, no rest for the wicked and straight into the kitchen for me. This was today’s dinner, with whipping cream instead of crème fraische, American mustard instead of Dijon, pork cutlets instead of chops and no tarragon.

The recipe had been followed this morning, now I had to microwave the baked potatoes and cook the beans. We call them Harbin beans because that is where we first tried them. Why beans? I though the recipe needed some colour on the plate. Here are the plates sans sauce; Huan has a small jug there. Once the photos were taken we just swamped everything. It was yummy!

February 28^th Today ended up being a long one, with no walks. The plan was for me to get down to some electrical work in the kitchen this morning to replace an old extension board. Here I am cleaning the wall after removing the old one and then, having found a problem in the cupboard, removing the socket under there ready to replace.

This was the socket I removed; two of the four wires just fell off when I removed it.

For the live wires in this socket they had used multi-strand instead of single core so I had to find a way to safely get two cables into one connection of the new socket.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to fit the new socket

A quick test with the electricians screwdriver was fine and then, and then I started preparing the new extension board.

Imagine my dismay when nothing worked! Lunch break was a relief. After lunch I realised the problem was with the wiring. When I had removed the old socket, the two wires that ‘fell out’ were the blue and the green. I had quite naturally installed the blue in the ‘N’ and the green in the ‘⏚/E’ terminals. Eventually, by taking off the socket on the other side of the wall in the dining room, I realised that the green wire had been used as an additional blue, and that in common with the rest of the house, we actually have no earth wires. While I was doing that I replaced the socket in the dining room too. Realising that the terminals of the new socket were slightly larger and thus easier to use I went ‘back into the kitchen cupboard’ and put a new one there too.

Hallelujah, all was fine. All I had to do was stick the new board on the wall and we were ready to go. Now nothing has to be unplugged, the new board has safety protection and in the cupboard, the plug for the extension is switched and fused. We should be fine for a few more years.

What I would really love to do is rewire the house completely; none of it is as it should be. To do that though means replacing all the floors as that is where the electrical conduits are. A fake ceiling would have been nice. Back in Harbin we had wood panelling from the floor to about one metre, that would work too, hide all the wires behind. In the past I have tentatively suggested surface mounted trunking to the Minister of Housing, a suggestion that was not well received at all. Where is Mr. Tesla with his wireless electricity when you need him?

I declined Huan’s offer of an after dinner walk. It probably would have been good for me but having taken so long to sort out the kitchen I was just far too lazy.

February 29^th All that sitting in a cupboard yesterday didn’t do a great deal for my muscles today. Stiff doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. Huan took pity on me and decided we would just do a round the river and look for lizards walk. As usual I took the high road while Huan took the low road but we weren’t heading for Scotland.

Within just a few metres Huan succeeded in finding her first lizard.

After that is was two for me, one for Huan and then another two for me.

They were coming out of the woodwork weren’t they? We surmised that they were out in force because they had spent the last three days hiding away from the miserable weather we’ve been having. Huan made the next find and made me jealous by doing it. It wasn’t a lizard but a pair of pooches in a pushchair. The ‘carer’ even got them out of the pushchair but I was not in a position to get there, Huan had to be my proxy.

Not long after I joined Huan on the riverside path and she swiftly found another lizard and snapped me while I was snapping it.

Competition was very hot today; the next three were down to me.

Next we disturbed a gent doing his stretching exercises under a tree and a load of insects, maybe midges. While we were there they all settled on a leaf. On this occasion Google was of no help, it gave the answer bees which these are definitely not.

For the next two photos Huan was the lucky finder. Surprisingly there is another spider, unsurprisingly there was another lizard.

The next one was more unusual. We were watching two old guys on the path directing a young man in the river. Whatever they were pointing at, we couldn’t see it. The young man then had a brief struggle after which he came out with his catch and a shopping bag to carry it home in. We did tell the old guys that the turtle probably did not want to be dinner.

The next order from HQ was ‘look at those cows and the bird on that one’, I dutifully obeyed.

Back on the main road we passed a big stone which I had only remarked upon the last time we had passed by. “I wonder why lizards don’t sit on that stone, that is in the sun and nice and warm too.’ Guess what I found today for the last shot of the walk. In its own way today’s walk was an unusual one, I found more lizards than Huan did. Maybe we should wager on it in the future.

After lunch naps were had all round, with me struggling to get onto and off the bed. Isn’t being retired a lot of fun? Those of you not planning your pensions, well take care or you will be like me. You will have to do all the repairs in your house when at such a late stage in life you would prefer to be paying somebody else to do it.

Chef Bob was on duty again today, another one from ‘Souped Up Recipes’, called’ Stir Fry Bitter Melon’. Some call it bitter melon, some call it bitter gourd, and some call it ampalaya. There is a photo of the recipe but not of the plates, I didn’t think it looked pretty enough.

It was a little too salty for our liking; in fact Huan left some for her breakfast. I used a little coconut milk on mine which helped. What went wrong? I probably left the gourd absorbing the salt for too long. If I do make it again I will skip that part completely.

March 1st Maybe those lizards yesterday knew something we didn’t and maybe they were making the most of the sunny weather. Today was an umbrella day, just in case. As it happened, I think we were mostly walking in water vapour, not really rain.

Some creatures like the water though, this egret for example. I originally cropped this to a square (CD Cover in Picasa) but then I spotted another pair of legs at the top. Neither of us had seen that bird at the time, Huan didn’t even see it on the computer until I pointed it out. We can’t make it out but there is a possibility that the brown one is the egret’s chick.

Staying around the town, where we could swiftly jump into shelter if needed, we found another des res for you. Why is this one not completed? Well, normally in villages, the height limit is three storeys and we think someone may have fallen foul of the planning laws.

Coming back down the track, the field had been taken over by a market. It makes a lot of sense; they used to be at the side of the main road before. In fact we have seen the stall holders ‘moved on’ by municipal inspectors more than once.

This is on the side of what we call the Haikou road, the road out of town heading north. Coming back into town there is a dog that really needs a bath and a trim. He always likes to see me and his little tail goes. Because of where I stood today, he gave me his paw for a change.

From a dog up the stairs to a cat on high, looking down on us mere mortals.

Continuing along our upper shopping street we spotted this fruit. Being the brave souls we are, we bought one to try, it was expensive. It was nearly £1.00 for one. A Google was needed once we got home. It is called in Chinese人蔘果Rén shēn guǒ - ginseng fruit. That is despite it not growing on the same plant. In fact ginseng berries are very different. In English it is called a pepino fruit or a pepino melon and is native to the South Americas. Like many fruits it is now grown across the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_muricatum

During our wander the weather didn’t deteriorate but neither did it improve much.

Our last photo of the walk is these two little pooches needing some attention. This shop has had a variety of different dogs over the months; I dread to think where the others have gone. We are usually told, by many owners, that their dogs have run away, they have been stolen; they are with family in the village etc. Sometimes we know the last one is true because our friends return after some time. At least I can give these two a little love.

March 2^nd It was market day today and it started with miscommunication. Never mind, we didn’t need anything this week, no salad on the menu. Communication restored we set off after lunch to buy lottery tickets, chips (not crisps) for dinner and some fresh air. The weather had gone back to being miserable again; the forecast was rain all day. The forecast lied but it was a chilly and damp walk. Today’s moped decorations, the first one is 给我来, Gěi wǒ lái – ‘come to me’. The second one is 别动我的车!!!, Bié dòng wǒ de chē – ‘don’t touch my car!!!’

Despite there being no sun today Huan managed to find a lizard and it was in a place that we have never seen one before. I wasn’t very near but I did find a decent enough vantage point.

Once we had our chips we set off home, no need for a marathon walk today. On our way we came across a multi-tasking young girl. She was busy on her phone whilst playing ‘chicken’.

At home Huan took over the cooking, she thinks I make too much mess when I make a fry-up and that’s what today’s dinner was. We had bacon, sausage (small bratwurst), egg beans and chips and I thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful. It had been a while! After dinner we had half the pepino melon each for dessert, neither of us really enjoyed it. It had a sweet taste but with a tang of something else, not easy to describe. At least we tried…

March 3^rd We seem to be stuck in a time warp with the weather; it’s almost like being back in the UK. Today there was no rain forecast but the skies were dreary so we stayed in all morning. Fresh air and exercise is a must of course, so out we went after lunch. We didn’t get far before Huan had to go back and ‘show’ the next door but one apartment to some prospective tenants. While she did that I walked around in circles and found a spider.

Although the weather was not up to much, the scenery kept us in good moods.

And the flora was fine too. In fact it was vegetables and while we can’t get the exact Chinese words the English name is “Hyacinth Bean”. She must be Mr. Bean’s wife!

That was just about it for our outdoor photos, the others I took are not so good. Dinner was the same as yesterday except that the chips came from a different burger place. The Minister of Food decided to cook again, I just enjoyed eating it.

March 4^th The last day of the week has rolled around yet again, doesn’t time fly as you age! There was no shopping today; we are busy for a couple of days this week. Walking was in the schedule though, on a ‘mostly sunny day’ according to the forecasts but a ‘mostly cloudy day’ according to eyewitnesses. Still, we had a nice long walk. Our first photo is another moped but for a slightly different reason. As well as the decals you can see that there is a crash helmet on the seat. This is very normal and nobody ‘makes off with them’.

Next is a picture of me just before I took a picture of them, with their permission.

We were headed along the main road before turning on to the riverside and walking up to the next village where we could cross and walk back. I tried taking some photos obscuring most of the man made stuff so that you could see the scenery. The third picture has buildings but it also has a tree hiding the mobile phone tower.

“Look at that bird” said SWMBO.

Soon we were on the bridge so we have more scenery. The collage is a 12mm and a 60mm shot from the same place on the bridge.

Maybe it is time we had some wildlife, here’s a butterfly for you.

We parted ways for a few hundred metres; in fact that is when I found the butterfly. Meanwhile Huan was doing her best in the village.

After the village I met Huan at the junction. Going up the hill would have made us far too late for lunch so we followed the motorbike.

Soon we were transitioning from the countryside to the city again so I thought this scene would be a nice combination of the two.

And then we were home, for lunch and a lovely long nap. Tomorrow we have an ‘alarming’ start to the day, we are off to Haikou. My annual PSA test is due; it should show that I am still female! The fridge also needs topping up with foreign delicacies such as meat and cheese. Stay tuned for photographs from there, next week.