October 1st Happy National Day to you all. Huan asked me today when
October 2nd Lethargy is a strong feeling, very strong indeed. We overcame it though and forced ourselves out of the house for a round the river walk. I chose that way so that I could buy sausages for tomorrow’s dinner. Crossing Little Island Huan was happy, she found lizards!
As it looks like the rain will not come back in great force (famous last words) we also checked on the new sluice gates progress. Water is still getting in to the ‘lido’ but the fight to get it out appears to now be winning.
Snowbird inward migration is now in full flow, the October holiday has begun. Consequently one of the outdoor gyms is being fully utilised again. Mind you, I feel sure that there may be some schimpfing and muttering behind closed doors when they see the adjacent gym! PS You will only find “schimpfing” in a British army dictionary. However, if you go here and translate the page to English you can learn more - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schimpfen
Crossing the river it was nice to see it decorated for National Day.
Sausages bought, we headed back home on the other side of the river. Ordinary birds were out in force. Well, we could hear then but actually spotting them was much more difficult. I had three failures in the trees and one success on the ground.
I stopped to take a hopeless photo; it was binned as soon as I uploaded it. As I was making my way back towards the leader she was busy with her phone. She does make me smile!
All that hard work made us tired, back to afternoon naps. When you see your parents, or your grandparents, dozing off after lunch, don’t laugh. One day it will be you!
October 3rd The countryside was calling us today so we heeded the call and went for it. On the way we took a diversion through a little village where we saw 土地公Tǔdì gōng or ‘God of Land’. Most villages have something similar to this little altar.
Huan is behind me most of the time but occasionally she sprints on ahead.
In that previous photo, from a distance I could see a tree that appeared to be missing its trunk. The top was just hovering in mid-air. Close up I think it looks quite artistic.
As usual in the countryside we have to create the occasional panorama.
We have shown you quite a few irrigation channels from our countryside walks, but I thought this one was a step up. Like the others it is man made but due to lack of pruning it looks natural.
Flora was on the books but the photos were not spectacular. Fauna was better.
Meanwhile other flora was being medicated.
On our way to cross the main road and take the back lanes home we spotted one of our favourite houses (dwellings) that has now almost disappeared under its natural roof. If we slept there I would probably have nightmares about snakes in the rafters!
Soon we were across the road and making our way down a rather soggy track. Nice views though.
This particular “road” was meant to lead to a new apartment complex.
And here is the complex now. Once upon a time I was chased by a snake down there. Boy, did I run fast. At one time we were also told that there had been plans for a small airport there, or that there had actually been one. We were never able to verify either. What went wrong with the present project we do not know but obviously the cash flow dried up.
Passing by the buildings we approach the village where you can see the old road, the one we still use, veering off to the left. The new road, or what you can see of it, goes off to the right.
Look Mum, they have cleared the foliage, can I walk along the aqueduct now please? “NO!”
I would title these next two photos as “Men at work.” However, these are two of the village ladies. The men are all lounging around under a tree, waiting for lunch time I suppose.
Huan found a little lizard in the village, so small that I had problems focusing on it. Just so that you can see it here are two photos with different bits in and out of focus!
Further on through the village we came across a lady chopping vegetables to feed her pigs with. Huan asked if she could help.
I told her not to worry if she chopped her fingers off, the pigs would eat them too! Enough photos from the countryside for today. Back home life was quite clearly back to normal. Our lunch was tuna fish and cucumber sandwiches, made with home made baps, embellished with lettuce and with cherry tomatoes on the side. I’m sure you don’t need photos.
For dinner however we will provide
you with the menu and with my plate. Did I modify it? Well, I added garlic as I
always do. Our pasta sauce was home made and our sausage was a
October 4th Being back to normal is good. Today was an up the road and down the river walk. Our first lucky scoop was on the way up the road.
Before reaching the top of the hill two lizards were found.
With all the work going on at the end of the main road we took the diagonal down to the river. This is a view that we haven’t showed you before.
Our riverside walk is still under refurbishment.
We always thought dragonflies were invincible until we showed you the one being eaten by a lizard. Well today we found another one that failed; he flew into a web of death.
As for this fellow, do you think he was a little angry with me?
Flowers through the trees and my flower through the trees. She didn’t know where I was.
And now for our first car / anime for a while. The first one is from something called ‘Kirby’, it means nothing to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_(series)
On the back of the car is someone that we thought, or I thought, would have something to do with the side decoration. It seems not, this is a character called ‘Shinnosuke Nohara’ and he comes from a different series - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayon_Shin-chan
From a distance I could see something on the roof of the building down the road from our place but I couldn’t make out what it was. It turned out to be a brave man!
As you know by now I often cook a couple of times a week and this week was no different. When we had been doing our shopping and I had been undecided about today’s dinner, Huan had suggested something that surprised me. She said she would like rice pudding this week. Now I love my rice puddings and I have cooked them for her before but she is more of a rice soup girl. Not to worry, rice pudding it was. We use a lot less sugar, salted butter instead of salt and butter; today we had no cinnamon, otherwise almost as is. Just like our Mam when we were little I would usually serve it with dried prunes. However, the prunes we bought were not good, for me anyway, Huan had them, I had raisins. We both added a little Thai coconut milk and loved it. There is no photo of our rice pudding, what is there to see? However, the recipe is here.
October 5th Saturday is market day and we are back to normal, buying the salad makings to go with cheese this week. First I had to stop and chat with a new friend. This friend is sometimes very reluctant to go home; a lot of enticing from his Mum was needed.
In the market we met someone we have met before. I am no longer the only foreigner in Wuzhishan. She is an Ethiopian lady married to a Chinese man, the brother of the lady standing next to her here. I promise that the next time we see her we will ask her name and also share her WeChat details for her Ethiopian coffee. I guess we should even buy some next time too.
Huan’s day was made, although I only had time for one quick snap!
I found a few birds today but none of them were good enough to share here I’m afraid. Instead we’ll remind you of Wallace and Gromit, this time it is three ladies of varying ages. The driver explained to Huan that because Huan’s licence is for an automatic car, she is not allowed to drive one of these or any other three wheeler. My licence is fine, my age is not!
It seems that the director of photography is also into spiders these days.
That was it for our day apart from lunch, naps and dinner. Huan’s salad was with Feta cheese, very nice it was too. Mine was with a supposed blue cheese. It’s called ‘Cambozola’, made by ‘Käserei Champignon’. If you are a blue cheese fan, do not buy it!
October 6th Ah Sunday, our weekly day of rest. Hang on, we’re retired, every day is Sunday! Today was a slightly different walk; we went off down the main road to walk back to the first turn off from the second, a reverse long cut if you like. My ulterior motive was to try and understand where Huan had told me the Ethiopian lady lives. No, I am not intending to stalk her; I just want to find the village name. Here we are just two minutes away from the main road.
The village we were looking for has no village sign but the building address ‘labels’ do give us the name and it is the one Huan told me. We’ve been through this village numerous times but have never known its name. It has a new addition this time.
Through the other side of the village and on to the fish farm restaurant and wedding place Huan was filled with happiness. She spotted a couple of egrets, a little far away, but I took the photos anyway. At home we were both surprised to see four, a whole family, two parents and two chicks.
Here’s a des res from a distance, stay tuned for a closer view later.
Across the pond and just past the des res we came across our old friends the geese. I took a video for Facebook and Huan took lots of photos. It looks as though the goose is vicious, as they often are, but he seemed to give my boot just a little playful nip. https://youtu.be/FtYu7H_1k9k
As promised, here’s a closer view of the des res.
After a fruitless search for snakes, we have seen one here before, we decided it was time to go over the mountain back towards home. The start was a hill; we both felt it was steep today.
That was the steepest hill. After some ups and downs and a lovely view of a local beach we were soon at the top of our last descent of the day.
Our day was completed, or should I say the Prime Minister’s day was completed when she found another lizard. I say another because she had found one earlier but one that I was unable to get a decent picture of. I think this portrait is good enough though.
October 7th Occasionally we
miss the bigger supermarkets that other cities have.
I left Huan napping after lunch and went off for an afternoon walk. I also thought you needed a few more snaps, like where’s the mountain gone. There is a road on the other side of that tower; I don’t think they are building a new one. PS All those smudges in the sky are not from the lens, they are multiple dragonflies.
We’ll follow that with two views on either side of Little Island, the first showing the river on our side and the second the irrigation canal on the other side.
I tried my hardest to find subjects that would impress the boss, all in vain though. The only lizard I found was a dead one! I took three photos of the cement pipe being used at the riverside, that didn’t move her at all either. My walk this afternoon had two ulterior motives. One was finding milk and the other was a sneaky fag and coffee break. The first part involved visiting the other branch of our local supermarket. Lucky me, I bought them out of milk completely, I took their last three litres. There was also a BOGOF on some snacks, who am I to say no.
For the second part I walked down to
The sound of birds was all around me on this street today. I tried, and tried, and tried again, most of the photographs were useless. As she was looking at them Huan kept saying “not clean”, in other words not in focus, and I kept agreeing and putting them in the bin. Of course I didn’t tell her that the last one I tried wasn’t too bad so when I clicked on it she was finally impressed. One bird photo for the day is not too bad I suppose.
And there you have it, our first week of back to normal life. Some might say back to the grindstone but as we are both retired we can’t really say that. We are both back in the kitchen of course; stay tuned for the latest recipes. See you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment