Voting Today

I went and voted in the European Union elections today. When I got to the polling station (in our village hall) and handed over the poll card I'd been sent in the post, I was given two ballot papers. Up until then I'd thought I was just voting for Euro MP's, or MEP's as they're called. But discovered that I was also voting in the County Council Elections.

The green ballot paper was for the County Council elections, and that was easy to deal with, because it was just a short slip of paper and there were only three candidates to choose from. Easy... choose, put your cross in the right square, fold and put in the correct ballot box.

The European Union election ballot paper was a different story altogether. The paper was yellow, and it was as long as my arm. And I had to choose between 15 parties, half of whom I'd never heard of before, and most of whom I knew very little about. It took a few folds to get it small enough to slip into the EU ballot box.

So that's it. I've exercised my right to vote, and it'll be interesting to hear who wins what.

Hooli's back

He's such a clever dog, but just a bit camera shy.

Racing Dolphins

I only just got around to copying video from my Flip Video to my computer. This was filmed when we were on a boat trip in La Gomera in the Canary Islands. We saw loads of dolphins, and it's almost as if they were racing the boat we were on.

Burnt Offerings

I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. I didn't use chocolate chips because I have some nice organic dark chocolate bars. So I chopped one of those up and used them in my standard chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Then I was too lazy to measure out spoonfuls of dough, and decided to make chocolate chip cookie bars instead. Since the recipe said not to grease the pan, I didn't. I then stuck the pan in the oven, and went out to do some gardening while it cooked.

The wind was blowing, and making a racket as it ruffled all the leaves in the trees, so I didn't hear the oven timer when it went off. By the time I remembered and went to look, the cookie was burnt all around the edges.

I decided this wasn't too much of a problem because I could cut the edges off when I cut it up into bars.

Easier said than done: since I didn't grease the pan the whole thing was stuck like glue. I did manage to cut out and scrape out about 20 cookie bars, and the rest was burn edges and crumbs which I have put into a plastic tub, and which I will nibble on while I have a cup of tea (just so I don't waste any).

It may not look very pretty, but it tastes quite good, if slightly burnt and crumbly.

You have to feel sorry for me.

Hooli again and a walk in the woods

Following on from yesterday's post about Hooli finding the rubber squeeky santa turkey, he was so pleased with himself that he slept with it by his side all night, and picked it up again first thing in the morning. So the house was filled with thumps interspersed with squeeks from the turkey as Hooli charged around with it in his mouth.

When I was getting ready to take him for a walk, everything went silent. Next time I checked, the turkey was gone. It's nowhere to be found. When I ask him where it is, he looks at me as if to say: "Turkey? What turkey?". I think he may have buried it again.

We went for a walk in the woods....

A field full of buttercups.

A rather elegant bug.

A molehill?

The path in the wood was almost overrun by wildflowers.

Like a low cloud.

And leaving the woods, I couldn't see the path out.

Till Hooli came back and showed me the way.

When we first came into the wood, there were three muntjac deer on the path ahead.

Two ran away before I could get my camera out.

If you click on the picture above you should be able to see the remaining deer a bit more clearly.

As we walked up the path we could hear loud barking sounds, which seemed to echo through the woods.

It was a little eerie.

When I got home I looked up the deer online.

They're the smallest deer in the UK and are known as the barking deer.

Click on this link to hear what it sounded like.

Gorgeous Day

It's been a gorgeous day here with wall to wall sunshine. In between washing and hanging out laundry, I read for a bit in the garden, and then I started to do some gardening.

Last year was a bit of a disaster in my vegetable patch, because even though I'd covered my vegetables with fleece or netting, I woke up one morning to find that all my salad plants had been decimated overnight by marauding slugs and snails.

I read recently that coffee grounds left around the salad patch are a good barrier for slugs, so I've been saving them up, and today I planted some lettuce seeds in a square area and surrounded it with coffee grounds. Unfortunately I ran out before the square was closed, but I think I have enough time, before the seedlings come up, to drink enough coffee to complete the square.

I've outlined the shape of the square, you can just barely see the coffee grounds, and the green line shows where I started and the red arrow shows where I ran out.

I hope this works, because I got very annoyed last year when I lost my whole crop.

I'm looking after Hooli this weekend and I got quite cross with him because he was digging near the boundary fence. I told him to stop, he'd pause, then start digging again, and just when I was ready to really yell at him, he pulled out a squeeky rubber turkey dressed in a santa costume.


He was so pleased with himself, he kept making it squeek.

I once read that squirrels bury nuts all through the summer and autumn, for use in the winter, and then can't remember where they buried them. Well I reckon Hooli must have buried that turkey at Christmas time, and remembered it all these months later. Does that make him smarter than a squirrel?

I do get some funny emails 1

The first celebrity to die of swine flu......

.....and we all know who gave it to him.