and have decided to have another go at this blog business...what do they say, try, try and try again, and if at first you don;t succeed, leave it for some other mug to do? I think I know where I went wrong with posting - or rather not posting -the pictures, but at some time I shall have another go at it,when I feel stronger and more daring computerially speaking!....so, here I am, on a lovely fresh and sunny day (when I could be out in the garden, plodding along in the mud with frozen hands,cutting dead things back in my wellies,).....blogging!
I might of course have been outside trying to solve the mystery of the sudden appearance of the newts.....or rather common newts, as our dil tells me they are..they are rather small, like tiny black/dark lizards, yet their underside is a bright orange....and they are endangered. Last week obviously one of them had not heard the rumour of being endangered, and decided to take his life in his hands, and appear on a dark and wet afternoon on the concrete path between the back door and the garage. Our tumble dryer is in the garage, and as our dil gets through industrial loads of washing most days (thanks to three messy little Royals)she was rushing out there, and thought first of all a leaf had blown about, and then she noticed the 'leaf'had tiny legs....and pretended to be dead....so the boys gently scooped the visitor up into a safe box, and looked him up on the internet (where would we all be without google, and what did we do before we ever had it? Actually, I had encyclopedias which I loved,big tomes, with pictures and drawings and explanations...and my favourite bits were always the embarassing illnesses bits,boils and rashes in darkest red,and biological sketches of the reproductive organs,which I hoped might not apply to me!) George having decided he knew where newts like to live, they put their coats on next morning and marched into the Park ..this park is quite wild and huge, and the entrance is at the end of our lane.....so, they slithered down the hill in the mud, down to the stream, and found the newt a lovely spot to live henceforth...I just hope that newt did not come round from the shock of it all a few hours later and looked around the area, and thought to himself 'Blimey, how did I get to this muddy dump? And where is everyone?' the children are convinced he will live happily ever after in The Park, which is as it should be. But this morning, the mystery deepens....dil took me outside, and there by the back door....another little newt, dead as a door nail this one, but still quite beautiful...its' little body curved with its' tail, and there on the underside beautiful burnt orange...what a shame! It looked quite unharmed, obviously not chewed or attacked from what we could see.... and we felt sad when we moved it into a flower bed....and then I began to wonder, was it that poor original newt who had decided it absolutely would not live by the stream? Or surely not his poor deserted mate, who died from a broken heart, all lonely and alone by the kitchen door? Or, a colony of newts in my front garden? Or rather, round the side,by the bins? Dustbins that is, perhaps they are a rough lot! Will we ever know the answer to that? Whatever it is...I shall have to be on newt watch, with my dil.....