Thursday 12 December 2013

Bella's Getting a Passport and Booking Her Tickets

Out with Bella this morning on a fairly nondescript day, my eyes were drawn to this lovely leaf.
More late Autumn/early Winter die-back. 
The colours in this hydrangea are wonderful - lots to be said for dying off on the appearance of plants, if not people:-) 
This rose is still looking good. 
Out with Bella this afternoon, spotted this extravagantly decorated garden waste bin. 
More die-back to be seen with this old man's beard. It's almost definitely more extravagant than the clematis flowers that preceded it, which are often small and green - hence not noticeable when they flower.
Bella had a good time at her speciality - sniffing every nook and cranny while wagging her tail incessantly. 
That's an unusual name for a house. "Where do you live?" "No Parking." This on a quiet stretch of road that sees no through traffic and has plenty of parking space on it…
Is this road named after my guitar-playing compatriot on Symi ? :-)
Back garden apple trees - possibly remnants of the orchards that used to cover this hillside.
Our cherry tree is a picture at the moment - so I took one. 
Looking over towards Little Solsbury. 
I've seen some strange abandoned items in my blogging history - but never a pair of Calvin Klein underpants. The mind boggles… 
Had a second attempt at making pitta bread - and got so excited when every one of them puffed up properly! We now have a stash in the freezer waiting to be filled with delicious yumminess.
This day a year ago, it was really cold - showing cobwebs off to great effect 
For those of you wondering what any of the above has to do with the title of the blog post - apart from the picture of Bella sniffing, it doesn't! This blog is titled "After Bella", because when we started writing it over three years ago we didn't expect that Bella would be with us for much longer - so we thought about how we might change our lives once she'd gone. Fortunately, she is still in very good health apart from a bit of arthritis, and some changes have happened for us - notably my no longer working full-time at UWE (although they do seem to keep asking me back to plug holes in the teaching-provision dyke). 

Su and I have been talking (endlessly!) about how to move on with our lives and have decided that we will no longer wait for Bella to go, but that we will make changes with her. I have commitments to UWE until the Summer, and we are expectant grandparents-to-be in May. 

So we've decided that we will rent out our house out and take Bella with us to Symi in October for the Winter - travelling by ferry and overland in the van. Just need to ensure when we visit Symi next April that we find somewhere for us all to stay in the Autumn (but Su's been on the case already) - exciting times!

1 comment:

  1. How exciting for Bella to go to beautiful Symi next winter, hope she loves it as much as we all do and has some lovely walks in the Pedi valley :-)

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