Today we were promised rain on and off and, frankly, I accepted this sentence with no little relief. What with the early Pilates, a longish dog walk, an expandable “hour” in the garden and some spirited evening knitting yesterday, I awoke feeling not a little achey in all (mostly) moveable parts. I resolved on an indoors kind of day with just a short spin along the back lane and round the head rig with the pooch. It was not like I didn’t have a stack of admin waiting…. Mum was stood down, I cobbled together a somewhat truncated version of the daily weights and toe exercises and, after coffee and too much toast, Lyra and I headed out the door. We were promptly blown back in again. I took the forced return as a sign from the universe to walk somewhere with more shelter, picked up the car keys and Lyra and I drove down to the woods.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a solo ramble. As we pootled along Lyra snuffled at unspeakable things in the undergrowth (there seems to be a local dog that feels every mole hill should be topped with a nice swirl of poo. I feel for Mr Mouldywarp as I believe he has a very keen sense of smell) and I let my mind wander. This, I thought, is the very thing…..A professional life (gladly abandoned) of timetables, lists and (worst of all) gantt charts has left me with a keen dislike of being corralled and planned, with a hankering for serendipity. I am, however, my own worst enemy as this fights with a stakhanovite urge to fill every damn minute with at least three things. I decided that today would be the day that I fought back. No baking whilst planning the garden, whilst listening to a book, whilst knitting, whilst breaking off to order random stuff, log mum’s meter readings and put people right on twitter. Today was to be a one thing at a time with vast gaps of aimlessness into which good things could waft sort of a day. And so the ADORE movement (A Day of Random Experiences) was born.
Seizing the moment, I diverted Lyra from the usual route and we headed along the Dangerous Footpath. We’ve avoided this since she lost her sight, but today was dry, Mum wasn’t there to act as Augur of Doom and the wild daffodils were tempting. Madam tripped along the narrow paths like a veritable goat and I brought up the rear. I do love this walk. We had missed the snowdrops, but the wild daffodils dripped like rivulets of sunshine down the slopes, slaloming through the shaggy mounds of just emerging ferns. The quiet of the woods was a balm, with only the intermittent rusty gate squalk of a pheasant and the background clatter of over-crowded branches jostling in the breeze. Through the still bare trees, I could see the start of the parallel track that runs along the stream at the bottom of the slope. I have been looking for the start of this for some time but it has always eluded me, disappearing in the undergrowth. This time, however, we were in the sweet spot after the leaf fall had been blown away but before the ferns had spread their leaves and I found the turn off at last. I was half minded to take this lower track back but Lyra, on reaching Snuffkin’s bridge, seemed to remember where she was and so we went on and followed the old carriage road. The low road will wait for another day – I expect Mum would prefer it she’s not keen on the slippery slope – and now I know that Lyra can manage it, next year we can all take the high road again in snowdrop season.
In other news, the spring flowers in the Hirsel are lovely; I am very envious of the quince and camelia. It is frog central around the loch and in our pond and toads are starting to emerge. Wild roe deer are also out and about, weaving amongst the trees and munching on the emerging wild garlic. Whilst Mum and I quietly watched two walking through the woods yesterday, Lyra found a big stick and, rather unusually, began to carry it along the path. Now she isn’t usually a stick dog so I was rather curious and went to investigate. Reader, she had found a deer foreleg. (They have been culling the herd as it has started to branch out beyond the woods). It seemed churlish to take it away – it wasn’t as though a deer was going to reclaim it, so I let her be and she swaggered along like Churchill with a fat cigar most of the way home. At one point Mum called out to say “Aww she’s dropped it”. However, the leg on the path was a second one and Lyra was still smoking hers…Clearly some other dog had found a similar treat. A few minutes later Lyra’s leg was dropped by the wayside – I was rather glad I didn’t have to take it home in the car. Like the moody teenager that abandons the edgy band when it turns out everyone else has the album, Lyra lost interest in deer legs when it became clear they were ten a penny. Luckily, no spare parts were discovered on our walk today and my floof has restricted herself to custard creams as my current cake offering (rather excellent I might add – recipe here) has chocolate in.
And now I am taking my sewing over to Luigis and, as I’ve been quite good, I might allow myself an audiobook after all.
