Never Shop With a Partner!

Don't ever go to the nursery with a partner who has eaten a good lunch and now just wants to go home and put his feet up!! I made that mistake yesterday when OAP and I called in at the local nursery in the valley to buy a replacement shrub for the one that died during winter. While I was all gung ho to buy the place out, OAP clutched his wallet firmly to his chest and dragged around looking at the prices of the plants! You know, if its a piece of clothing I want he is dreadfully generous, encouraging me to buy whatever I want, but when it comes to plants he is not too keen. I suppose this is because most of them die while we are in SA and I have to buy new ones every year. Mostly he is keen for me to wander around with a pair of secateurs and a plastic bag secreted in my pocket and filch cuttings from every plant I like! Nevertheless we did manage to agree on two shrubs and four rockery plants. Can't remember the names except the shrubs were Potentilla something - one bright yellow and the other orange and the rockery plants included Gypsophila repens and lobelia.
Back home, having missed a huge thunderstorm, we happily planted the new members of our Swiss family and hopefully they will do well over the summer. But my absolute best is going with my sister to the nursery - this is when I need a credit card to get through the till point though!!

The alpine storm could be seen from the valley, 1km below. The peaks were enveloped in thick dark grey clouds and thunder rumbled and lightning flashed and it was very majestic and awe inspiring. We had a few drops of rain on the windshield as we drove up the steep winding road home but otherwise all the rain had fallen at about 1300 metres and above!

This place is just so absolutely stunning that I have to keep looking at the view every half hour or so - that's when I am not sitting staring at it for hours on end or admiring it from the car as we drive up and down the mountains! Until yesterday it didn't realise it was actually summer and this is the sort of view we got daily as the moisture from the valley, 1 kilometre below, rose each day until we were enveloped in a thick mist. This pic is a bit of a cheat as it was on the OAP's computer from a previous summer visit. Presumably once the mist is up at our level it is then clear down in the Rhone valley. When it's a white-out like this we just sit indoors and watch Wimbledon and soccer on TV! But its now officially summer and today was roasting hot with all the locals wandering around in sleeveless shirts and shorts with nasty pallid legs and arms showing! Even so, there is still a lot of snow on the peaks just a couple of hundred metres above us , making it necessary to keep a jersey close by for when the wind blows. Normally I live in South Africa in the bush where I have mesh on the windows to keep out the monkeys and baboons, but here I have put fine mosquito netting to keep out the flies and midges! Also at night I like the bedroom window open but it's at ground level and I wonder what is wandering, slithering or creeping through the window! The mossy netting keeps most of that out too!

I got my little Acer loaded with the drivers I needed to make the internet link but on arriving home I couldn't make it work so will now have to spend a further half hour or so on the phone to the Swisscom helpline in order to fix the problem. I wouldn't mind but I am always worried that I will get the same guy each time! They all sound alike, are scrupulously polite and very nice but I am sure they think I am an utter ass!! I even had to ask what a browser was when one of them told me to open mine! Why didn't he just say Internet Explorer? For that matter, why do all experts make technical stuff sound so difficult? Most of it is not hard if you know what the bits and bobs are called.

Wimbledon is great this year. I don't normally bother with the first week as I find them a bit boring but this year Nadal was lucky to hang in to win his first match and then the match that lasted 11 hours and ended in a tie break of something like 70 - 68!! You can't ask for better nail biters than those!

We've been here over a week now and yesterday the sun came out and for the first time we were able to leave the apartment without hats, gloves and scarves!! So where did we go? To the nursery of course! To buy bright red geraniums, white alpine rock jasmine and a shocking purple clematis called "Etoile de Violette" - Purple Star! I can't wait for it to flower and climb up its trellis. Every year we arrive at the end of July and so the intense growing period is essentially over and each year I buy new geraniums and a climber and it always dies in winter. But this year we will get a lot of pleasure from them before we leave at the end of September. It's gut wrenching to leave and know no-one will water or protect the plants, but then I do the same in SA and for the most part they somehow survive. Not sure about our new trees this year as, although I covered 12 of the most tender before we left, we heard that one night it was 8 degrees below freezing and many of the water pipes burst!

The birds here are lovely (not as many and not as lovely as SA) and feeding like mad at the feeders. The Blue Jays and Nutcrackers love the peanuts and sumflower seeds and the smaller birds go for the millet and peanuts. The chocolate brown squirrel with his tufty ears and white bib comes to eat up the left overs the birds drop to the ground as he can't manage to reach the feeders. We laugh when he tries as he looks just like the squirrel from Ice Age trying to reach his acorn which is JUUUUST out of reach! He climbs onto the balcony above and hanging by his toenails just can't get onto the feeds but he can touch them , which only makes them swing wildly. So down he comes and onto the table and from there he reeeeaches up but he's nowhere near. Poor frustrated squirrel!

We've had a couple of walks but the OAP's hip is really giving him problems and he hobbles along - it's really sad to watch him as he used to be such a strong hiker. Today a walk that normally takes an hour at most took us nearly two and last week he sat on a bench half way home from the village below while I puffed my way home and collected the car to fetch him.

We have managed to blow up yet another computer! How many does this make? I really and truly have lost count! Yesterday we bought a new light fitting for the kitchen which has always been like the black hole of Calcutta. The OAP switched off the electricity while he took down the old fitting and put up the new one, when we switched the power back on there was a loud bang from the spare room and on investigation we discovered that something had blown up in the tower of the desktop! This happened to me in Benmore when the tower was full of dust and when I switched on one day it blew up. SO - one step forward and two steps back and off we go to Alex, two villages below and no English whatsoever, to explain the problem and hope he can help without too much expense. I meant to bring our newish Toshiba over and leave it here to act as our resident computer but a friend of ours told us that we will kill the battery if we leave it unused for more than 3 months. Not that it would really matter as it will run off mains here. But as it was we didn't bring it in the end. Typical! BUT my OAP insisted on bringing his ancient Thinkpad - just as well as that's what I am now using as I couldn't connect my Acer as I need the drivers to be loaded and as it doesn't have a built in CD drive I have to get it loaded via a memory stick, which I didn't bother to bring!

Speaking of which - I think I must have left my brain behind with all the chargers and wires for our various electrical goodies! I brought my Omnia i900 to use as a GPS and didn't bring either the house or car charger, or the cable to connect it to the computer so I can download maps from the internet! I brought my Nintendo so I can Train My Brain every day - two days into our trip and it showed a red light meaning recharge. Uh Oh - no charger in baggage! No cable to upload pics from the camera to the computer - therefore no pics on my Blog! Grrrr!