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!