bunn

1) Apparently in our house the answer to the eternal question: 'there's a rat in the kitchen what amma gonna do?' is 'catch it using the two-wellie-boot technique, escort it, enbooted, up the lane through the stygian darkness until the torch begins to die, then turf it out'. The Deliverer of Rats was Yama Bungle. I hope he's not going to make it a habit.

2) I made some crabapple and mint jelly, but it wouldnt' set for ages. when it finally did it was very caramelly and not very suitable for use as a mint jelly. I think I used too much vinegar and water and didn't boil it fast enough. There are still loads of crabs about, so I may try again.

3) We were given some gooseberries, but they were really too sharp to make good crumble, so I made them into jam. Now I have 4.5 jars of jam that could double as paint stripper. I think it will be OK if spread fairly thin on toast...

4) I intended to make some chutney this weekend, but didn't get round to it in the end. This is probably no bad thing given the level of Preserve Fail already achieved.

5) It was Mollydog's twelfth birthday on Friday. Everydog had Birthday Bones to celebrate. She celebrated by haring about like a mad loon, but it was pouring with rain so I did not manage to photograph her. Here she is today instead, practicing her levitating.

6) Although I am still very in love with my ancient manual focus lenses, I put the autofocus lens back on the Nex3, and experimented with using different types of autofocus now that I am generally more used to the camera. The spot focus mode seems to deliver the best results for the kind of photos I want to take. Here is Flash Whuppet running like a little deer: