These bits of wool caught my eye as we walked down the hill to breakfast. They’re still wet after the previous night’s rain and looked to me as if they were hung out on the washing line to dry.
Here are a couple of more traditional “woolie jumpers” I’d seen the day before, the inquisitive lamb looking at the camera and the watchful mum keeping an eye on me.
And another youngster, trying to be “just like Daddy”.
Most of you already know Alice so here’s a little more about her new friend, Pepper too.
Pepper came to us as an indoor rabbit, he’d been a bit mischievous as a garden rabbit in a garden with a four-foot fence and two cats ~ following the cats in his family over the fence to go out to play. Having wintered indoors, we had to wait until spring finally arrived before he could move to his new home with us in our garden.
Pepper moved into Alice’s old hutch with a mesh run attached to it so that they could both see each other, but not cause any harm if they decided they weren’t going to get along. In theory I was supposed to put them together for their first meeting in the bath, a neutral small space where I could watch them intensely, but since they seemed to have got over any initial aggression and were quite comfortable together through the mesh, I skipped that bit and let them both out into the garden with close supervision.
We took a little risk here since our garden was Alice’s territory and in theory she would defend it against the new intruder. At first there was a little scuffling but that didn’t last long at all and they soon settled down, all be it at different ends of the garden.
Once they’d both accepted the garden was for sharing, the next stage (as my rabbit consultant ~ Middle Daughter~ explained) was to compete for the garden hierarchy. This seemed to take a sort of jousting format.
Alice was usually the instigator, facing Pepper nose to nose in a sort of stand-off, but he would just put his nose down on the ground to be washed and she always backed down first.
Pepper seems very laid back, he didn’t get annoyed at Alice at all he just kept putting his head down and then resuming his grass-munching when she went away.
They seemed quite happy sharing smaller spaces in the garden and I started to leave them outside without supervision, just checking on them every half hour or so, I guess Alice got bored first and gave in to Pepper’s request to have his ears washed. I spotted the grooming as I checked on them though the window and grabbed my camera to catch Monday’s photo … “the first kiss”.
There’s still a little way to go yet, I’ll be taking the run away on the old hutch this weekend, and hoping to have them both sleeping in the new hutch by Monday, then with a little fixing, patching and building, I’ll join the two hutches together and they’ll have a nice place to live, each with a new friend.
More from before : posts about “Llanberis” and walks in the surrounding area.
It rained on the Thursday afternoon when we went camping to Llanberis, not all day mind you and quite lightly apart from the odd heavy shower, the clouds parted for a couple of hours as we arrived at about lunch-time for us to set up the tents but then closed in again as we headed for “Pete’s Eats” (who deserve every mention I’m giving them) for some refueling and decision-making. The decision was made to visit the castle.
Now Dolbadarn Castle doesn’t have extensive grounds with marvelous gardens, it doesn’t have a huge banquet hall for you to marvel at the beautiful decor, actually, it doesn’t even have a roof … it’s a ruin from times long ago and I have to admit I knew very little of it, not even its name until I googled it when I came home, but the one thing I did know was that it was made of old stone and old stone is very often shown to its best in the rain so the others tagged along while I played with the camera.
I peered though the old windows out onto the remaining grounds below with a view over the lake …
And these were the old steps inside the one remaining tower. Hubby informs me that they are left-handed steps as they go up clockwise instead of anti-clockwise which is the norm. Imagine you are wielding your sword in your right hand trying to protect your tower from invaders below you and think how difficult it would be to get a decent swing at them with the centre of the spiral always restricting your right shoulder. Now imagine you were left-handed and how much easier it would have been to protect your property from your higher advantage.
The sunshine caught my eye as it glinted on the rain on the old slate path to the steps on the outside of the tower, unfortunately it glinted on the rain which had managed to land on the lens as well. There are Hubby, Eldest Daughter and Boyfriend waiting patiently for me to catch them up again.
I’ll be the first to admit that the views would probably have been more stunning in bright sunshine, but then I would have missed the rainbow which appeared across the view of the old slate mine as the sun put in another appearance.
Before I go, here’s a picture of Dolbadarn Castle itself, I climbed to a high perch on one of the walls in the castle grounds to try to catch one of the snow-speckled mountains in the background. Eldest Daughter was waiting for me to re-gain safe footing with my camera, the other two in our party had retreated to dryer, more sheltered areas as I finished playing.
And one last picture for today, this is what Eldest Daughter was doing with her mobile phone while I was perched on my platform to find my view.
More from before : posts about “Llanberis” and pictures of “Snowdon” from our climb in 2009.
How is this for a room with a view … just before breakfast on Saturday morning.
Our garden views were pretty awesome on the other two days we spent camping in Llanberis at the bottom of Snowdon too,
… even when the clouds rolled in and got us a bit “damp”.
Needless to say, I’ve plenty of pictures to sort out and I’ll filter them through over the next week or so.
More from before : posts about “Llanberis” and pictures of “Snowdon” from our climb in 2009.
