Room With a View

 Here is my room with a view, a favorite spot

and view of a room

The third of this season's heatwaves has passed, though we are still very short of rain. It's over 2 weeks since we had any precipitation and things are drying out and burning up.

The sale of our lakeside Limerick home is proceeding and our buyers want to bring the final closing forward to July 31, which is fantastic news. 

Hedgehog Rescue

We drove to Llangedwyn this week to listen to a talk given by a hedgehog rescue team,

calling themselves Hokey Pokey. We knew that hedgehog numbers in Britain have been declining and we were interested in learning how to be sure our yard would be a safe and inviting place for them.

Heather described the hot and dry conditions of this summer as being 'rubbish weather' for hedgehogs since they're unable to produce milk for raising young when there's no water available. We have a 'hedgehog house' for our yard, provide fresh water, and have set up a feeding station. Now we are volunteering to have rehabilitated hogs released on our property.

Since hedgehogs are nocturnal, it's not easy to know if there are any around in one's yard ... we've been examining and photographing poop in our yard to try and determine their presence from their scat. Today Heather confirmed that our pic was a positive ID. Sadly, also because they're nocturnal, there were no live hedgehogs to see at the presentation.

The 'Friendly Club' of Llangedwyn hosted this event at the same time as their weekly £5 'Ploughman's Lunch' for locals and visitors.

They had a Bra Bank in their hall too

Land of Dragons

Dragons (draigs) have historically featured in Welsh folklore as symbols of might, strength and national pride. 

It is said that the red dragon of the native Britons defeated the white dragon of the invading saxons to claim Wales' sovereignty

  

A young Merlin (Myrddin, pronounced mur-thin) features in one of the Welsh myths about the battling dragons and how they disrupted the building of a castle

Charlies

There's a shopping complex near Welshpool known as Charlies - it's like a sprawled out country mall on what was once the farmland associated with Powis castle. 

The assortment of things available here vary from tractors to plants, livestock feed to clothing, kitchenwares (but not general groceries) to candles, specialty foods and wines to hardware, tools, and screws ...

We visited last week to get a feel for all that's available there, to do an explore without an agenda

There's a large free (noteworthy in the U.K.) car park, a restaurant, benches and pleasant walkways

And there's this goofy looking sheep statue in the foyer! What???