juliachalkley

Lighting up the darkness

Photo by Tomasz Pro, Pixabay When one of our cats dies, I light a tealight and leave it burning in a lantern over the cat’s grave. Tonight there’s a candle burning on each grave in the garden, to acknowledge that every cat out there added his or her own flavour to the house. Looking outContinue reading “Lighting up the darkness”

The Silence

Image of tortoiseshell cat by Didi S, Pixabay We’ve woken every morning for the last six months to our young tom’s call to the breakfast bowl – a kind of rusty hinge squawk some mornings, a sudden loud “AWWWW!” on others. This morning, we woke when the sun came round to our window. It’s smallContinue reading “The Silence”

Life hands you lemons. Unripe ones.

Picture by Eduardo Viera, Pixabay This time yesterday, we had three cats; an elderly tabby female and a pair of youngsters just growing up to be adult cats. They’d negotiated their spaces in the house and everyone got along with everyone else. The tom was starting to show signs of preferring to sit with myContinue reading “Life hands you lemons. Unripe ones.”

Now the year has really started.

Yesterday was another indoors day, and I used it to plant up the first seeds of the year. I’ve had the propogators set up for a week now; seed compost in modules, gently watered and plugged in to heat the soil. Yesterday I spent the whole day deciding which varieties I was going to plant,Continue reading “Now the year has really started.”

Waiting for the snow

We have friends in Scotland and the north of England and the borders of Wales. So I know that many people have had proper snow and are now wishing it would clear up and move on. Apologies for the excitement, but over tonight and early tomorrow we have snow forecast for our area. I hadContinue reading “Waiting for the snow”

Didn’t it rain!

Wet day today. Started just before noon yesterday, and it’s been raining ever since. The roads out to the nearest town have been flooded, the river has burst its banks in several inconvenient places, potholes appearing in the roads are invisible under huge puddles, an accident a few miles south has delayed journeys home toContinue reading “Didn’t it rain!”

Be Kind

I made a private resolution to post a blog entry every day in January, even if it was only a few lines. You can check back and find out how well I’ve done so far. It won’t take you long. The best I can make of this is that everyone has been telling others toContinue reading “Be Kind”

Back to Reality

I spent the run-up to Christmas trying to keep up. Our local area went from relatively virus-free to one of the top twenty infection hot-spots in England. I wasn’t keen to go out and mix with other people – most have been polite and willing to keep their distance, but some are oblivious and focussedContinue reading “Back to Reality”

Nano 2020

For the first time, I finished 50,000 for NanoWrimo early – on November 25th. It started as a short story meant to get me in the mood of writing and just kept leading me further into the story. I finished the main story on the 25th, but I’ve carried on writing – several short storiesContinue reading “Nano 2020”

Second hand

About six years ago, I went on an astronomy camping weekend. Surreal in itself; we worried that our telescope would be stolen while we were off in town during the day, until someone pointed out that there was always someone sitting by their tent seeing who was messing with others’ telescopes, and that there wereContinue reading “Second hand”