I’ve been trying to persuade Ian to read some of our dog training books as I think we need to step up on Rosie’s training. She’s actually pretty well behaved, however, because of her size and strength, we definitely need to control things like her jumping up.
Ian is less than convinced by my dog training books, muttering ‘mumbo jumbo’ and other, less printable, comments. I don’t think it helped when one of the books said that the answer to getting a dog to return when its off the lead is to roll round on the floor and look like another dog playing an exciting game. Something that Ian said he refused to do. However we have noticed that Rosie comes back if she thinks we are heading in the other direction, so Ian now tries the approach of running away from her when we call her. I am not sure whether this looked any odder to the small crowd of old men watching him than if he’d been rolling around on the ground.
I was looking at my cotton plants, and looking at pictures of the cotton plants last year and I can’t help thinking that they aren’t doing very well. The chilllies that came through don’t seem to be doing very well either. I am wondering if the reason for this is that they are planted in the area that Manuel was using to clean out his cement mixer. And therefore the soil might be over alkaline. The other reason that things might not be doing well is that we might not be watering them enough. Last year we were watering with a watering can so we knew how much we were watering the plants, however now we are using a hose and it is easy to forget how low our water pressure is and how little water comes out. I filled a watering can the other day and it takes several minutes, which I’d forgotten, so I guess I’m not giving the plants as much water as I thought. Of course, cotton doesn’t like a lot of water, so that’s not the problem there…
Ian’s finally got new tyres for his bike, so we both went out for a cycle this morning. It is San Juan fiesta, so I think we were passing people on their way home! We haven’t been this year, but may pop up tonight to see what’s going on.
We’ve got a yellow alert for a heat wave. There’s hot air coming from Africa which is affecting much of Spain. It is hot…