Ha ..... Sebastian ... with an 'a' .... reads my blog!

My bay yesterday .... awesome weather!

Sebastian reads my blog .... yep ..... 14 year old Sebastian, the Labrador Retriever, reads my blog and he told me I’ve been spelling his name incorrectly ... it’s Sebastian with an ‘a’ ... not an ‘o’ .... I will definitely correct that Sebastian!  ... whoops ... nearly spelt it wrong there again!!!

Leaping off the rocks yesterday

The weather this morning was magnificent  .. a follow on from yesterday ..... azure blue skies and gorgeous sunshine.  If  this is a foretaste of what our Summer’s going to be like, then it’s going to be a hot one!  Even the hound felt the heat this morning .... and she doesn’t normally as she spends so much time in the waves!   I’m feeling a need to participate more fully in her morning swim!  To be honest though, I did stop and chat to Carol and Sebastian ... with an ’a’ ... ...  for a while, and hound beach times were over by the time we finished catching up on the weekend ... that meant no more wallowing in the waves for the hound!  I would have headed down to Ladies Bay but the brilliant weather pretty much guaranteed that the nudists would be out in force ... and I wasn’t in  the mood for a spectacle like that so early in the morning ... so we headed on up to the view site.

Leaping off the stairs this morning ... the tides in and the waves are glorious!

The view site at Achilles Point and the view site at Glover Park are two of my most favourite places .... I love looking out at the ocean ... watching the way the waves break over the rocks as the tide does it’s thing.  That’s what’s so awesome about this view ... it’s ever-changing .. no view on any two days is the same ....... the tides, the weather, the shipping movements, the fishermen .... the nudists ... yep, even them  ..... the tourists, the locals ... all play their part on an irregular basis in creating the vision I look at and regularly photograph.  Even on the darkest of days .... or in the wettest of weather .... the view never fails to touch me.

It’s my sanctuary when I need to escape from the world.  Standing on the platform at Achilles Point or sitting on the benches in Glover Park .. with my world spread out before me ... is just so therapeutic .... it recharges my positive energy!  How can I remain anxious ... angry .... disillusioned .... hurt .... when I see all this magic laid out before my eyes.  The waves talk to me of freedom ... liberty ... an insatiable desire to explore our world .... the ocean is my soul .... I’m at one with it.  Seeing all this never fails to instil in me an appreciation for the freedom I have to ramble with the hound each and every day ... to walk in the waves and feel complete as the ocean wraps itself around my legs ... I am just so very lucky!

The sunshine took me out into the garden this weekend too  ... our little patch of lawn has been spawning all sorts of growth other than grass.  There’s a tremendous sense of satisfaction ... well, for me there is .... in sitting for an hour or two and removing the creeper type weed that invades my lawn .... I can see the progress I’ve made ... I can see what I’ve achieved.  So often ... and it’s especially true of parenting .... we think we’re not making any progress whatsoever with our kids .... it’s not tangible .. you can’t see the effect all the hard work you put in has on them.  But, with weeding ... it’s instantaneous ... I can see the effect an hour of weeding has on my lawn ......... big bare  patches ..... !! That particular weed has an insidious manner of infiltrating the lawn and suffocating the grass ..... and in its removal it plays its trump card .... bare patches with no weed OR grass .... my poor lawn!!

The hound finds this behaviour of mine quite bizarre ... whilst she’s delighted that I’m in the garden with her she cannot understand why I’m pulling out what in her eyes is ‘grass’ .. and yet when she tries to help me I chastise her!  Those big brown eyes look sadly at me as she lowers herself down onto the exact patch of lawn I’m trying to weed!!

She's a charmer of note .... one look from her big brown eyes and I'm smitten .... and she knows it.  I had no idea when I got her that she would become such a close confidante .... my ‘partner-in-crime’ on our daily rambles ... but she has ..... and my world is so much the better for it!

“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them .... filling the emptiness we didn’t even know we had.”