Clouds

Yesterday on the way to the dog palace in my friends truck, there was sweeping clouds touching the the mountain that we were about to go up. It was quite memorable.

It was going to be a hot day, but only the last walk was it so hot, that I cut the walk short. On all but one of the walks, we took small tracks off the main track and were walking through vast swaves of flowers, almost like a carpet on the ground. But summer is nearby and in areas baked by the midday sun, the flowers are wilting and are making one last effort to turn the pollinated flower heads into viable seeds for next year. Later on a walk had us looking out towards Kithnos, with two types of clouds, streaky ones slightly covering from our view the white fluffy ones, sorry I have no knowledge of cloud names!

Rita is doing marathons. She did three out of my four walks today. But the dog Palace’s Diva dog Jabba, as she is known decided for a second day not to walk with me. On one of her walks Rita sniffed out a lizard and it ran out of one bush into another, but she did not get it.  Maloney walks the garden wall looking down onto the ground for them too. He had a mini fur ball in his coat, which was discovered the other day, the mention of it had him hiding under the bed. Today, he did a similar stunt, but it’s removed now.

Photo Interlude - Rita and Chocca

On my last walk, we took another flower covered path down to a small vineyard where someone was working the vines. My friend told me the lady who used to live in the Dog Palace house, used to make a truly unpleasant wine, when you visited her it often came out.. I have lent my friend my moving photos display so they could see it in action. I plan to populate a usb stick with photos of the dogs at the Palace. I had a fabulous meal, that we would call Rosti, it is in fact a Swiss nation dish.

Photo Interlude - Flowers in the garden

I visited and spent a bit of quality time with one of the oldest residents in the Palace, I wanted to see the sun shelter, the addition to his quarters. He has a lovely hillside garden, covered in flowers. He also has a really cosy sleeping place sheltered carefully from the wind. It’s too easy to spend time with the dogs that demand cuddles, and ignore the quiet ones, but they need attention too. Back to the garden one of the roses where Maloney tries his luck with the lizards, there are roses, which have deep red petals and a super fragrance. Where we sit by the well, and have our lunch, the dogs are seeking shelter from the sun, by going into the undergrowth or digging holes in the ground and hunkering down.