Saturday, May 8, 2010

Sophia photo update

Yesterday, my dog complained that it's ages since I last spoke about her or included her photo in the Antipodes blog. (Well, a fortnight.) Sorry about that laxity, Sophia. Here's a formal portrait:

Over the last few days, Sophia has been accompanying me on snail excursions. What, you ask, is a snail excursion? Well, a hundred meters up the road, at the level of the shed where Bob's daughter Alison used to house her horses, I discovered a colony of newborn snails, apparently of the Burgundy variety (though I may be mistaken). I've been collecting them and bringing them back down here to my compost heap. In the following photo, the snails are roughly the size of peas.

Will they thrive here? I have no idea, but it's worth trying. As for my dog, she can understand a man who prepares dishes of cassoulet, and bakes walnut bread, and buys the very best Isigny butter and cream. For Sophia, however, the idea of collecting tiny snails by the roadside and bringing them back to the house in a plastic saucer is quite crazy… just like growing roses and peonies. But she seems to find it fun to accompany me in these operations.

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