Oh dear, Aristotle is worried. We\u2019ve had temperatures down as low as minus eleven centigrade and he doesn\u2019t think his lavender plants are going to survive. He and Mum worked so hard growing them all from seed this year, but Mum says lavender only copes down as far as minus seven. She remembers losing a lot of plants the first year in our old house in Yorkshire as there was a sudden cold spell. She says that one went on for a while, so Aristotle may be lucky, but he keeps going to check on them to see how they\u2019re looking. Honestly \u2013 cold is how they\u2019re looking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had such a lovely walk at the racecourse. We went around lunchtime when it had warmed up a little and there were very few people around. I had a lovely run and an amble around the field in the middle. Then I tried to round Mum and Dad up to get to them to walk closer together. Dad doesn\u2019t wait for me so Mum gets left behind. When I run to catch up she\u2019s not so fast. There may be the opportunity to go to the woods today, which would be awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realised why I couldn\u2019t find lots of photos from the early years of the diary. Mum didn\u2019t have a camera phone back then so it wasn\u2019t so easy. That Christmas it was still Alfie was an only dog and a lot of family staying for a big Christmas in what was then our new house in Yorkshire. At that stage it was unfurnished \u2013 go figure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I looked back at what Alfie was up to and found two things you\u2019d like. This bit made me laugh having only known him when he was older:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWhen I was at the kennels, I was in the little office without my lead on. My Mistress was busy talking to the man who does my training and I spotted an opportunity to take the world by storm, or more precisely the cat on the workbench. With one leap, I didn\u2019t just put my paws on the bench, I launched my whole body up there with no trouble whatsoever. It makes you feel good to hear phrases like \u201cI didn\u2019t think he\u2019d got it in him.\u201d I smiled mischievously and wondered whether I could get away with climbing to the shelf that the cat had retreated to. Sadly, I was hauled down before I could consider my next manoeuvre in detail.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The other thing I found was Alfie\u2019s version of the Twelve Dog Days of Christmas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nOn the twelfth day of Christmas my owners gave to me,
Twelve brand new collars
Eleven flying Frisbees
Ten doggie biscuits
Nine ropes for throwing
Eight toys for tugging
Seven balls a bouncing
Six rubber chickens
Five warm beds
Four toys for fetch
Three hide chews
Two marrow bones
And a dog treat made of turkey.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s all from me today \u2013 have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Love<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilma<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aristotle is worried about his lavender. Wilma’s been to the racecourse and she’s looking back to 2008.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,9],"tags":[63,123,12],"class_list":["post-27104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas","category-gardening-2","tag-aristotle","tag-christmas","tag-gardening","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}