Life goes on ............

After three dreadful weeks, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down and moved onwards and upwards as they say. There are other animals in need and we have put feelers out to see if there are any we can offer a permanent home.

Yesterday we visited the Fethiye Animal Shelter to see what was there, and of course they had a lot of animals looking for a home. But we came home with none. Tyson is a hard act to follow, and we are both used to large dogs. We are very aware that several people are looking for and able to have small to medium sized dogs, and we feel it would be better for us to have a 'biggy' that others either do not want or are unable to accommodate.

Fethiye Animal Shelter where the premises are clean and the dogs are well cared for

If anyone reading this post lives in the area and feels that they are able to offer any animal a good home, here are some of the current residents of the Shelter on the Uzumlu road out of Fethiye.

Some of the cats ............

and some of the dogs .............

We are having huge problems here at the moment with our water supply. For the last four weeks we have not had any water for more time than we have had any, and this makes life very difficult. We have learnt to keep water in buckets and bottles around the house to cope with household chores, but we are often having to water the garden in the height of the sun as we have to water the plants whenever we are lucky enough for it to appear.

The courgette plants are doing really well, but watering them is a problem

David has restarted his shed building project, which is coming along really well and I am back out in the garden. The vegetable garden is doing much better this year, partly due to the soil being improved and partly due to learning from last years mistakes. Last year I bought three courgette plants of which only one survived and produced very few courgettes. This year I made compost pits and grew them from seed and they are doing extremely well. I collected the first courgettes today and was surprised to find that one of them had become a monster in the space of  couple of days.

Today's courgette harvest with the one that fast tracked to a marrow.

I have also returned to my Turkish lessons, and very kindly the teacher offered me a free private lesson today to catch up on what I have missed during the last couple of weeks. It gave us the chance to discuss my progress, or more accurately lack of it. It was great that we were in full agreement about how I am doing. That my pronunciation of Turkish is appalling. In the words of my teacher "You speak Turkish the same as if you are speaking English"! That my grasp of Turkish grammar is very good and that my memory of new vocabulary is bad. But I won't give up, I just hope that my teacher and I live long enough to crack it.

We have now lived in Uzumlu for fifteen months and during that time we have introduced over forty people to the village who otherwise would never have been here. Some are relatives, some long standing friends, some new friends who we have met through our blog. Without exception they have all loved the village and a few are seriously considering coming to live here in the future. So I was very pleased to see today that a lady from the village has started a new Facebook page for property for sale and rental in the village, and I have added the link to our 'Useful sites' page.

Both David and I were overwhelmed at the quantity of comments, personal messages and emails we received from Turkey and around the world after our last post which was our public goodbye to our beloved Labrador Tyson. Your kind words meant a lot, were a great comfort and we thank you all so much.