Do people still blog?

 I was just wondering.... Is there still a blogging community?

I'm, once again having trouble accessing my account to leave comments, this happened to me before!

So once again, last year , I promised to be a good blogger and keep it up weekly. What I hadn't considered was how many things would stack up against me. I slowly sank into a very deep depression made worse by a silly argument with my French neighbours over a cockerel of all things! I stopped wanting to tend my farm and I very quickly became surrounded by high bramble hedges. I hid away and stopped going out or mixing with anyone, feeling deeply nervous and suspicious of everyone around me.

Shortly after my last post, in April, I lost many of my newly hatched ducks and my beautiful gosling to two very determined foxes who ripped through the cages and enclosures. My darling Eriskay pony, Bo developed a massive tumour on his chest which at the time I thought was an agressive form of cancer as it grew so large in a short space of time. He had a successful operation and the tumour seems to have been benign as it didn't reocur but the trauma of the operation caused a bout of laminitis which I mentioned in an earlier post.

After that, my darling cat Taliesin began to fail and his constant mouth and throat disease caused a large lesion on his tongue which was the tipping point. He stopped fighting and I knew it was time to make a difficult decision.

However, just at a time when I felt that things couldn't get worse, the little guy in the picture below turned up. He'd been dumped in a garden in the village and from the moment I went to collect him, he installed himself under my chin and rarely left my side. Even my 'special needs' dog, Merlin, allowed him to share our bed at night. I called him Rocket after the Racoon in Guardians of the Galaxy and he sure lives up to the name. He's feisty and fiery and has brought me such an incredible amount of healing.

He's not even a year old but already one of my biggest cats. I can't describe the love I feel for him and he's helped me so much to overcome constant anxiety and a fear of being seen outside of my safe little house.

I took another chance and went along to a couple of French/English conversation meetings a have been taken under the wing of a wonderful woman in the village, a true Elder in all ways. I believe she was the first woman to own her own land and have sheep in our village, which she has lived in all of her life. She's become a huge inspiration to me.

This year will be a challenge as I start to pull myself out of the slump and back to the real world. But I have many animals a couple of human friends too who I think will help me 💗