Tuesday 31 May 2011

Parrots and telling the time

I woke up this morning, looked at iPod which said it was 8.02  - quite late for me! Henry the cockerel was crowing and I realised I must get up and on as the kids are coming back today and I have loads to do before I have to pretend to be maternal. So, duly charged downstairs, made tea, let out hens and let out the rabbits. Back in, sit on the sofa to finish tea and glance at clock - 6.17. 6????? I have done this soooooo many times, I completely misread clocks. How stupid is that? Analogue or digital. I have heard of dyslexia; I have heard of dyscalcula....is there dyscloxia?

Meanwhile, Maud the hen has developed a rather disconcerting habit - having read on the  British Hen Welfare Trust website that newly introduced chickens can feel more confident if they have a person around them, myself and the children have made an effort to reassure Maud especially when Henry and his side-kick Ida (who has had gender issues since her last moult) decide to go for her. She can also fly pretty well, being young and sprightly, with comical consequences when she tries to land on the washing line. Suffice to say that flying ability + person = Maud on one's shoulder, similar to parrot.

This would probably be quite sweet except that like most hens, she finds eyes fascinating and also like most hens, she will peck at anything she finds fascinating. So it is simply a question of removing her from one's shoulder, with eyes tightly shut. Of course, like most hens, if she doesn't want to move then she flaps around and squawks and generally makes a kerfuffle, drawing the attention of Henry and mean Ida, so then Maud is even more reluctant to be removed from one's shoulder/back/head. Ah, chickens, don't ya just love 'em.  At least they are bothering to lay at the moment - they went off for weeks and only 1 of them is moulting, do they come out in sympathy? Or is it some Union agreement that I am not privy to?

Anyway I should look at my bees and douse them with icing sugar as there's varroa all over them, but it's a bit windy and I'm enjoying not having to cope with a beestung limb or digit. I have been through my list that I made at the start of the bank holiday weekend and crossed off all the things I knew I wouldn't bother doing anyway so looking at it, I have done pretty well, although Charles would disapprove of such wanton misuse of a To Do list :-)

Monday 30 May 2011

Should I...

...be able to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull? I am a geologist-in-training, I feel it would be a good thing to do. Or should I concentrate on getting the geology degree first?! I have been reading about rudist meadows on Cretaceous carbonate platforms and now I'm on to carbon cycling. And in Evolution I'm reading about co-operation between organisms so I finally understand haplodiploidy in hymenopterans!

I bet that made nooooooooooo sense to anyone apart from other people studying at Level 3 for a BSc in Geosciences with the Open University. Welcome to the minority :-)

Sunday 29 May 2011

After spending some years avoiding doing a blog because nobody will read it, here I am setting up a blog instead of studying. The children are with their dad and I should be going to look at the bees today but the weather's miserable. I haven't been stung for a while and I'm out of the habit of going to bed with a packet of frozen peas draped over some portion of me.

I usually sets up a stall outside my house to sell honey but yesterday I had a knock at the door and 4 cyclists asked if I had any honey for sale having bought some from us a few weeks ago. I invited them in - I had sort of vaguely tidied up so it wasn't too embarrassing - and they bought 3 pots. Quite how they were going to get Kilner jars of honey strapped on to a bike I don't know but hey.

At least that knock at the door was better than the one in the morning when my wonderful neighbour came to tell me that the rabbits had escaped. I think they have worked out how to pull out the stick that props up the door flap at the end of the run (they're in a chicken ark) so it then falls down. Scarlet, the black lop, who seems to be getting rather chunky despite only eating the low quality grass in the garden, was having a face-off with Mary the pullet, who is small but feisty, over by the bird feeder. Willow had gone back in to the run luckily and Scarlet is too podgy to run far so disaster was averted. They did get out the other day and I had not only 2 wayward rabbits to deal with but also a hysterical 11 year old girl who thought her precious bun buns would be lost for ever. She was so relieved to get them back she cleaned their house out!!