New Kid on the Block

As I mentioned in a previous post, Henry my cockerel has gone to live with a friend of mine, and in his place we have Bruno the Barnevelder. He's enormous! I trying to see if I can use him as an excuse to invest in yet another Flyte So Fancy creation - I'm thinking Gypsy Caravan ;-) - but he is very handsome:

He's also a total gentleman which is a pleasant surprise after Henry's rampant libido. The hens seem very settled around him which is nice as his presence means the older ones don't pick on the babes.

The ducklings continue to be exquisitely cute and are getting really big. I might get the ducks a paddling pool as they love scudding under the water in their seed tray. We had a fox in the garden again yesterday but luckily Blossom spends her time on red alert and kicked off with the most frantic clucking and I hot-footed it out in to the garden and saw it running off down through the field.

My lupins have put on the most spectacular show and the bees are back in the garden now that the oil seed rape has finished flowering. I've set up a bait hive in case they swarm again when I'm out, but I've now got 3 colonies doing well - the small swarm I collected has laying workers so it won't survive but they are happy enough so I will let them fizzle out on their own. My roses have suffered with aphid attacks but I've been rubbing the little blighters off each evening so hopefully the blooms won't be too affected. My veg table is really productive too and we've enjoyed fresh salad every (well, I've enjoyed it, the children have eaten it) but I found Speckledy Emily devouring the lettuces this morning having learnt it was a simple hop and a flap to get up there. Sigh, it was nice while it lasted...

The girls have been enjoying the sunshine and have spent hours in the garden building tents and playing with sticks. Amber drew and typed some beautiful labels for my plant stall and they seem to have an endless capacity for making up stories. Tristan has been busy with his studies and generally keeping a low profile. I procured some 1970's sun loungers off Freecycle and Amber sits on hers with Hazel the chicken for ages:

Ahh!

Little Bills and Feet

Four ducklings have hatched now, rather than the 5 I had deduced from the number of eggshells I thought I'd counted! They've been out in the run today but haven't eaten anything yet. I'm finding ducks very different to hens and I wasn't sure whether I should take John out in case he picked on the babes but scouring the internet, the consensus seems to be that it should be fine, so I've kept him in with the family. I hope Jean knows what she's doing :-/ ducks seem a bit thick compared to hens. Or perhaps I'm worrying too much....it wouldn't be the first time. They have dabbled around in the mud and been shown the water:

As you can see, they are all different colours ranging from blonde to dark, so I'm not sure what colours they'll end up. Both their parents are mallards which is the dominant colour, but depending on their parentage, who knows! I moved the run yesterday to give them fresh ground, and the local dunnock population have been recycling the downy feathers that Jean plucked out to line her nest to go and line theirs with - I keep seeing them flying round with beakfuls of tiny white feathers.

Hooray, the sun's out! I must check my bees this week to see if all the queens are laying. One of the hives is very small now and the poor weather has not helped, so I need to check they're all ok. The swarm I brought back from Ann's looks good from all the activity at the hive entrance, and they are bringing in pollen which is what they use to feed the baby bees so I'm hopeful that they have started to build up the colony. I did get stung yesterday when I lent on a bee who'd chosen to sit on the broody coop as I was moving it - it's the first time this year and unfortunately it's my knitting hand! Help! I am about a third of the way through the second sock so I need to keep up the momentum. I bought some fabric tape with "Made by Me" embroidered on it so I can put one in the back of my Owl Jumper as I keep having to look for the back decreases to find out which way to put it on!

I've been busy in the garden trying to hold back the couch grass from taking over my borders. I have to do it when the chickens aren't looking though as they come along and scuff up my neatly cut edges and send precious soil all over the lawn. The girls spent yesterday afternoon banging away at wood in the carport and have built a large square structure which appears to need to live in my study. Amber is going to tidy her room today so she can have it in her room, which presumably will happen at the same time as the squadron of pigs fly over, or Hell gets chilly ;-)

Ducklings

Well it's been a long wait but - at last!

Are they not the most adorable little creatures?? There are 3 more eggs so we'll see if they hatch :-)

We visited Arundel WWT yesterday and there were ducklings there too! Lovely.

Today I took Amber and Rose to the Owl and Sewing Cat to get materials for bunting. They have a very good tutorial on their blog - I know it's really straightforward but sometimes, a bit like needing the recipe for a Victoria sponge, it's reassuring to have someone telling you what to do. And, joy of joys, it was probably the most relaxing and un-stressful sewing session I have ever had with the girls, and we now have 4 metres of Jubilee-friendly bunting with some left over to do more. I even christened my new-to-me ironing board to press the flags which was remarkably pleasant after my 4 year break from the hot flat thing.

John is sitting guarding the entrance to the Dinky Duck House and earlier was sitting inside with his wife and children. It made me feel a bit sorry for Blossom, the single teenage mum with her 5 chicks but she is doing really well and the chicks are getting the hunched vulture look as they've got their wing feathers but are still downy everywhere else.

Ducklings! :-)

Owls

I tackled knitting a jumper recently. It was designed by Kate Davies (I follow her blog, Needled) and the instructions were great so it all went swimmingly. Big yarn and needles too so surprisingly quick :-)

Here's a pic of the cabled owl detail:

My dad didn't realise they were owls and thought I'd just sewed decorative buttons on but we'll forgive him ;-)

I've had a busy weekend and last night went out with Kate (not Davies!) who gave me my birthday present - a packet of different coloured garden twines and a gorgeous handmade fabric pin-backed adornment (brooch sounds a bit frumpy). I have fixed it on to my smart brown coat and it's instantly more 'me'! So thanks Kate :-)

I'm feeling rather whacked now so I think I'll put the animals to bed and sit down with my knitting for a bit. The children are back and seem to have had an ok time apart from a minor Ribena-based crisis on Tristan's part, so hopefully it'll be a quiet night...

A Garden Full of Bees

I had a phone call yesterday from the lady whose bees I look after; they'd swarmed. It was a dreary, drizzly, murky day so I hopped in the car with a box and a beesuit and went to collect them. The cluster of bees was beautifully situated on an overhanging branch, about head height, along a path :-) couldn't be better. So although bees are very rarely aggressive when they swarm as they've nothing to defend, Ann's are a feisty lot so I did put on my suit and after a sharp tap on the branch, into the box they went. I wrapped them in a sheet just in case as there were a few stragglers - a couple of whom decided to negotiate their way out of the folds of material and buzz ominously around the car as I was driving home.

There were a lot of bees as I put them in to a hive in my garden, but despite the rain they all flew around orientating themselves to their new home. A good job done.

Or so I thought. I noticed this morning that there were a lot of bees around the other 2 hives: not just at the entrance but also trying to get in to the vents and the floor and buzzing along the joins between the hive boxes looking for gaps. Little whatsits were trying to rob my hives!! So, back on with the beesuit and gloves, and armed with a roll of parcel tape and the tiniest, most useless pair of scissors we own, I set about reducing the size of the entrances to the hives so that the guard bees had a smaller gap to defend from their cheeky upstart new neighbours. Trying to unwrap parcel tape, cut parcel tape with Christmas cracker-quality scissors and stick parcel tape on to wood all whilst wearing rubber gloves and in slightly breezy conditions - well, I'm glad nobody was filming that particular exercise in cack-handedness. Or indeed recording; my language had deteriorated somewhat by this stage. And I couldn't seem to retain in my head that there was no point in trying to sever the tape with my teeth: I was wearing a veil. Anyway, the new bees seem to have calmed down now and left the others alone. The tape's still on the entrances which they don't really mind, although you can almost hear the tutting as the bees return, laden with pollen, and have to queue up at the doorway.

My new run arrived today (yes, another one!) as I thought the ducks needed more room, especially with the prospect of babies. It's really good and I feel much happier about them being in there. Rose helped me build it:

Isn't it great? It's the large freestanding lawn run from Flyte So Fancy - I have been so impressed with their other stuff and this is no exception. John and Jean and any future family will be safe and secure in there, and I can fit their big tub of water in too.

I must go and look for Mary the Adventurous Hen who has been gone for a couple of hours which she does frequently. Off she goes, all on her own in the more-than-chicken-high wheat crop behind the house. I did find myself having a fleeting, subconscious thought that I should text her......

Growing

The chicks have settled in well to their new broody coop, and have enjoyed a few trips around the garden with a ferociously maternal Blossom. She thoroughly resents any interference from me either in the coop or when they're roaming, to the point where I get roundly pecked when I am putting in their food bowls or retrieving a lost and cheeping chick from the wrong side of the herb bed.

She has got 5 chicks (the chipped egg didn't hatch unfortunately) but Blossom is obsessed with dust-bathing despite it being on the wet side of damp. There will be a bit of a change around soon as my cockerel Henry is going to live with a friend of mine who would like to breed from her hens, and I will hopefully have nextdoor's Barnevelder cockerel, Bruno. As Henry is the father of 3 of my flock, I thought it best to take the opportunity to mix up the gene pool a bit. I will get Bruno some hens of the same breed if I see them at any of the shows over the summer, not least because they lay the most beautiful brown eggs.

Still no sign of the ducklings...

Yesterday was typical Mayday Bank Holiday weather, but we braved the Spring Garden Show at Ardingly nonetheless. We bought a number of things, including a baby ginkgo tree. I love ginkgoes for their prehistoric heritage, and after a massive section on palaeobotany  for one of my degree courses, I find their presence (virtually unchanged) in the fossil record from the time of the dinosaurs rather incredible.

I have finished my owl sweater (designed by Kate Davies) and purchased the 34 buttons necessary for the eyes this morning, so I will sew those on once it dries. If it dries! I realise my knitting arm is also my vacuuming arm so I thought I'd better rest it: I've cast on some socks but I won't be hoovering the stairs...

My bees are flying whenever they get the chance and the little swarm seems to be doing ok. I don't know where all the bees have gone from the original hive; they must have continued to send out swarms until virtually all the workers had left. I now need to wait for the new queen in both the original colony and the new swarm to start laying eggs. During this time, the worker bees will gradually die off and if there aren't any newly-hatched bees to replace them, the numbers dwindle and it can be that there are not enough bees to look after the eggs and larva, meaning the colony won't survive. I really hope they make it. There is plenty of honey in there and looking at the varroa board underneath the floor, there are flakes of wax and plenty of frass so the swarm colony are building comb. I always feel like a 17th Century medic scrutinising the "humours" of some poor patient when I peer over the varroa board, but it's a good indicator of activity in the colony, not just to count them pesky mites. I try and observe what they are up to at the hive entrance as much as possible as that is also a good barometer of things in the hive. I don't want to take the lid off and have a look as it is cold and damp, and small colonies need all the warmth they can get. I am disappointed that I've lost the swarm though - it's not exactly what I planned!

Swifts are screeching overhead and I will take out my tea and sit with the livestock for a bit as it seems to have stopped raining.

Ahh some more



Well, the chicks enjoyed a foray in to the run of the broody coop today as the sun was shining:



There were cracks in one of the remaining eggs - it's quite a late hatcher (23 days) so we'll see if it makes it. The others are bonny and well though and Blossom is doing a great job of mothering them despite her young age. Instinct is a marvellous thing, isn't it?

Ahh

Saturday was hatching day for Blossom's/nextdoor's eggs, and sure enough, I peeked in to the broody coop and saw a fluffy black and a damp blonde chick. By the evening there were 5: 2 black, 2 blonde and one who's a mixture, and very large. We think he's a baby Gloria, who is also currently broody in nextdoor's coop and we think he's a he because of the black spot on his head; certain combinations have gender-specific markings.

It's a poor picture as the horrible weather convinced me that Bloss and the babies would be better off back in the rabbit hutch in the warm shed (rather than my home-made coop), which is cosy for a mother hen but gloomy for a photo op. I went along to Middle Farm and bought some Garvo Alfamix Chick Starter which looks really delicious, and as Blossom has been brought up on nice expensive mash, she'd looked in the dish of [organic] grey chick crumb and didn't seem bothered about encouraging the chicks. The feed shop owner said "you're spoiling them!" when I told him I was buying it for 5 new additions. He may have a point. The dried amphipods and herbal extracts did the trick though and she was soon bok-bokking and the little chicks were cheeping and pecking around in the shavings. Ahh :-)

Jean is also sitting patiently in her Dinky Duck House:

I'm not entirely sure when her eggs are due to hatch but hopefully the rain will have eased by then.

My bees swarmed yesterday, or indeed it could have been the day before as it was a tiny swarm in the beech hedge. I'm hoping it's not a cast swarm, where a second queen - a princess - leaves with a small group of foragers as it will mean I have lost the swarm with the original queen and her large entourage, which usually is in the region of half the adult bees. It's too wet and cold to open up the hive to see how many bees are left on the frames (it's like the Marie Celeste after the initial or 'prime' swarm leaves) but I did pop the cluster into my new skep and decant them in to a hive I had ready. They were very sluggish though and I squashed a lump of solidified honey into the frames under the crownboard as despite filling themselves to the brim from the stores in the hive before leaving, they will have used up their crop-full of honey as fuel to keep them warm in the hedge. They need to eat plenty of honey to make wax, as it's secreted from wax glands which is a high energy process, so hopefully they will be able to refuel so that the queen can get laying. If she's a princess, she will need to go on her mating flight first which takes the pressure off the comb-builder bees as she won't be ready to lay eggs until about 3 weeks after she's flown out and found herself a batch of suitable drones one afternoon up in the sunny sky...yes, she may be waiting a while! It was a bit warmer this afternoon and the bees were orientating themselves outside their new home, so I am really hoping for some good weather over the next few weeks so they can go and forage.

I went over to the farm on Friday and split the large colony into two, and with luck I've done it in time to deter them from swarming, as I'm not on hand there to collect them as easily. The bees were really calm, and I decided not to use a smoker as I find it stressful keeping it alight, and I don't know if it works as a calming agent anyway. I try to be really gentle and measured when I work the bees as they release an alarm pheromone when they sting or get crushed which is understandable but deeply unhelpful from a beekeeper's perspective. I found an unsealed queen cell on a frame and popped that in the hive opposite with some more frames of brood and a box of honey on top. I'll go and check they are flying next time it's warm.

It was my parent's joint birthday party yesterday which was great fun, and I was the lucky recipient of the contents of my aunt's shed which she brought over with her. It's like a gardening treasure trove - lovely terracotta pots and a proper besom broom among other things. I had put some lemon pips in to compost back in the autumn and forgotten about them; lo and behold, they germinated. I've potted them up into the terracotta pots and they look charming with their glossy leaves so I should have some nice citrus houseplants!

It was my birthday at the weekend and I was lucky enough to receive some fantastic presents, including a nestbox webcam which is currently on the optional fat-ball feeder it came with. The company (handykam.com) had thought of everything, and I must say it is rather compulsive viewing, despite the fact that the chickens wandering around underneath look the same size as the sparrows and blue tits. It's a real window in to the birds' world and if it's something you've always to try - do!

I was also given a Dinky Duck House by my parents which is brilliant. It was a timely gift as Jean the call duck has gone broody, and as I had a bit of a scare the other day when she wasn't well, I thought I'd better breed some potential replacements! Female call ducks are hard to come by and they have a strong pair bond, so if anything happened to one of them, the other would be bereft. So, I took the decision to try for some ducklings :-) She is sitting on 5 eggs so hopefully I'll get at least one female. Blossom's eggs are due to hatch this weekend so I am considering investing in a new broody coop from Flyte So Fancy. I have a bit of a rat problem and I'm concerned that my Heath Robinson attempt won't be rodent-proof, and I've got a feeling Mary (Blossom's brood-mother) might be getting the nesting urge too as she was tucked up in the corner of the Lurve Lavatory at bedtime. Although that could be because she's a bit thick.

The weather's been dreadful here (although we need the rain blah blah) and the bees have been pouring out of the hives as soon as its dry to head off to the oil seed rape and dandelions. I've been rejigging all the frames in my spare hives and I am debating as to whether I should split the big colony or let them swarm. The garden is looking fantastic with the frequent cloudbursts (including the couch grass and willowherb in the borders) and I had a bit of a result with Freecycle: I'd requested some hanging baskets to use as cloches to protect my new plants as Henry can spot a shiny new perennial like a hawk, and before I know it he's scuffed the whole thing across the garden with his great feet in the name of impressing the hens with his muscular leg action and worm-finding abilities. Anyway, a chap called Alf emailed me and this morning I collected 24 hanging baskets from just down the road! The are all a bit rusty which means they blend in to the borders really well and in fact are not devoid of charm in my rural setting. Think delapidated milk churn or ancient tractor aging gracefully into the landscape and it's sort of the look I feel I've achieved. Once the foliage grows up through them they'll disappear anyway. I'll kick myself if I see my idea in one of the Chelsea Show Gardens...

My knitting project is growing although I need to find some other stitch markers as I'm using my wedding and eternity rings at the moment which are not ideal, although it does put them to good use :-D I've signed up to finish my degree as I've swapped the courses over to a BSc which doesn't need me to go on a residential school. I had stopped for a break with every reason to suspect I would not pick it up again, but I miss the challenge [of feeling completely out of my depth!] and I end up fretting about useless pointless stuff so I figure my best option is to lock the old grey cells into something worthwhile. The children are pootling along quite happily with their various interests and actually I find that they get swept along with me to a certain extent when I'm studying.

I hope to have some duckling and chick pics to show everyone at some point :-)

A Visit to Perch Hill

On Saturday I took a trip out to Sarah Raven's Open Day with Kate. It was rather chilly and we hurried past the cutting garden to the warmth of the barn and conservatory where tea and cakes were being served. After a delicious slice of coffee cake spiked with Baileys, we pottered around the shop choosing seed packets, wondering where our houses could accommodate the beautiful candles, and handling spools of colourful string with their lovely smell of potting sheds. I bought a pack of gladioli "Plum Tart" in the sale as I've never grown glads before, and some veg seeds: Red Bor kale, Amsterdam carrots and red giant mustard leaf. It was busy in the shop and I get a bit nervous when I'm walking round somewhere with so many costly and smashable items but the Delft blue hyacinths in pewter dishes were kicking out a perfume so it was very pleasant. Ms Raven's styling is inspirational but not wholly appropriate to my lifestyle and it's a bit out of my price range, but it is a lovely place to go with a friend and the gardens were looking surprisingly colourful given the earliness of the year. I'm not quite sure why I find the orderly lines of veg and tulips so appealing as I'm hardly a neat freak in any other area of my life!

The afternoon was the Grand National, and I managed - by complete girly fluke - to back the winner! A wonderful grey horse, who won by a few pixels judging by the photo finish. Two horses had to be put down which always puts a dampener on these things, but I take a rather pragmatic view having had horses myself, and being a livestock owner is fraught with delight and disaster. Anyway, I'm going to spend my winnings on some yarn to knit a jumper - my largest [size] challenge to date.

I took the girls in to town yesterday and Amber purchased some semi-permanent hair colour as she's been whittering on about it for ages. She did have doubts as the Ribena-coloured water streamed from her hair when I showered her head over the bath, but I told her it would be fiiiiiine and to stop worrying as frankly it was too late to change her mind. It's quite an attractive plummy-chestnut although of course I prefer her dark honey-gold locks. It lasts for 24 shampoos according to the packet, which given Amber's current rate of hair-washing and general ablutions, should last her about 3 years.

Today has been chilly and breezy inbetween sunshine and 'useful' showers to borrow the term used by the forecasters. I've planted the gladioli corms and Amber put some French bean 'Purple Teepee' into pots. It's National Gardening Week so I'm focussing on horticulture in the afternoons...it's a valid reason! - I'm not just trying to find excuses to go into the garden in the name of education, honest. There is a massive shortage of horticulturalists and botanists so I like to feel I am doing my bit to make the children aware of what can be grown and when and how. I did discuss vegetable crops with them but got a bit unstuck as Tristan refused to believe that we actually imported broccoli, saying that surely nobody liked it that much. I will get them pricking out seedlings later in the week as I've got quite a few: the alkanet and woad have germinated, as well as a quarter-tray of some green and glossy seedlings which are a bit of a mystery. I'm not a great labeller.

I've almost finished a pair of fingerless gloves based on Susie's Reading Mitts, a wonderful (free) pattern on Ravelry which I've adapted to have 2x2 rib at the wrist and fingers as it's a bit easier.

Blossom is still sitting on her eggs so hopefully we will have chicks by the end of the month - I hope it warms up a bit before then. The bees have been flying when the sun comes out and I am hoping for some swarms soon to fill all the hives in my garden!

Spring Action

I heard the cuckoo this morning, which is the first time. I've seen orange tip, red admiral and peacock butterflies, lots of bumblebees and lacewings too so far, but of course it's the cuckoo that announces it's Spring (or at least, more Spring-like than sub-Saharan Africa). It seems to be a semi-resident as I hear it calling from the same area, and I have also seen flying in its cumbersome manner across the field behind me in previous years.

The nestbox I put up in the copper beech behind the house has had blue tits successfully breeding in it for the past two years, but I heard a tap-tapping while I was giving the hens their breakfast, and thinking it was a woodpecker, went over to have a look. It was actually a great tit hammering away at the entrance hole trying to get in. I've seen blue tits, wrens and sparrows making reconnaissance missions in and around the box but the great tits seem to have bagged it as I saw one of them shoo away a blue tit. It couldn't seem to get its shoulders through so I'm wondering how long they'll persevere.

I'm now feeling I should provide the ousted blue tits with a new box and we were looking at camera ones this evening which would be brilliant, although I'm conscious it'll be another thing for me to worry about!! I could put it in the beech tree as the ivy provides plenty of cover and birds already nest there but I'm not sure how much room they need between boxes; I don't think they like to nest too close to each other (apart from sparrows who apparently enjoy the company) and I don't want to put off the great tits. An alternative would be in the cherry tree outside the front door, then the cable could come straight in through the lounge window, giving the Ocado/post/milk man an opportunity to garrote himself as he trips over the makeshift duck barrier and dodges the bees. I will also order some roosting pockets from Wiggly Wigglers as I have had dunnocks nesting in the hedge in these before now.

The weather has been very wet today and despite parched conditions a week ago, my garden has been transformed in to a sloppy and slippery mess. I am making a new border where the chickens were during the winter, as they demolished the grass and if I'm going to make good, I'd rather not simply reseed it. I'm sure my landlord would approve of a shady border with foxgloves, Pulmonaria, Lamium and a bee-friendly clover lawn instead of boring old ryegrass??

We went to Iden Croft Herbs yesterday which was, er, interesting. We didn't know what to expect, but that wasn't it. Anyway, I got some really interesting herb seeds which I sowed today: Good King Henry, cuckoo flower, woad, alkanet and arnica to name a few. My veg table now has a hanging basket on the side of it for me to plant a tumbling tomato, thus increasing the useable area.

I am now going to knit a lemon for my tea cosy...

It's Been a While....

...partly because I have run out of room in my online photo album so can't post pics without deleting previous ones or purchasing album space, and my laptop has been donated to my son and my old pc won't speak to my camera. Consequently, uploading pictures and getting them on to my blog is a bit of a palava. I'll try and sort something out though. Things have been busy here: I find spring such an energising time of year but I'm actually trying to slow down a bit. I used to make my cup of tea in bleary-eyed fashion, crawl back to bed and resurface once the life-giving caffeine had gently woken me up. Now, I have got in to the unhealthy habit of putting the kettle on, feeling obliged to go and feed the hens and then take the tea outside and start wondering what I can get on with in the garden. Yes! I know! Madness!!

The children are going to their dad's tomorrow morning until Tuesday afternoon so I am looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. Camilla has been round which is nice for the girls, and Amber has had her friend Emily to stay too. Tristan had his regulation time with Joel last week so the inevitable bickering has been at a manageable level. I have banned the words "I'm bored" with threats of double work when we get back to homeschooling if they chunter about not having anything to do during the break. Tristan is starting French GCSE and hopefully history if I can understand what set books I need to get. I took a special trip up to Foyles in London to have a decent peruse but got completely lost so gave up. I did get a really good insect field guide, a biodynamic calendar, a bee book called "Queen of the Sun" which is a lovely anthology of  articles, pictures and poems from a bee-friendly perspective. Oh, and a great Eleanor of Aquitaine bio by Douglas Boyd which I am really enjoying. So. er, yes, not a great result on the textbook front but I'm well stocked up. Things with their dad are ok; I'm letting the CSA do the running around for me! Well, I say running...I think the Alps are moving more quickly but hey, I wouldn't want to do their job.

The garden is looking full of promise though, and this morning we are finally getting some rain. Drizzle actually, but it's better than nothing. It's not been too bad with the hosepipe ban as I have the duck's bathtub water to decant over the border (which yes, I lug 5 watering-can-loads of water to) and I've been prioritising my new plants so it's all looking pretty green as I've got mainly perennials.

The chickens are all doing well and enjoying the dry weather. They still haven't touched the dust-bath station I installed, but are finding plenty of other places; in my row of potatoes, a pothole they've excavated in a patch of bare earth in the lawn, under the bikes which kicks dust up all over the chains, that sort of thing. Blossom the chick has gone broody, and at the risk of sounding like I advocate teenage motherhood, she's been so out of sorts and hormonal I felt it better to let her sit and see if she stays rather than force her out of it. She's in the spare rabbit hutch in my potting shed so it's nice and quiet, and she has got a selection of nextdoor's eggs under her. My neighbours lost Dorothy, a favourite hen and have a few of her eggs left. There are some others too, mainly Pekin bantams and Polish and some other fancy fowl - they're a bit more adventurous than me.

The call ducks are also fit and healthy, and are right at this moment enjoying the dampness. John the drake is extremely full of the joys and keeps grabbing the chicks and trying to mate them. I did think he was just chasing them but no, having observed him from the upstairs window as I shouted directions to Amber in the garden, he definitely has more libidinous things in mind. They have got a bit wise to him now and give him a good pecking which is a bit dangerous as they could do him some real damage. Not that he seems frightfully aware of that. It certainly doesn't seem to be putting him off. Jean, the duck, did go broody too and [extraordinarily] tempted though I was, I decided not to let her incubate :-( she is very young and ducks are less easy to find homes for than hens. I'll see if it happens next year and let her have a go then.

I'm knitting/crocheting a tea cosy at the moment - it's a variant of the Spring Explosion Tea Cozy from Crochet With Raymond, which looks like this:

I'm doing a fruit 'n' veg one though, and so far it's looking great. I've also discovered the Martha Stewart website which has lots of ideas, so have been churning out strawberry pincushions (from the Sewing Projects) section, and yesterday Kate came over with her machine and we gave it a clean up whilst drinking tea and chatting. Very pleasant :-)

Happy Easter to you all.

Bee Check

I have been wanting to check my bees for a while but with a nod to my new-found bee knowledge, I wanted to wait til the weather was very mild and not breezy, so that I could open the hive up to dust them with icing sugar. The thinking is that they groom themselves and each other to remove the sugar, and in doing so, ping off any Varroa mites that have been latched on. I'd darned the holes in my veil and the elasticated cuffs of my bee suit yesterday evening and when the sun was shining brightly on the hives, I took the lid off and had a look. The smaller hive has a very small nest but that's to be expected at this stage in the season, but I did see the queen, eggs and capped brood, as well as plenty of pollen, so they look like they have done alright so far this winter. I put a desertspoon of icing sugar in to my sieve and gently dispensed it over all the frames of the brood box, and then tapped the last teaspoon over the bees in the super. They protested a bit but I put the crownboard and roof back on quickly anyway to try and retain the heat, and within seconds the rather disgruntled buzzing had calmed to the usual contented hum.

The hive at the front of the house is my original one, and contains the descendants of my first queen who was prolific and docile, and has passed the traits on to her offspring. They are still some of the friendliest bees I know, and due to my rather inexpert amalgamation of an artificial swarm, has over-wintered with two brood boxes. A quick look in the top box showed egg and lots of honey; I think they are going to grow in to a large and productive colony again this year. I'm hoping for some swarms so I can 'experiment' a bit with my apicentric theories by using frames rather than foundation and not using a queen excluder so she has the run of the hive.

I gave the bees in this hive a dose of icing sugar in the same way, and they didn't complain at all, even though they do look a bit ghostly:

I put the hive back together and left them to their grooming. I'll check the base board in a while to see if any varroa have fallen off...

I got in the way of their flight path as I was putting the roof on:

If we get another mild day in the next few weeks, I'll dust them again.

Projects

The weather has turned rather wintery again which is always disappointing - we get a tantalising reminder of mild weather and spring sunshine, and then bam, in comes rain and wind and back I am in to warm woollies. I am thankful for all my knitted goods though. I'm currently working on a pair of socks which need a higher diploma in Fairisle colourwork and pattern deciphering - frankly the latter is far more frustrating but I'm hoping sock number 2 will prove a little less challenging. I do need to get on with it before I forget all my interpretations and what the scribbles on my colour chart mean :-/ I have also cast on some ribbed wrist-warmers using the cuff of my gumboot sock as a guide, and while waiting with T at the doctor's I polished off a jug cover for Nicky so I will get some beads to put on that when I next see her.

The green Kidsilk Haze shawl/wrap is growing and I am looking forward to using it, although I will have to remember not to go for impromptu wanders when wearing it as it will snag like anything.

In the garden I have been busy as well. Having bought some wildflowers from the garden centre, I've planted them in the area in front of the beehive, and sown some poached egg plant seeds. There are lots of dandelions too and Crocosmia which flower late so with luck the bees will have a buffet on their doorstep, although they will no doubt go straight past them to the nearest crop of rape/field beans/Himalayan balsam. Still, it will benefit the other pollinators and look great so that must be good. I have planted a variegated thyme and the salad burnet in pots:

I have been weeding my borders and raised beds as they have numerous clumps of grass dotted through them. I was chucking them on the compost but then decided to plonk them on to the bit of the garden where the poultry were, and, having squished them in with a welly, they have all taken. It won't be a bowling green but I think it will be green if nothing else! Reseeding or putting down turf is a) expensive and b) risky with the hens and c) not worth it for what was originally a pretty scrappy excuse for a lawn, but some foliage should assuage my landlord's horror. I have also been feeding the new dandelion shoots that are springing up amongst the perennials to the bunnies, which they love. So, upcycle your flower border and vegetable bed rejects!

All my seedlings have germinated so I have transplanted some things from the cold frame in to the ground, and from the house to the cold frame to give me more room, as I was running out of windowsills. New growth has started and I am really looking forward to seeing how the garden progresses this year. The perennials should be at their peak.

The animals are all fine, except nextdoor's ducks waddled in to my garden while I was on the phone to the CSA, which meant I had to drop the phone and run out to rescue Jean from the attentions of their enormous drake. This necessitated me confirming my national insurance number again when I came back on the line which I found rather pointless. It reminded me of The Now Show podcast that I had on last night - Andy Parsons' piece about banks had me crying with laughter. Do have a listen:(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cks52/The_Now_Show_Series_36_With_Andy_Parsons_and_Lynne_Truss/)  :-)

Hooks and Needles

I've had a busy week since adopting a 'bites of the elephant' approach to housework and home organisation in general, but I am pleased with how manageable it all feels and with the results! I have a brief window between the girls' lessons and helping T with his workbooks, so my peppermint tea is here and I have taken some photos of my recent projects that have been finished:

This bowl/jug cover is from Nicky Trench's book, Cute and Easy Crochet, and it is a big version of the jam pot cover. I carried on with the rounds rather manically during a particularly harrowing episode of Call the Midwife, and increased when it sort of looked like it should (difficult to recreate I know!). I then threaded beads on to a length of cotton and double-crocheted round, letting a bead drop every 8th stitch. The beads are glass ones made by fellow CCG member Nicky's sister, and are beautiful colours - and suitably weighty.  Over tea and welshcakes yesterday afternoon, Nicky and I discussed various projects and we are veering more towards herbal salves and foraged foods as spring approaches. I have been using the shampoo bars we made a few weeks ago that have olive oil, beeswax, avocado oil and egg yolks in them. I used the rosemary hair rinse that Nicky had made and it has worked brilliantly! I spritzed it on after rinsing and towel-drying my hair and it was an instant detangler, plus my hair feels wonderfully soft.

On the sock front, I finished the February fair isle socks, and also the ones in the sweet pea yarn:

I am really enjoying knitting socks! I've a new pair on the go at the moment which are from quite a complicated pattern but they are looking good and are for a worthy recipient so I don't mind at all, and being only 50 stitches with DK yarn, are knitting up relatively quickly. I've also brought a pair of Nicky's socks back to finish off for her as I do seem to need about 4 things on the go so I can ring the changes. The kidsilk wrap is growing, but I want it really wide and luxurious so I am not rushing that at all.

Due to the rat infestation I have moved all the poultry down to the other end of the garden and decanted the contents of the compost bins/rat hotels in to old plastic sacks. I will leave the bags to stew for the summer in discrete groups as I don't want to encourage the rodent population to take up residence in amongst them. The ducks have taken to waddling out of the garden and dabbling around in the drainage ditch outside my house which is disgusting, and hardly safe (especially with the chap and his Staffies that regularly ride up the road), so they have been shut in their run. It is now on grass though and they have been making little trenches with their beaks around their bucket. Jean is laying eggs too :-)

Anyway, Tristan and his chemistry workbook need some attention before Rosie goes to tea with some friends from the local school. Back soon with more projects to show you!

New Start

I have struggled with February, as I always do, but since chatting to Nicky on Sunday, I'm hoping to have turned a bit of a corner. The house is looking presentable due to my own variation of the FLYLady regime, and I have instilled a few gentle and subtle boundaries that the children have yet to detect but have responded well to!

For her science lesson this morning, I took Rose out for a walk with her I-Spy Trees book, and we managed 115 points which was pretty good as there are obviously only a few broadleaved trees with sufficiently distinctive bark or buds for Rose to be able to identify them at this leafless time of year:

The oak tree helpfully had some of last year's crop of acorns on the ground though so we could tick that one off. Amber has been having a go at The Times spelling bee, until Tristan came along and started showing off. Still, it made a change from them fighting over nothing :-D Rose and I did history this afternoon from Susan Wise-Bauer's magnificent The Story of the World and fortuitously we had cooked rice at lunchtime, which tied in nicely with activities about the Mauryan Empire of India. Tris is working his way through Key Stage 3 Science and GCSE Biology, Physics and Chemistry, and all the children are doing their handwriting practise every day. I spent my 15 minutes decluttering a corner and found a couple of good workbooks that have been missing for ages so that was a result. I just need to find Tristan's missing shoe now.

The friendship cake starter yielded a round of blueberry and apple muffins for breakfast, and the February fairisle socks have been completed! They went a bit wrong but my hand-knitted socks are certainly unique. Unique as in not like anything else, let alone the other sock in the pair. But! - I have made them myself and does it really matter if they aren't the same length? I want to finish the green Kidsilk Haze wrap so I might sit down this evening and do some, although it's Professor Iain Stewart tonight *swoon* with his programme about How to Grow a Planet so I won't be able to crochet in front of that. It's a good series even though as my parents and I often joke: he, like Brian Cox, only seems to find decent examples at spectacular, far-flung, exotic locations. All my seedlings that I pricked out are doing really well on windowsills throughout the house; they love the sunshine even if they are straining a bit towards it.

Oh...I've just heard from the girls that it's the Brit Awards tonight so I might be able to crochet in front of the tv after all! I'll save Prof Stewart for iPlayer in bed ;-)

More Thoughts on Bees

It's the last day of half term and we spent some time in the garden, and we did some gentle homeschool. I also spent a bit of time organising my beehives. Here are some pictures:



The amaryllis has flowered

I made up a medicinal pot of feverfew and chamomile

I planted baby cacti in a 50:50 mix of molehill
and coarse sand

I have given this National hive a brood and a super, and have
put the deeper brood frames in the super so the bees have a
lot more uninterrupted space to make comb

There is another 3-4" below the bottom bar of the brood frame

I have taken out (or not bothered putting in) the strips of foundation. Foundation is hexagonally-stamped beeswax that the bees then extend out to make honeycomb. However it has been manufactured to have a slightly wider diameter than the bees would naturally build, and this has led people to suggest that it has allowed the varroa mite more room to wriggle around and get attached to the bee. Hence advocates of natural beekeeping try to let bees build their own comb if possible. It also allows the bees to produce drone comb, as the foundation is worker bee size.

A National is still not an ideal environment for bees - in the wild they would occupy a space that would fit in to a man-made beehive, but they don't cope well with corners. They build a round nest in a cylindrical tree, so us providing them with rectangular frames in a square box means the corners get cold and unpoliced as the bees really don't understand that they are there. In the winter they can end up dying of starvation even if there are full frames of honey at the edges of the hive. Bees are incredibly sophisticated insects and highly programmed but this does not equate to being able to think! The lack of hollow trees has been detrimental to our wild bee population in the same way as it has to our owls and other tree-nesting birds, and I feel this should be the emphasis for beekeeping in the future: providing them with a safe place to live rather than purely honey production.

I have given the bees some of last year's honey comb to feed on, but as you can see,
it has granulated and the bees are finding it hard work and leaving the sugar crystals behind.
I have provided them with extra water so they can dilute it; it granulates
due to cold or because of the chemical makeup of the nectar it came from.

This lady is enjoying tucking in to a comb of liquid honey

Lined up at the bee bar

It has been lovely to spend some time in the garden and be around the hens, bees and plants. 

Bees and Geology

Tristan has returned from his father's and has disappeared with the laptop so no piccies I'm afraid. All I have on my camera anyway is a photo of my lovely Wiggly Wigglers Valentine's Day posy which has all British-grown flowers, and comes with a Quattro Stagioni jar for future use and a bar of Divine chocolate :-)

I went up to London yesterday to the Geological Society at Burlington House, Piccadilly, to listen to one of the Shell London Lectures, on the geological record of previous global warming events, particularly the one 55 million years ago. It was really interesting and the main message was that it's all very well having scientists saying in their peer-reviewed journals about climate change but it needs to become part of the world population's consciousness, and that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the only way to deal with carbon dioxide emissions until low-carbon alternatives become mainstream. I was disappointed to learn that top geology totty, Professor Iain Stewart, was at the earlier presentation, but never mind :-(

I missed the earlier lecture as I was meeting beekeeping friend John to discuss apicentric tactics for the coming year. It was great: we sat in the Waterstone's cafe talking and talking for 4 hours so the pecan tart and 2 pots of tea were very welcome.

Today was another day sans enfants, so Charles and I took the opportunity to go for a pub lunch at a child-unfriendly venue - I think it's called The Star but we know it as The Dreary Placemats due to the extraordinarily naff pen and ink drawings of a nondescript cottage on said placemats. I also had to get my boot catch fixed as it's been stuck since the snow, and it turns out the lock wasn't frozen. I popped in to the garage expecting to have to book it in and pay money I don't have to get it sorted out, but it was only a fuse, so for the princely sum of 42p I can now get a bale of hay in the car for the bunnies, who are recovering well from their neutering op.

The rest of the day was spent watching iPlayer and discussing which pollinator plants would be best and working out what we think about biodynamic gardening. Lovely :-)

Looking Forward to Spring

The snow is hopefully on its way out, as we have high pressure bringing us some Atlantic weather rather than dragging in cold continental air, so the forecast is for temperatures up above freezing. It means rain too, but hey, can't have everything! I got to work in the garden over the weekend as the chaotic mix of privet, winter jasmine and bramble was looking dreadful outside my front door, so it had to go:

I didn't take a 'before' photo as it was a it of a spur of the moment decision but take it from me, it was a mess. So, I now have some space to plant some new plants, and given the proximity of the beehive, I'll focus on pollinator plants, although really I feel if you're going to plant plants at all, they may as well be pollinator ones. I bought some Cobaea scandens seeds from Sarah Raven which can romp away to 6 metres, so I will sow some of those in trays this afternoon and see if they germinate. I've not been particularly impressed with Ms Raven's seeds so I'll see how they do. She produces a very attractive catalogue though!

When Nicky and I made lavender bags a few weeks ago, we used the dried seedheads from my Mum's plant, and there were lots of tiny seeds at the bottom of the storage jar. I popped these in to some compost and I was pleasantly surprised to see some tiny green shoots this morning:

I have been reading my book about biodynamic gardening, and it's certainly intriguing. I've a chart that gives times for sowing and tending different groups of plants (flower, root, leaf and fruit) and I am going to try and stick to it. I quite like having restrictions actually so if nothing else it will prevent me feeling overwhelmed by the needs of the garden! A lot of people garden according to the lunar cycles as it affects groundwater in the same way as the tides, but biodynamic is another step on from that. It's easy to scoff but I think there is so much about the planet and its workings that we don't understand, I'm happy to give things a go, especially as so many aspects of our relationship with the soil and plants and the natural environment as a whole is out of alignment. So, this afternoon is a time to focus on flowers. Maybe some cosmic influences will enhance the germination rate of the highly-marketed seeds I was seduced in to buying! I'll let you know...

My granny squares have been transformed in to a cover for my wicker basket:

I am really really pleased with it :-) I would have loved a big blanket but realistically, the rush of enthusiasm had slowed to a trickle, and at least with this I will use it all the time (plus I have lots of lovely blankets already). I have a few squares left over, so I am thinking of making a wool-insulated bottle jacket, but that's still gliding around in my head at the moment, waiting to become a proper idea that I can work with. I did a picot edging and the picture doesn't show it, but I have buttons at the handles, so it can be taken off, to possibly make an impromtu picnic cloth? I find wicker baskets so handy as I often carry boxes of eggs and food and drinks, as well as knitting, so they would get squashed up in a bag. It's a shame Glyndebourne is too highbrow a venue for the likes of me; reckon it would go down a treat.

It's half term so I made bagels and muffins. I was given a friendship cake starter, but having given a portion out to two of my friends, I couldn't think of who else would want it so I'm keeping it for myself! I know that is really not the point of it at all but I figure people would rather I took them a batch of cakes. The recipe suggests an addition of apple and cinnamon to the batter, but this morning I put in some grated carrots and a cup of walnuts instead to ring the changes. They are delicious.

The girls are playing with their fairy theatre and singing along to their favourite songs, as well as practising for Oliver! as part of their Stagecoach performance. T is in bed reading his Bernard Cornwell for a third time, and luckily I was so late getting breakfast I'm hoping it will sort of count as lunch too so I can be relieved of that duty!

A Sock, a Shawl and some Houseplants

The snow still hasn't melted and frankly I'm rather bored of it now, especially as I've been walking up the footpath/Olympic luge run twice a day which now has slippery muddy patches as well as the slippery icy patches. I've had to separate the hens again as despite giving them an enormous run (the large ark, extension run plus small ark), Henry kept picking on the chicks, and I find it so disconcerting to hear them squawking. So, the chicks and Ida now have the small ark and the extra run, and the 4 older chickens have the big ark. I can't let them out for long as there's not much to do in the garden with the snow on the ground, so they end up on the verge outside, or - their favourite place - across the road in to the garden where my white call ducks met their fate :-/...honestly. So, I have decided to take the opportunity to keep them shut in for most of the day and give them their Flubenvet-spiked mash so they actually eat it, otherwise I can't get any wormer down them. The ducks have a herbal pellet which is added to their food on a monthly basis but I can't rely on the hens sharing the food out quite so equably as Mr and Mrs Duck. Anyway, they all seem ok and there are enough hens in each coop to keep each other warm when they roost.

I've suffered a bit of pain in my wrist from all my knitting! Oops. So, I've not done so much recently, although I've done the first bit of colour work on the second fairisle sock:

I am also crocheting a cobweb scarf/wrap in the green Kidsilk Haze yarn - I made a shawl for my mum and couldn't resist making one for me! It's a bit of a trawl and rather a boring stitch but it looks good and is lovely and springy:

I've also decided on a project for my Sissinghurst granny squares, but I've a bit more to do on that before I can take a proper picture:

I spent some time in the garden yesterday as I'd had the foresight to bring my sack of compost in overnight to defrost it. I had lots of spiderplant babies in dishes of water, and they now have roots. I've potted them up in to Nutella jars and tins with grit and sand at the bottom for drainage. I love golden syrup tins too so the ivy went in there:

I have a new book about biodynamic gardening so I'm going to try and get my head around that this weekend! I sowed sweet peas in large yogurt pots and pricked out some Cosmos seedlings, as well as some lupins from an old seed packet, which I now realise are the rather boring yellow ones but not all of them germinated. I'm longing for some sunshine and spring warmth. I always get so desperate to have plants I always sow everything far too early so it gets all leggy or damps off, but I can't resist. I have about 20 hollyhocks in the coldframe which are looking brilliant, and I have sweet peas in there too, and at least when the snow has gone I should have some crocuses and snowdrops to enjoy :-)

Work Work Work...

Due to the snow, we have achieved very little today, unlike a usual Monday which is a hive of activity (!). Well, there were duckles paddling around:

And then there was a sled run to make in the field. I told the children to construct it down the footpath so that our rather draconian landlord wouldn't tell them off for trespassing. I realised afterwards that once it's all frozen solid in the sub-zero temperatures overnight, it's going to be great fun when I try to walk the dog up there tomorrow :-/ but they were being remarkably co-operative with each other so I left them to it:

It was a beautiful day though so I did venture out, and needless to say got roped in to having a go :-)

Transformation

The forecasters were right! We have had snow! The hens weren't sure:

The dog loves it though - he's the tiny dot between the two trees in this photo:

So as the children are with their father this weekend, I've got myself a big blanket, the February socks, the sweet pea socks, my half-finished crocheted wrap, 3 books which require concentration and the box set of Life on Mars which we watched 4 episodes of last night. Oh, and a really big tub of chocolate digestives...think I'm all set ;-)