A Birthday

I took the children over to Laura's this morning and caught up with the news over coffee - I had been given some coffee by Simon and Joss as a thank you for checking their bees so we enjoyed some 'Suave' coffee which was the mild one...the alternative being 'Fuerte' or intense but we decided we already had enough intensity and didn't need the caffeine variety too.

Back home and Charles came over for lunch which was really nice as it was his birthday. He was thrilled to bits with his presents although it was difficult for me to give them to him as I had taken the maxim of "buy gifts you'd like to receive yourself" rather far. I did make him promise to give the fossil trilobite back to me if he ever got bored of it but he said he wouldn't :-(

We then went to Scats to buy, amongst other things, a crowbar so I could break up my pallets:

Et voila

I have been trying to work out how to make a better run for the ducks and pallets bits are always a good place to start. Ooh, talking of ducks:

Ahh

We also went to the reclamation yard as everyone (ie Kirsty Allsopp) raves about them and we wondered what on earth people do with rusty guttering, gargoyles and peeling windows but hey, it was certainly an experience.

So then it was time to get the children as they "wanted to see Charles" which, roughly translated, meant have a slice of birthday cake

5 slices gone

and now, after all the excitement I'm feeling pleasantly tired so I think it's early bed with a podcast and some knitting, although I do need to quickly write 300 words on Cretaceous polar forests or I shall get behind with my studies...duck watching seems to be taking up an extraordinary amount of time. I did, however, find a Call duck website which gave all the genetics of the different colourways which was rather fascinating and constitutes work in my book. So what with that and looking up all about Metacanthiana trilobites on Wikipedia I'd say I've been rather productive on the work front. You can tell I home-educate! ;-)

Daylight

It is, of course, about the longest day length in the year for us at the moment and given that we seem to have had summer in April, it is feeling slightly autumnal to me. Having found the camera (under a bag) I thought I'd take some pictures of nature's status in the growing season as I am always amazed at how early plants actually start setting seed:

This....

...plus this = embryonic crumble

A future champion?

Elderberry cordial to be

New Scots pine trees

So I know it might seem a bit depressing to be thinking about autumn but I am a bit obsessed with day length as I am studying the Cretaceous period when the global temperature was such that we had polar forests - Alaska was covered in cycads, ferns and conifers as well as flowering plants but because of the incredibly short growing period of about 3 months they were all deciduous. Of course, most of the 3 months was continous daylight but I find it incredible that plants adapted so brilliantly to the intense growth whilst still protecting themselves from maruading, migrating herbivorous dinosaurs...

Anyway, dragging myself back to the Cainozoic, my soap is now airing or curing or whatever:

 

It bears a disturbing resemblance to rum-and-raisin fudge

Oh yes I know I said in my last blog that it would have to wait til I got the proper stuff but everyone reading this knows I'm far too impatient to do that so having googled, I used milk instead of water and guessed the temperature.

And here's the regulation chicken picture - Maud and Mary in their rural idyll:

Not going to make it in to Country Living magazine is it

And just to make up for the lack of pictures yesterday, Tristan with the cake he made:

Clever lad

:-)