Mary is getting rather cooped up in her coop, and perhaps it's the fact that I empathise with the constant cheeping from three little chicks which must be like "Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum!...." so I try and let her out for a change of scene and a wander round the garden if I'm available to keep watch. The chicks are getting quite bold and have grown so much; even their wing feathers have started to poke through.
Having toured the garden, Mary alighted upon a recently uncovered area of newly-planted penstemon cuttings that I had been carefully nurturing and protecting from sharp beaks and claws. Since shutting the hens in their pen though, I have been rather less Fort Knox-ish so this, obviously, was the ideal place to initiate another bathing area. Mary got down to it, showering the chicks with dirt,
and the amazing thing was that once they'd got over their puzzlement over what she was doing, the chicks copied her. They don't have any feathers though so they were shuffling around in the earth rather ineffectually but I had no idea they would do such a thing so early on and so instinctively.
Still very cute :-)
After visiting Dixter yesterday and the nip of autumn in the air, I felt it was time to visit a garden centre and get some bulbs organised to ward off any getting-very-dark-in-the-evening-isn't-it blues. Charles had been in Court and called in for a cuppa after so we pootled off to the local Wyevale. We prefer the independents usually but Wyevale is very local, although their seed selection was dreadful.
We picked up a few bargains for £1 each that looked a bit sad but nothing that a trim and a decent water wouldn't remedy. They also had good deals on bulbs so we bought crocuses, narcissi, indoor narcissi, anemones which should all flower early and are good for pollinators. I also bought some beautiful purple, blue and red miniture irises that I will put in a pot to display. We got cyclamens too so all in all, a successful trip.
I'm looking forward to planting them all now!
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