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!
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