Early Summer

It has been a busy last few weeks with poultry, swarms and um, other stuff which has taken up my time but I now can't think of what...

The chicks are growing well and now that the nights are milder, are in the broody coop with Beatrice, and enjoying their daily explore of the garden under her watchful eye:

Ooooh!

The chick I thought was a boy I now think is a girl, and the white 'hen' seems to have a prominent comb already. I tried to talk myself round to it just being because it's a white chick so it shows up more but it's seeming less and less convincing!

Son of Henry

I really wanted a white hen as since Peggy (Amber Star hybrid) had to be put down due to a kidney infection, all the chickens have been varying shades of brown. Ho hum, I'm sure he'll be a handsome chap like his dad tho so I'll keep him as a replacement. The other two 'Welsummer' chicks (either the hens were running with another cockerel and retained his semen for longer than I'd anticipated, or Henry is not a pure Welsummer) are orangey-brown and have smaller combs so fingers crossed. I am pretty sure the two Buff Sussex bantams are pullets though, which would be brilliant as I need to replace the two taken by rats; I still feel pretty sad about that incident to be honest.

In other news, we've rescued a baby bunny from nextdoor's cat - it sadly didn't make it but it was a little poppet:

Ketchup, the young bunny

Clearly it wasn't a victim of my cat who is now on a diet due to his sedentary lifestyle - thankfully the rat problem seems to have lessened now it's getting on to summertime and the spring traps I bought have caught a few.

My allotment has been a bit neglected as I've been so busy elsewhere but a session with the girls saw off most of the burgeoning willowherb. The slugs have had a wonderful time as I'm the only person who doesn't use pellets, but I was delighted to see that the sheet of corrugated iron I left in a sunny spot has encouraged a large and expert slug-eater:

A warty friend

As Amber and Rose were with me, it had to be named, so meet Todd the Toad. I'm really hoping I might get slow-worms as I love them! I'm not sure if hedgehogs frequent the area; I hardly ever see them these days. I read an interesting article in Permaculture Mag about slug control: as usual, the more the ecology is fiddled with, the more problems you have. So, if you do everything to encourage natural predators the balance will be restored. Using pellets or even nematodes discourages the birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians from coming in, hence the problems the minute you don't use any control, or miss a bit. Utilising slugs and snails as food for beneficial animals means the predators will patrol the area looking for food on a regular basis and do a far more efficient job with none of the negative side effects. However, I would like to fence off my plot so I can take my ace slug hit squad up there periodically for a sweep:

Be afraid, be very afraid

I've not had much time for knitting recently but I have picked up some art - a timely and excellent birthday present from a like-minded friend has inspired me to pick up my pencil and paper and I'm loving it, to the point where I see something and my first thought is to want to draw it rather than photograph it. I'm only getting proper time to indulge about once a week but I'm hoping to start a sketchbook as well as galloping through A3 printer paper for my practise exercises, and a trip to Tate Modern beckons...

A Birthday Treat

My birthday this year happily fell on the same day as the Antiques Fair at Ardingly. We'd visited there for the first time at the end of last year so I was interested to go again (when hopefully the weather wouldn't be quite so cold and dreary).

I had a few things in mind to keep an eye out for - a stoneware pot and wooden masher for making vegetable sauerkraut, maybe some bedlinen, possibly some cutlery; it's difficult to predict what's going to be there! Last time I saw a fantastic carousel horse....

It was quite busy:

This is just one of the halls

I did see a gorgeous toile de joie (is that how you spell it?) bedspread which now adorns my four-poster, and found myself an antique stoneware pot from France, as well as a masher with a lovely smooth handle from years of wear. A cheese knife, and an old chipped enamel dish for sempervivums too. The girls enjoyed themselves and spent their £20 wisely.

The cat approves of the new bedspread

I have also had the first crop of honey from the bees, and first crop of chicks too! (See waywardbee.blogspot.com for that update.) The weather has turned a bit cooler and we've had a welcome drop or two of rain which the allotment has definitely needed, but the garden is waking up now and soon the bees will be thinking about swarming! Busy times ahead :-)

Jars of raw honey

Spring Is Definitely In The Air...

It was like switching on a light. My call ducks have been living in perfect fraternal harmony since I purchased two white drakes at the South of England Show last summer to keep my father-and-son pair company. But then, the warm weather kicked in a week or so ago and they have been awful! The larger white one (Puddle) picks on the smaller white one (Walter) because Walter keeps trying to attack John, one of the mallards, who in turn spends his time trying to attack me. Walter now has a Mohawk down his neck where the feathers either side have been chewed off and if I put them in the house together at night, even in the pitch black which is meant to be calming, all I can hear is thudding and banging like I'm tumble-drying rocks in the garden. Walter spent last night in a cat basket in the outside loo and I'm having to keep him in the run I use for the rabbits during the day. Oh dear.

I'm looking after some Bovans Brown chicks for my friend who will be taking them at the weekend, and they seem to be coping with the not entirely wholesome attentions from the cockerels, altho Simba had a bit of a shock when he put a morsel of tempting food by the run and the chicks all pecked his magnificent red comb through the wire, which I don't think was the reaction he was hoping for. They're very sweet though:

I put Hetty and Harriet in with Simba and his two hens, and Honey, the Rhode Island is being a complete cow to them and goes up in to the coop every so often just to terrorise them. Honestly!!

So, sigh, it's all rather hard work with the poultry at the moment, but the bees are behaving, and the plants aren't fighting, and actually the children are being remarkably pleasant.

Well some you win, some you lose.

Rain, Rain, Mud, Rain

Oh dear. More rain and squally winds to welcome in the New Year. The hens hate it, I hate it, the garden (which is on heavy clay at the bottom of a sloping field) hates it. The ducks think it's fantastic:

And the dog isn't bothered, coming as he does from gundog stock. I get absolutely filthy every time I go outside, which is rather a lot as I am feeding the hens little and often to prevent their pellets turning to porridge and to replenish the rabbits' and guineas' hay and give them some company. I mopped the kitchen floor for the first time in ages today and had to change the water 4 times - it's only an area of about 3 square metres!

Still, we had a lovely Christmas despite a lengthy powercut on Christmas Eve and I was the lucky recipient of some wonderful presents. Charles gave me a cute little box of 6 Conte pastels, which happened to be the perfect colours for my mallard calls:

But today he gave me my New Year's present (apparently there is such a thing):

Aren't they absolutely gorgeous? I could sit and look at them instead of out of the window, as the weather is so disgusting, and think about the spring and summer when I will be able to christen the yellows, reds, greens and blues, rather than just the browns, greys and black...

It's nearly half past 4 and dark outside so I'd better go and close up my poor poultry in their coops, then back inside for Christmas cake, tea, and some knitting.

Happy New Year!

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! :-)

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......

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'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.

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 :-)

Egg-citement

I discovered an egg in Joanna and Llywelyn's run today, so the day length is now officially long enough to stimulate call duck egg production :-) It's my first duck egg so I was really pleased. She laid it right on the mud rather than in the house but it scrubbed up alright once I'd armed myself with a damp paper towel:

Peggy egg for scale

Before you ask, no, I won't be hatching any, unless by some miracle either Jean or Joanna decides to go broody which they are not known for! They can be incubated under a hen (or indeed in an incubator) but I'd rather keep it natural. A shame though, as ducklings are the most impossibly cute little things in the world. I will try to sell some as hatching eggs though as call ducks are quite popular due to their diminutive size.

I've rearranged all the poultry pens to give them a change of scenery, and this prompted me to then tidy up my sewing box as I'd found a load of compartmentalised trays in the garden (?) so again, having washed the mud and hen footprints off them, Rosie helped me sort out my button and thread stash:

As you can see, the heated airer provides a very useful surface on which to rest things - this is why I can't have an ironing board, as it just gets colonised by random stuff. I also got started on a project using this Rowan Kidsilk Haze yarn:

I love the green, and it's working really well. Another thing that is working is the welly rack (sorry, the pic's a bit overexposed but the sunshine must've shocked my camera):

This evening I am going to sort out my seeds in to chronological sowing order and also stick my new biodynamic charts at the front of each month's divider. Biodynamic gardening is new to me (although I have heard of it in the agricultural context) but I'm going to a biodynamic beekeeping event this weekend and I find the whole concept quite intriguing.

It's been raining today and very grey - I find it difficult to get going with the weather like this, although it is also the time of year; the urge to hibernate is very strong...

The ducks are happy though, and have been rootling about in the muddy grass finding all sorts of unsuspecting invertebrates - they particularly like the manure I put at the base of the apple trees, (ugh) but also the grass around the greenhouse which is more photogenic:

We've worked out that the chick called Hazel is the cockerel, and the two others are hens. The boy has much bigger wattles and comb compared to his nest-mates. Hazel is now Wilbur, and the three of them have been separated from Henry (as he has rather an unhealthy interest in the pullets and keeps picking on his son). I am waiting to hear from my friend Joss as to whether she can take Henry - if not, the chicks can stay as a trio.

Wilbur and Pippa

 The hens don't enjoy the rain but yesterday they enjoyed a communal groom and snooze on the bench:

I was out in the garden yesterday too - I cleaned up the cobwebs in the outside toilet, although the chickens have a habit of appropriating it. Ida keeps laying eggs on a pile of old papers and Henry finds the dark corners irresistable for a secret trysting spot. He goes in there and makes a very soft, purringly seductive bok-bok noise and the hens fall for it every time, so we call it his Lavatory of Lurve...

I am trying to reorganise my boot room which is the smallest space in the house yet is the most congested, as it is also our main house entrance. I decided a welly rack would free up a bit of space and had seen some lovely ones from Wilderness Wood, but at £39 I thought I could do it myself for free given I had a bit of pallet and some broom handles. Dad gave me some tips and - voila!

It's sturdier than it looks, honest. Home education today has consisted Biology GCSE with Tristan, although it was all about classification and frankly rather out of date as it had birds as a separate group to reptiles which got on my nerves, but did give me a chance to revisit some of my OU Evolution course knowledge! Amber and Rose have been surprisingly harmonious and working together on all sorts of things.

I made some bread, with one third stoneground spelt flour and the rest organic white. It gives a lovely nutty flavour which I find tastier than wholemeal. I also use a mixture of raw organic milk and molasses as the liquid, and Doves Farm yeast, so I'm guessing it's a pretty healthy loaf! The children prefer it to plastic bread which I feel is quite an astounding achievement:

My spider plant (or Chlorophytum comosum as I learnt today) has had lots of babies so I have clipped them off and popped them in to a shallow dish of water:

I can thoroughly recommend the book, which is full of instructions for everything you could ever wish to divide, graft, sow and take cuttings from. I also repotted and planted up the babies of my aloes too:

I love the generosity of plants when it comes to regenerating, although I get a heartsink moment when it says a particular species takes a year to germinate or 7 years to flower, as I am rather forgetful and I have my doubts as to the prospects of such plants in my care: "Oh look a seed tray full of old compost with a faded label...nah, don't need that..."

I went back for an anaemia-related doctor's appointment this morning and I had the usual 40-minute long wait so the sock is coming along well:

Stitches

I pruned the apple trees yesterday, as I finally found a no-nonsense article about how to go about it, so, having armed myself with secateurs and pruning saw, I trimmed off everything that pinged out from a fruit spur and took all the top growth back to an outward-facing bud:

As I've been in all day, the poultry have all had a good wing-stretch outside their respective runs. The white ducks enjoyed a snooze in the sun:

The mallards enjoyed their tub of cold water:

I have cast on 54 stitches in the Shetland aran wool as I want to make a cafetiere cosy. I always seem to end up finding the perfect pattern in all but one aspect so I have to adapt it, does everyone find this to be the case?? Anyway, this will hopefully be a simple stocking stitch-and-cabling one with 2x2 rib at top and bottom...watch this space and don't hold me to that design!

This is another little project, more on that when I've finished it:

I can knit other things now as I have finished the pair of gumboot socks!!

I love them! They are really warm and comfortable and I am amazed that I actually managed to knit them. I might keep them as bed socks as they are far too gorgeous to be trudged around in wellies. The Sweet Pea sock is complete too, except it obviously needs a friend, which I will cast on before I lose the momentum...

Unfortunately the nicest bit (as far as I'm concerned) is the stripy bit which happens to be on the sole, but I can see me wearing these as summer bed socks!!

I must must must get on with some crochet squares for the Sissinghurst hot garden blanket but I'm thinking of teaching Amber how to do them, as they are not very taxing. I might do some when I've cracked on a bit with the other things. Luckily I vacuumed the landing and cleaned the bathroom in a moment of inspiration so can get back to the important stuff...

Weather

It has been extremely wet and blowy recently, with local flooding and generally miserable conditions. I've never seen the hens looking so bedraggled, although the ducks of course loved my submerged lawn:

Oh dear, my garden does get a hammering. The crocuses are poking up through a puddle and I'm pleased I actually remembered to pop grit in with the bulbs when I planted them. Roll on spring.

The January sock challenge is going well and Nicky and I both seem to be at a similar point and even appear to have bodged a stitch in a similar place too! We met for a brief chat and catch up this morning while Tristan and Rose were at sports, but here is the welly warmer:

It looks like a proper sock, I'm really pleased! I'm carrying on with the other sock in the Sweet Pea yarn which is lovely, but I am pootling along with them as they are really easy to do in front of the tv so I'm keeping them for low-input knitting occasions. I am about to put the final flourish on to my second beehive egg cosy, as I made one for my dad for his birthday and they are really cute! I have made felt bees to go on the top so I will post a picture of that next time as I have only been able to appropriate my laptop for a short period between fights and on the promise that I will get tea for the children as soon as I have blogged....

Yuk, I have to go and shut the ducks in now, and slop around washing up their bowls and emptying their buckets in a gale. Oh and feed the poor rabbits and guineas who are rather bored to say the least, so I might get the girls to bring them in to the lounge for a bit!

Frosty Morning and Fancy Dustbath

Well, it was beautiful yesterday morning. Cabbages can be pretty unimpressive but then Jack Frost calls and, well:

I also took a picture of all the plants we rescued from their tumble in the greenhouse and rehoused in the cold frame:

Roll on spring, I can't wait to plant them all out :-)

The other part for the new dustbath arrived and after a lot of bad language and misplaced screwdrivers, ta-dah!

I bought some play sand to put in the dastbath itself but it's sopping wet so I am drying it out at the moment. For anyone else in the same situation, don't cook it, it doesn't work but does create a lot of steam...

The ducks are still enjoying their compost-spiked mudbath:

Ah, I am very fond of my ducks.

A couple of years ago I collected some seeds from the Scots Pine trees in the copse and planted them. They are doing really well:

When they first germinate they are the tiniest little thread of a trunk with a fan of half a dozen needles on top, just adorable. I really recommend growing them for their miniture perfection! Growing tree seeds is so full of promise, I love them.

I have finished the mitts! But they are wrapped up and I forgot to take a photo so you'll have to take my word for it.

I'm now knitting a circular scarf for my friend but with lighter-weight yarn and smaller needles so I've added on another 30 stitches and am hoping for the best.

It's Jamie's Christmas on tv and I'm absolutely starving, it's not the best program to watch as I am drooling...