Sunny Sunday

I wrote a list this morning...now I usually hate To Do lists as they sit there accusingly reminding me of all the boring things I should do, but I've been feeling so drifty and unachieving recently I thought I'd better do one just so I didn't womble my way through another day.

So! I did hoover my bedroom and the landing, and I did make cinnamon buns, and I did move the chicken run. I also did my bees who are loving the Himalayan balsam that lines the banks of the Cuckmere river although because they all end up with a 'brand' of pollen on their thoraxes it's a bit tricky to spot a white-marked queen. But they are all well although one colony is queenless so I popped the little colony on top to unite them. The other one is doing brilliantly too despite having to hack my way through the undergrowth to get to them:

I decided to set up the stall as Sundays means walkers and cyclists and we sold a box of eggs, a yellow squash and two pots of honey :-)

I've been feeling rather disillusioned with my studies recently, probably because I'm not very good at geology which I want to be really good at but you need to be concise and non-waffly and good at linking together all the different elements which I am rubbish at (it's my blog - I can say what I like about myself!) so I got all my resources together and immersed myself in them; literally in fact as I put them all on my bed and sat in the middle. I also reminded myself as to why I'm doing it and it's so I can understand a bit more what's going on with the planet and actually, I do. Phew. So I did a chapter of each module and fell in love with it again.

Look at John! - he's growing up! He's losing his brown downy feathers on his head and will soon be all glossy black and he's also getting those little curly feathers at the top of his tail:

Very exciting, he's going to be soooo handsome.

Amber has been grinding corn today to make flour. Unfortunately, despite having home-educated for some years, I didn't seem to have a quern stone in the house so we improvised with the coffee grinder:

Continuing with the home-made theme, the apple wine is fermenting away like crazy - lift off the towel and a great waft of appley-yeasty aromas come up, probably just as well I have no idea how alcoholic it is!

So apart from some tinkering in the garden,

I'm in love with these flowers!

it has been a relaxing day and the last item on my To Do list, namely to crochet a green chain for my garland, will be done during all the lovely Sunday evening programs like Antiques Roadshow and Countryfile which always remind me that it's the start of another week and I don't have to worry about a thing.

Sussex

The children were off to Airbourne Air Show today, although it was pouring down when I woke up and it still looked pretty murky by the time we'd had breakfast and a minor meltdown from Amber over a jeggings/laundry incident which was my fault apparently. Still, I packed 'em off and went off to lunch with Charles where we saw the Red Arrows fly over us. We went up on to Bo Peep Bostal to enjoy the countryside but it was rather blustery and after about 10 minutes we decided that yes, Sussex is lovely right let's go and have a cup of tea.

We let Mary out for a break from egg-incubating but she wanders around all puffed up and looking a bit crazed which is rather disconcerting so I caught her and popped her back on her eggs. I hope this spell of broodiness doesn't mentally unhinge her...chickens are funny things and I've got my bonkers poultry quota with Maud thanks very much.  The hens have worked out that if they tread on the chicken wire over my vegetables they can get at them, here demonstrated with Ida and my autumn crop of beetroot:

I decided to make some apple wine following the recipe for peapod wine (I'm not sure how transferable the recipes are but hey, nothing ventured) and Charles got to work with the apple processing for the pot:

So that's all cooked down and is cooling now for me to add the yeast, teabag and lemon slices later.

I popped over to Nicky's for a quick meeting of the CCG but I think we're both suffering from being at that difficult stage in any skill where one is too proficient to be happy with dodgy stitches and wonky bits but not good enough to not have dodgy stitches and wonky bits. Hmm. I'm doing a sunflower now as I want to make a big cushion but perhaps I'll make something up so that I have something to show for my crocheting rather than lots of little bags full of things.

It's quite a lovely evening now although doesn't it get dark early?? :-( I took this pic with the 'scene' mode on my camera which has the alarming function of not only being best for sunsets but states that "this mode is appropriate for shooting actively moving children". Well I'll bear that in mind...

Another busy day

Having been so inspired by the hot garden at Sissinghurst yesterday, I was keen to try making a granny square blanket with the colours I'd seen. I looked up the pattern on Attic24's blog and had a go - it was very straightforward to do so I got cracking. I also had a look at Nicky's book of crocheted flowers and sat with my cup of early morning tea and got hooking. I got up to replenish tea and managed to catch my foot on the wool, pinging the crochet hook somewhere. Could I find it? Although trying to find an admittedly large needle-type thing in the metaphorical haystack of my living room was not easy and I felt a bit sad about having lost it, especially as I was halfway through constructing a hellebore.

Anyway I did find the hook and before tidying or hoovering so that was a good result.

It's a start...

I then remembered I had to make a new run for the ducks so I got going with that - I drew a plan and everything (but I didn't stick to it) and didn't really make that many mistakes. I think it's a bit more robust and easy to use, as well as foxproof:

There was lots of quacking but I'm not that up on my duck-speak yet so not sure - I hope they approve. Joss and Simon came over at lunchtime and brought my demi-johns so I can make some homebrew and bought me a bottle of their own elderflower fizz. It's very exciting:

I've got bloopy air lock thingies
for each of them too

We looked at the bees too as they are new beekeepers so that was fun. Simon is also a builder and architect and I was slightly concerned when he headed towards the duck run but luckily he said it looked pretty good - maybe he usually wears glasses or something.

So after they'd left, I sank into a much-needed hot bath as my fingers were in ribbons after all the unforgiving chicken wire and banging my thumb trying to get the bloomin' stuff stapled on, ouch.

I'm watching the program on the last Atlantis shuttle flight...amazing things us humans :-)