A little random post

A quick chicken pic.

A quick duck pic.

A funny cow pic.

And a picture of two dolls my mum knitted for me years ago. I think that they are quite 'waldorfy', and if I remember rightly they are from a pattern by Jean Greenhowe. The clothes are removable and really are lovely. She made a great job of them and they have survived all this time! They must be 25 years old I would think.

Ok, so those pictures are a little random! They are some of the ones I meant to post a few weeks ago but didn't get round to for one reason or another.
Today has been an odd sort of day. One of those days when I didn't really have a plan in mind but it sort of developed all by itself.
This morning while I was making the porridge and putting on the bread dough, I saw a rat run across the patio...now we know there are rats around. After all we live in a rural area with fields behind us and lost of us keep chickens and have compost heaps, so I guess they are inevitable. But on my patio? I THINK NOT.
So we all got outside straight after breakfast and proceeded to have a re shuffle of the garden and a bit of a tidy up. He seems to have a 'run' that comes in under the fence from next door and then he must run along the fence under the hedge, where there has been plenty of cover from various things in the veggie patch...garden canes and fence posts, pots etc So we moved all those out and made the area much more open..Jonathan has set one of his traps there, but I don't hold out much hope, as they are notriously tricky things to catch. I don't really have a problem with there existance, I just do not want them up by the house pestering the quail or stealing the rabbits food!! Poor Merlin. He is back indoors again now and looking quite smug about it too!!!
Jonathan and David were then outside finishing the tidying and making new bows, so it only seemed fitting that we went somewhere after lunch for them to use them. We walked across some stubble fields instead of the usual wood walk, and they had such fun firing their arrows and chasing after Louis as he ran off with them!!! We had an 'Alan' moment when Jonathan was shouting at Louis trying to get him to stop, and then at David to get his attention. It was a BBC animal antics programme or something. Meercats shouting Alan and then Steve. Google it and I'm sure the video will come up on Youtube. VERY funny. Very, very funny.
The boys are now playing together on the computer and have been for a long time. Tom has been outside fixing a few things on his truck that broke the other weekend at his off roading event, which went really well. He got 16 'punches' out of 20. They all have a card attached to the passnger wing mirror that they have to punch at various points along the way. He did brilliantly. Thanks goes to Mike who picked him up with the trailer and brought him home again!
David took part in a distance swimming event on Sunday and swam a total of 300m!!! I thnk he could have done more with a little encouragement, but the organisation was a little poor. He got a 200m badge and certificate and is very pleased with himself, never the less. As are we!!! He did really well, considering he had never done anything like it at all before and it was like the M25 in rush hour. 6 children sharing a lane, all going at different speeds and using different strokes. There wasn't enough room to swing a cat!!!! He kept having to dodge people and that made it difficult to concentrate, I think. But he did well. And really enjoyed it, too.
Right, off now to see how the pheasant casserole is doing. The latest in our free food. Well, I guess it wasn't entirely free, as Jonathan did have to do a fair amount of walking and bashing the undergrowth for the local farmer to get them!!!