At the beginning some of you might be thinking...yes that would be the logical place but sometimes logic has absolutely nothing to do with it. Especially when it has been so long since I have written an entry to this blog. This of course, does not mean that life has been boring so I have had nothing to blog about....OH NO!!!! Quite the opposite. Life has been SO busy that my feet have barely touched the ground.
I just don't know whether to write a long list of events and then elaborate on a few or to just start at the immediate event and go backwards!!! Yes, even at 9 o'clock at night there are still exciting things happening here. One baby quail has just hatched and another is about to break free!! These 2 will be added to the other 7 that hatched 3 weeks ago and are now fully feathered and living in the kitchen in front of the patio doors enjoying the sunshine but still protected from the elements. They are very cute, and funny to watch. I will add pictures at some stage soon but they are on the other laptop so I may just have to do a photo gallery tomorrow.
Buffy, our broody hen that we hatched last year has successfully hatched her 3 eggs and is a very good mummy. ALL the chickens are now ranging free at the bottom of the garden and with the exception of a close encounter for one of them with next doors Jack Russell resulting in a limping juvenile cockerel, all is well. They currently have a choice of 2 houses for sleeping but once the numbers have decreased following the consumption of a few of the 'useless' boys!!!!, we hope to get them to share one large house.
In the incubator we also have 4 duck eggs that have about 10 days or so left to go...really excited about those, although I'm sure the tadpoles in our pond are a litle nervous about their arrival!!!
Now I feel miserable. One of the baby quails that just hatched has died. Leaving a lonesome teeny weeny quail drying out. It looks very sad all by itself. We lost 2 of the other quails when they hatched...one didn't make it out and I kick myself for not having helped it out of its shell and one had to be dispatched because it suffered an injury while drying off in the incubator. One of its legs got caught in the holes in the base that allows air flow, and although i freed it quickly they have very fragile limbs. We left it a few days to see how it would develop but you can't keep a quail that can't walk or scratch about. So this time i was determined not to allow that to happen again....i got the infra red lamp ready above a small pet carrier box, but I must of moved it too quickly. I was so worried about its little legs that I didn't check the temperature and it must have been too cold. Or as my husband pointed out, it may just have been weak and wouldn't have survived any way. :-(
The garden is slowly taken shape. We managed to aquire a large number o fpaving slabs from freecycle and have been gradually covering the worst areas of the garden around the house so that is an all weather surface. I have a veggie garden that actually looks like a veggie garden!!! Potatoes all growing well, onions looking good, lots of carrots growing and a few rows of beetroot showing themselves. I've just planted out some pumpkin and courgette plants, although I'm not sure which ones are which a I labelled the seed tray pumpkin/courgette and omitted to make a note of which end was which!!! LOL The runner beans are just starting to climb up the canes from their home in the 2 Discovery tyres!!! I have others to plant out but have yet to work out a space for them. The tomato seedlings are looking great....LOADS of those and i have a fe pepper seedlings that look promising. And there we have it on the plant front.
Now for the children. Well, David attempted to go back to school after the Easter break, without success. He lasted 2 days before he had a 'I don't want to go day' and I de registered him the following Monday. He's been using his Wordshark computer program alot and getting on well.
Then Tom started out on his epic adventure to Australia! My 13 year old son bravely made his first flight ever, on his own and a 24 hr flight at that with a stop off in Kuala Lumpa!!!! Totally amazing. He called me when he arrived and it wasn't until that moment that it really sunk in to me that he is over 12,000 miles away!!!! He's now been there 2 weeks and really enjoying himself. He is going to school with his friend, so is participating in lessons a year above himself and says that they 'don't do much'!!!! They do however do Agricultural studies and get to take care of the calves, goats and the chickens...... he enjoys that!! He's tried surfing and has been bitten by millions of mozzies. But he says its lovely there and I doubt he'll want to come home at all!!! You never know, maybe we'll all move over there. The sunshine is certainly appealing, as is the laid back atmosphere. Trouble is, all I can picture is Crocodile Dundee!!!!
Jonathan and I have finally bought Bob!!! This is the pony that he has been riding at the stables for his lessons and that we fell in love with. A 13 hands bay New Forest gelding about 7 years old that has a lovely temperament, good stable manners and can jump in excess of 1m 10cm!!! They are the perfect match. We're keeping him at a field in the next village along with our neighbour's and her sister's horses. In the space of 10 days Jonathan has hacked out on Bob 7 times, 2 of those times we went with Sally Ann and then today he hacked out with Sally Ann, Clara and Louise by himself!!! A quiet 11 year old boy that hardly speaks to anyone, hacking out with 3 ladies and having a great time including a sneaky gallop!!! Lucky boy. I've managed to have a little turn on Bob and then Sally Ann allowed me to ride her beautiful coloured cob Angelina. Wow, what a privelege! Its been a LONG time since I hacked out....8 years and it felt fantastic!!! There is light at the end of this tunnel!!!
And last but by no means least, there's Rob and the job saga. After 3 years with his most recent employer, he had become bored. When you work in sales your day is governed by sales traffic, and if there isn't anyone coming in, you can't sell anything. Which obviously makes for a very slow and tedious day. Rob likes to be busy so took a job with a Mini dealership. It was a longer commute to work (35 miles I guess) but was given a company car and promised free fuel. The rota seemed ok with some weekends off in the month and a day off every week, and a couple of later finishes supposedly counter balanced with a late start. But when he started his job on the Tuesday it was fairly obvious things were not as they were meant to be. So to cut a long story short, I received a phonecall on Thursday and went to collect him that afternoon!!! 2 and half days into the job...but you just know when something isn't going to work out don't you?! He almost went back to his old job but they couldn't agree on terms so he called another previous employer and is now working as a technician for BMW bikes. An ideal job for him I think. He's very good at sales but started out originally as an apprentice technician for BMW bikes but got side tracked into sales. He's good with a spanner and is methodical and diligent so there'll be no loose wheels on his watch!
We put our beautiful, magnificent trailer tent on Ebay hoping for a quick sale as the weather has suddenly picked up (we need to sell it to pay for the horse!!). 33 watchers but no offers as yet. The boys and I went up to our local campsite and pitched it all up so I could take photographs and then ran out of time, so we left it up overnight. I suppose it gave it a good airing before going up the following day to take it down. Jonathan and I did really well as a team and reminded me of all the times I did it with the 3 boys on my own with Tom as my helper! Funny how I always used to be so desperate to escape whereas I don't feel like that so much now...must be having the big garden and fields all around us. Or is it because the boys aren't at school so life is more laid back anyway?
William is such a talker! Anything you say he can copy. He talks in sentences now and with such expression it's comical!!!He i sleeping better again now and just loving the freedom the garden brings him. He loves playing with his tractor and digging around in the spare bits of earth I have left for him. He lives in his wellies!
So as you can see, there has been so much going on....I didn't mention the terrible sickness bug which got us all in some form or another but completely knocked Jonathan off his feet and in 5 days he barely moved from the sofa or ate anything. I also didn't mention my parents coming up to stay for a couple of weeks, or that Sophie is settling in well, or that my house is in such a mess you wouldn't believe. But then we've never really gone in for a tidy house as it is a sign of a boring life!!! You can't Home Educate 4 boys and expect a show home!!!
here is the garden as it is today. Its like a balding middle aged man!!!!Lush growth around the sides but patchy in the middle!!! But then I think lawns are highly over rated anyway!!!
And these are a couple of my beautiful pumpkin/courgette plants....I planted a tray with half anf half and now can't remember which half was which, so it will be a nice surprise!!
And on first glance this is a good photo of the strawberry plants, lavender, chives and mint by the water butt....but I have now just noticed a horrible reflection!!!!! AAAAAAAh!
Some of them are enjoying the greenhouse which is waiting for its fate to be decided...to glass or not to glass? that is the question. Will it be better to buy perspex or abandon the idea completely and just let the chickens enjoy it? Watch this space!
Is this chicken trying to work out how to get to the plants in th emiddle of the pond? Does it know that it is water under the green duck weed?
And the quail....not the greatest picture but it is very difficult to photograph such tiny fast moving creatures!!! We have 2 dark males, 2 dark feamles, one pale male and one pale female and the little female in the front corner of the picture which is neither buff nor pale!!! A mix of both, although it started off white with the little patches.
They are enjoying their aviary that we managed to construct last weekend, and are now starting to lay eggs!! So our egg tray in th ekitchen looks like this....
