Snow?

I can't believe that it is going to snow tomorrow,but snow it is
and in true wartime spirit I have recovered all my potatoes with tarpaulins and have scattered haylage all over the baby broad bean seedlings and the new herb bed.
I am not sure just how effective the protection measures will be against a deep frost but at least I have done my best.
Nursing a hangover after a very nice meal out last night, I forced myself to be useful and did a spring clean of the kitchen. God it was dirty, but completing the work was as satisfying as making a huge list.
The weather has been glorious today but there is a definite chill in the air. The gorse is in flower up the Gop and the view of the valley towards the sea was lovely.
Settled down late (smelling of bleach) and watched the end of Adam's Rib (1949).
Chris is knitting.......................

obsession

I am getting obsessed with the weather.My potatoes are in and what can we expect this weekend....bloody frosts!!!!!!!!!!! I have cos lettuce ready for planting, spinach too not to mention more delicate herbs and seedlings, so everything seems to be on hold until late next week which is somewhat irritating today as the weather is fine.
I have had to content myself with general tidying, edging and clearing away the ton of haylage created by the hens, I had given them 6 melons (treats from the veg shop lady) so after stuffing every square inch of themselves, they have spent most of the afternoon heaped in a mass of overfed feathers, sleeping it all off.
Meeting Chris later in Osborns for tea which will be nice, and only 6 days to go before the next set of ducklings are due. I am getting obsessed with turning the eggs and have been findling myself checking the incubator temperature constantly, to minimise hatching problems as only the day before yesterday the core temperature was 2 degrees higher than it should be.. There seems so many variables listed in the "how to hatch ducks" literature, that I am surprised that the average Mallard can effectively raise a set of 12 ducklings without the aid of 20th Century technology!

Black Sun

Black Sun (2005)-at Theatre Clwyd tonight, is a different type of documentary, and not an easy watch. It is essentially a "talking head" first hand story of narrator Hugues de Montalembert , who was blinded in a horrific mugging in 1978 New York, and his rather dead pan thick French accent underplays the trauma and true horror, the adaptation to sudden disability (especially to a painter and film maker) must be. Accompanied by blurred, often beautifully eerie visuals of urban New York and various far eastern countries he subsequently visited, I found the whole story interesting but certainly not moving, which surprised me. De Montalembert wonderfully captures the strange way his brain bypassed his blindness and describes the visual "hallucinations" perfectly, but his unemotional voice over deadens the whole film to the point of near boredom, and in the end I wondered just what made this man tick.

Without engaging with the narrator, you loose a certain empathy for his life. Which was a pity

Sweetcorn & News

Chris is finally back tonight which is nice. The house and bed feels dreadfully empty without him cluttering up the place. Re seeded more of the field's bald spots today and potted up all my sweetcorn seeds; so many in fact, the kitchen now resembles a market garden.

Set the ducks up with a new larger and deeper bath ( which flummoxed them completely-ducks cannot cope with any change at all)

Delivered a load of eggs and took some flowers down to Peter and Tracie's house in celebration of the birth of their son Louis (a 9 pounder!!!!!!!!!!!).

apart for that I have spent the day in the allotment.

Teachers have the right Idea

I wasn't surprised to hear that the NUT's ballot has 3 to 1 voted in support of a strike on the 24th of April. General secretary Steve Sinnott said: "I call on the government to think again and ensure that salaries at least keep pay in line with inflation and that there is a recognition of the continuing workload pressures on teachers." , but I think that the strike (the first in 20 years) is less a reaction of money and inflation, but an indication of how low morale has sunk to in the education system.I never thought I would agree with public sector strikes, but I support the teachers' actions wholeheartedly. I hope that their action and I suspect the public support that it will generate, will galvanise nurses into similar statements of dissatisfaction. The NMC (Nurse and Midwifery Council) and the RCN (Royal College of Nurses) are terribly impotent and old fashioned organisations and are in desperate need of a shake up. Nursing has been dumbed down for far too long. Morale is low, standards are dropping and nurses like the teachers need to "draw a line in the sand"- to say enough is enough. so when the time comes,( and I hope it will very very soon), for nurses to be balloted in order to take industrial action, I for one will be voting to strike!!!!!!!!

30 hens and a potential new Great Nephew

Collecting three new hens with four dogs in the boot and Jess (left) sat on the dash board was perhaps NOT a good idea.After seeing a "free to good home" advertisement at the Farm warehouse, I rang up an elderly lady living in the hills somewhere behind Abergele, to arrange to take some unwanted point of lay hens off her hands.
It turned out that the lady in question was a full time carer for her husband who had recently suffered a succession of strokes,so looking after poultry and a selection of other animals had become too much a burden. After coffee ( and a ton of scones) I piled three of her lovely amber rockets ( actually they are almost pure white) into the back of the car and I was very good at resisting the rest of her "unwanted" hens AND an elderly sheepdog that was also being re homed,(Bless , she was very tearful when telling me all this)... but I must admit It was pretty hard as I am a sucker for a sob story.
Anyhow on the A55 and almost home, Jess suddenly "got wind" that there were birds somewhere in the car, and literally went berserk.Thank god I had taken the precaution of tying her to the seat belt, if I hadn't it would have been "thank you and good night" for the three new girls who I have named Margo ,Karen and Eve. Anyhow got them home and set up in Stanley's coop in one piece... but only just.

Ann rang this afternoon to tell me that Nephew Pete has taken his wife Tracie into hospital this morning for the birth of their second child..which is great news..Bugger only knows what we will get the baby....Buying for little ones is not a strong point of mine.

Back to some sort of normality tomorrow, Chris is home..

Springtime

It has been a warm springlike day and I have spent most of it outside in a tee shirt.In fact I have been outside from 7am until 5pm and am writing this waiting for the water to heat up so that I can have a hot bath.
so what have I done all day?
I have:-
>Sown grass seeds on all the bald patches in the field.
>planted wild flower seeds (Californian poppies,welsh poppies,ox-eye daisies,field cornflowers and cowslips)
on the border of the allotment.
>aired the compost bins
>wormed the ducks
>potted up butternut squash,
>bathed maddie and George,
>planted early lettace,artichokes,main crop spuds,radish,and transplanted broad bean seedlings to the main beds.
>Planted out a new herb bed with French parsley,golden marjoram,mint,lemon balm,rosemary and sages
>put fox proof latches on the new ducking house.
>Gave Mike and Viv a load of chicken manure
>mown and edged the lawn
>sold Chris' saddle and delivered it.!!!!!!!!!! (I got half the price of the sale for organising it)
>Walked the dogs up the Gop ( William and George spent most of their time swinging from a kids' rope swing -pic)
>Picked Janet's Jess up and walked all the dogs on the beach.
>did 4 loads of washing,delivered some eggs and collected a ton of veg and fruit for the hens.

Off to Ann and Tims tonight for tea, which is great.Chris is back on Wednesday...it will be nice to have him home making the place untidy.

Sad Bastard

I felt as though I had to make the most of the sunny day today, and get all those jobs done which I failed to do properly yesterday due to the horrendous weather. No sleep,(what's new) I cleaned out the coops,cleared the enclosures of hen detritus and walked the dogs. Kirsty Young was interviewing the wonderfully gentle and Interesting Penelope Wilton on Desert Island Discs, so I drove to Sainsbury's in order to listen to the excellent interview.
It was here at the supermarket checkout that I was reminded just how much a "sad old git" I actually am!
The content of my shopping trolley was as follows:
2 x 27p cheap white loaves (a treat for the hens)
20 x 15p cans of basic sweetcorn (also for the hens)
4 pigs ears ( for the dogs)
1 small can of gin & tonic (diet) for me
1 bottle of bleach (to clean the Kitchen floor)
1 box of basic fishfingers (49p) for lunch.....I love fish fingers...
The twelve year old check out girl, raised an eyebrow and no more when she saw my goodies......and I felt as though I had to explain why I was purchasing what was on the conveyor belt. She smiled rather weakly when I explained away the sweetcorn, but I could tell she thought I was a pure "odd bod", especially as I was covered in mud and chicken poo from that mornings jobs.....
I felt absolutely knackered by mid afternoon, and cried off a kind invitation at Ann's for dinner as all I needed was to veg with Casino Royale (2006) on DVD. The azure eyed Daniel Craig would never be found dead buying pigs ears and fishfingers at Sainsbury's........