Colleen Nolan

Today started off wet and blustery, so the ducklings were confined to their
house and soon made a real stinky mess of the wood chippings covering the floor. Walter and Harold have been gang raping Nell and Maude to excess over the last few days, so have been dispatched to pastures new, giving the girls some respite from their attentions. Some female ducks have literally been killed by drakes exhibiting this behaviour, so I think this action is a wise move. I intend to keep seven or so females out of the duckling horde, then pick a couple of the best males from which to breed from. The males will be non blood related to the females, so the new ducklings will be not inbred.
The broody hen from out of The Nolan Sisters, is still sat firm on her eggs and has done so with a Blanche-like tenacity. She has not got a first name, so I have decided to called her Colleen, after the talented Loose Woman presenter.....
This afternoon I have planted more radish,rocket,lettuce,mange tout as well as more French beans. Escapee Mildred Pierce has decimated some of my salad crops, so all have been covered and re netted .
Chris has slept in for most of the day, suffering from jet lag. He came over to the allotment for a show round wearing my Canadian pressie....the incredibly huge cowboy hat.......very Brokeback Mountain

Benidorm revisited

£2.99 from Sainsburys, the new "pool" was a bargain. Mind you I almost had a stroke blowing the bloody thing up.
Hysteria reigned supreme in the duckling run for hours..

Walking On Broken Glass

I heard this for the first time in a long long while this morning, and I had forgotton just how uplifting a song it is.
Reminds me of Nuala, Mike, Bev and the famous Sheffield Ledmill nightspot, where we used to take paraplegics from the spinal injury unit on a Thursday night! The young lads in their wheelchairs used to pretend to be tetraplegics rather than paraplegics ( for those that are interested paraplegics are paralysed from the waist down and are therefore more "able" than quadraplegics who have paralysis of all four limbs) By pretending to be more disabled, the patients were allowed to have a nurse/carer to go into the nightclub with them and therefore all the nurses could escape the long queue outside the club and get to the bar quicker!
It would never be allowed now, in the light of multiple risk assessments. God, in those days most of the nurses were pissed ( but to be fair usually responsible), the patients used to empty their urine bags into pint pots ( to be stolen by thieving students (tee hee))and no one ever came to too much harm...
The video is actually Romeo and Juliet with the lovely Claire Danes

The smaller world of Blogging

Now, I have repeatedly had the discussion with some of my friends, that why do I blog?

Many feel that it is slightly "odd" to put down your often private thoughts on line for everyone to see, others feel that it is a waste of time. Others perhaps "enjoy" the contact with me (especially those that I do not see very often), I guess there is no definitive answer to why I enjoy writing this rubbish. Some of me enjoys being "read" by a few people from all over the world, another reason IS the contact it gives me to friends living away. In the main,the whole ritual of putting words down on the blog is relaxing and therapeutic in itself, but yesterday a meeting with some local people who had read the blog was an interesting example of how the blog can open up more local contacts.

As I was filling up the duckling water baths, I spied a family in the graveyard. As many do, they stopped to look at the hens and ducks and I called them over and said that they were welcomed to have a closer look. As it turned out the family lived in Trelawnyd, and the husband Geoff had read my blog and was interested in keeping a couple of hens in the garden himself.Funny that although they lived only a stone's throw away, it took my blog to open up a meeting...

Anyhow Chris is back tonight, which is nice, I know the cottage has been lovely and neat without him, but the novelty wears off after a day or so. One of the Nolan sisters(pic the red rock above) has gone very broody, so I think I will try and hatch a few hens eggs underneath her. They will be my last chick brood this year

Home from home

Up at 6am still has not given me enough time to finish what I needed to today. One of the hen houses has the dreaded red mite infestation again, so I have had to totally strip it and spray every inch with mite disinfectant. After animal feeding,and cleaning out the ducklings and then walking the dogs it was 1pm before I could start on the new shed, but I finally finished staining it mid afternoon.

As you can see the buff chicks have been safely installed inside, as well as all my poultry junk. I have even ( and how bloody twee is this?) tacked up a piece of old net curtain to screen the chicks from prying eyes.

I have turned into my Grandfather.........well just a little

Ned came over this afternoon and we managed to erect the cheap-as-chips bargain basement garden shed, Chris ordered a few weeks ago. It took us three hours of huffing and puffing before it looked the part and I am glad it has a small window, out of which I can see the garden view, as I am tending the chicks.
I have been toying with the idea of some Kath Kitson curtains..............what do you think?
At 46, I suspect I have reached the ideal age for my own shed.
I remember my grandfather's shed very clearly. The smell of creosote, the ancient tins full of unused screws and nails. old tins of paint, that would come in handy someday;rows of vintage garden implements and the home adapted wooden vice. It was all very masculine, rather dusty and in a strange sort of way, totally him.It was also always very warm (like your memories of childhood always are!)
My shed will be very ME. Obviously chicken and duck orientated, but I think I will get some curtains to give the place my own personal twist as well as some nice shelves with Homes and Gardens style gardenalia objects carefully arranged on them with relaxed style.
It was late when Ned went home, and I realised that I had no tea only at 8.45pm after I had rushed around feeding chickens and dogs, and watered the allotment.
After walking the dogs later I have got the Laura Linney film The Savages (2007) to settle down to.
Chris rang......he is full of cold and looking forward in coming home.....he has bought me a cowboy hat in Banff.....

Nell,Racism and Red Valerian

Poor Nell has been suffering the over romantic attentions (!!) of Walter and Harold over the last few weeks and now has a nasty sore on the back of her head (that is the area drakes "hold" their females when mating)as well as a clear infection in her left eye. So I caught her this morning and took her to the vets to get some treatment.
Now ducks are like hens for they remain still and calm if you hold them firmly, so I wrapped Nell up in a baby blue hand towel and sat her on my knee in the vet's waiting room. The waiting room filled up fairly quickly as only one vet was on duty, and by 10 am there was seven people in there with cat baskets on their knees, an elderly man with a collie and me with Nell sat stock still in her towel.
One woman opposite from me asked which vet was working and another women told her the "foreign" vet was holding clinic. Regular readers to this blog may remember that I have always been amused by the Polish vet tendency to yell when taking a history, so I was terribly shocked to hear a rather personal tirade of racist comments from the first women against this vet.
With eight perfect strangers listening, she admitted that she didn't like these "crappy foreign vets" who give poor care and couldn't be understood by anyone.Rather proudly she added that she would never see anyone but the lovely "English" senior partner . The waiting room was silent at this speech (but I did notice the second woman nodding) and I sat there speechless at this blatant nasty behaviour.
I couldn't quite believe that someone could be so open in their racist comments and had to say SOMETHING in view of the silence in the room .As coldly as I could I said loudly "The "foreign" vet is actually Polish and is a VERY competent professional She deals with all my animals and has done so wonderfully for two years".
Now the moral high ground I felt I had, was somewhat diluted by the fact I had a bald duck on my knee wrapped in a baby blue bath towel, but I hope this woman felt a tiny bit ashamed by her words. I guess that sort of creature does not take challenging too well( she just shrugged at my words), but at least the other people in the waiting room may have felt a bit embarrassed by their own silent complicity.
Anyhow Nell was treated by the senior "English" partner who had come back on duty (pity) and she had cream anointed on her head and some I M antibiotics.I have to bathe her head and eye daily with cold tea ( a first for me) which will be fun, and I put her back into her run with Maude after removing Walter and Harold.
The drakes literally went hysterical at being separated from the females and have constantly broken out of the hens enclosure to get back with their girls. After the fifth escape I left them all together again,I will wait and see if Nell's injuries improve.

Caught up with garden clearing this afternoon. The red valerian in the lane looks wonderfull, Thia weed covers all the walls in the village.

Ann's Allotment open

Ann's co-operative allotment held its first open evening tonight, with all proceeds going to a local Hospice.The small group of invited guests had a good chance to wander around the beds, ask questions and have coffee and cake and everyone seemed friendly , good natured and appreciative of what was on show. A local retired policeman Mr Cook seemed very interested in my allotment and poultry and asked if he could arrange a similar "visit" to my field in Trelawnyd, Mind you my allotment is not a patch on Ann's huge walled garden but I would be happy in showing it all off.

The chicks seem to be doing fine. Quiet, and still rather "depressed" looking, they totter around like little balls of cotton wool on pipe cleaners and don't actually look like they do anything else at all. Joan unlike the dogs, doesn't even notice that they are in the kitchen, mind you she is not looking too well today and has spent the afternoon on the couch, not moving even when William and George joined her for a while.

Judy and her sister Bridget called in for coffee and a fuss from the dogs which was a nice surprise, and I have spent the rest of the day gardening and clearing weeds from the back garden.

Chris rang from Canada and says Banff is beautiful. I am sure the views of the Rockies is lovely, I have seen the Mountain ranges around Seattle from the air, and I remember just how BIG everything looks.

He seems happy enough being over there, and not at all depressed as he usually is. I have told him to buy me a nice pressie .