Feed The Birds - don't I just!

With the cold weather continuing I seem to be going through bags of corn like there is no tomorrow, and this morning I realised that I seem to supporting the large population of wild birds as well as all of my charges.
Long lines of blackbirds, a jay, thrush,a couple of phesants and a huge gaggle of field sparrows are all surviving the winter as a direct result of the poultry feed.
What can you do?
I am working this evening and Chris is still away in London,so I want to get the jobs completed early. Poor Susan, remains gravely ill in the shed. She is now off her feet, so I have made her a comfortable nest out of straw, so that she can die in peace iand in warmth

Fags

Chris has gone to London for a couple of days, which may not be a bad thing as he is finding it incredibly difficult to cope with every day home "irritations" when withdrawing from the dreaded nicotine drug!
His battle with cigarettes is an ongoing one and is one that is complicated by intermittent fags (to my American reader Fag in the UK is a cigarette!!!) and intermittent nicotine patches!Subsequently he has rushes of cravings and surges of temper, which doesn't make for harmonious living for him AND for me.
I wish I could help him give up the dreaded weed for good, but I can't, suffice to say, I think I had better keep schtum........and perhaps agree to him buying a pipe!

Faye Dunaway RIP

I woke up this morning, not to the promised "thaw" that we were all wishing for,, but to a new moderate fall of snow. The view from the cottage (above) remains white, icy and quite beautiful, but I am afraid the beauty of the snow has long since left me, literally quite cold .
I am tired of posting about the weather, but what can I do when it dominates the lives of out little band of characters at home?
Faye Dunaway died today.....Not the Faye Dunaway of course (though to be fair the real actress does resemble a corpse in most of her more recent films) I am referring to one of my old hybrids, a skinny old amber rock that I found quite flat and frozen in her hen house this morning. Halleh the sex starved duck may well have been responsible for her death (the flat nature of the corpse my indicate that he had given her a good seeing to) but I am hoping (and I really believe) that the cold, coupled with the fact she was well past her prime, was the real cause of death.

Old Stanley watching me clean out his coop this morning with my oldest hen, Beatrice

Nora keeping the cold at bay with some bananas donated from Joanne, one of my egg customers

Lizzy,Jane and Kitty

The four turkey poults seem to be doing ok in the adverse weather, and all six turkeys have survived their brush with the dreaded "Blackhead" which is something of a miracle. Boris is accepting all of the youngsters including the one slate poult stag who remains rather shy, and I am hoping that the three brown females will provide him with a good natured breeding group.
The girls are robust, friendly and well used to being handled, and with the deep dark eyes so typical of the adult, they are, to me,quite beautiful. I have named them Lizzy,Jane and Kitty.
The young male will be "swapped" for a garden shed, by a guy from the village who has a lone female!
The sky is pale and almost translucent today, and already this afternoon it has started to snow, albeit very gently. We are all getting sick of the snow here, one neighbour, Ann, fell in the lane the day before yesterday and badly broke her arm. I took some eggs up to her yesterday...thought It was more useful than a get well card!
Off now to feed the pigs and to put the turkeys in, I have left Chris sitting on the couch wearing his scarf watching Went the Day Well? (1942)

Isn't everyone just a little bizarre?

I have a theory that when were are alone, all of us can be, well, just a little odd!
Now I am not speaking "serial killer" here, I am actually referring to those private little moments of "madness" we all indulge in from time to time.
Today was a case in point.
I took all four dogs out for their walk this morning and for a change I walked them down the snow filled bridlepath called Gypsy lane. The sides of the path are screened by trees and hedges and I had walked well over a mile before I had to stop in order for George to get his head out of a large rabbit hole.
As I stood waiting I looked into the hedge and there balanced neatly in the Ivy on a tree was a glowing ten pence piece!..
Weird? well yes it was, because in actual fact I was me that placed the coin in the tree way back in 2006.
Gawd knows just why I had done it. I remember finding a coin in my pocket, and I remember thinking It would be a grand Idea to secrete it on a tree but on reflection I cannot, for the life of me, remember my actual motivation for doing so!
I mean, why on earth,does a middle aged man, go out of his way to jam a ten pence piece in a tree?
Does anyone else do similar bizarre things?
answers on a postcard....

Tattoo

My Brother is on holiday in Florida and has done the indulgent thing and got himself a long awaited tattoo¬! He's looking more brave about it all than I would be
They have just sent me this photo (as it happens) by phone....isn't technology great?..

It's Complicated

.............well actually Nancy Meyers new comedy isn't complicated in any shape or form despite having a fairly "unconventional" storyline.
Jane (Meryl Streep) has been amicably divorced from her husband Jake (Alec Baldwin) for ten years. During their son's graduation, the pair start a secret affair, despite Jake having a new wife and Jane starting a tentative relationship with shy architect Adam (a weirdly airbrushed Steve Martin).
Hummm......,do hilarious situations abound?...well no they don't........not at all, but on the whole this film does have a few interesting things to say on the closure of long term relationships and dating in middle age, and it is mildly amusing thanks primarily to Streep and Baldwin's polished and rather winning performances.(But that is about it~)
Streep acts her socks off with the very smallest of gestures, and I always find her a mesmerising actor to watch. She is also quite beautiful and physically untouched by Hollywood standards which makes her all the more attractive and appealing to an audience. You can almost feel the waves of admiration people have for Streep, as you are sat there and that is impressive!
Meryl made me give this film an averagely good 7/10
ps. Hazel has her fourth date wth new beau Alan tomorrow......as her GAYBEST FRIEND..I get the first look at him ! I will be on best behaviour

Hard Work

Now as readers of this blog will know, I will never complain about the work I choose to do on the allotment and field, but I must admit this morning has been a bit of a slog. After night duty and -11 degrees of real frost, every water container on the field was frozen solid,like cement.
Each coop water feeder had to have warm water bucketed over from the cottage to fill it, and it took an absolute age to complete all the work effectively.
The younger hens are not doing well in the icy weather. At roosting time, they often seem disorientated by the snow and ice, and I have had to check the churchyard and field borders, where they have been found sat forlornly in the shelter of wall and gravestone. not making the effort to walk back to their huts across the cold snow.
Last night I found eight hens in this state and managed the ferry them all to a coop safely before nightfall. The buff girls are especially prone to this sort of apathy, but at least allow themselves to be caught and carried without murmur or protest.
Anyhow enough of the snow and enough of hens.... Off to the cinema with Hazel later, think we are going to rough it with the new Streep film It's Complicated