Protecting the troops

It has felt like summer today; house martins have been swooping around the field borders and I have caught the sun after finishing off the weeding and planting out French beans, marigolds and turnip seedlings swapped with another villager for some eggs.
Broody hens and now ducks seem to be everywhere. Lilly, the buff has now parked herself on any egg she can find and in one of the rabbit hutches two of the runner ducks have collectively started their broody sittings!
Kate Winslet has been fed with corn, cat food (good for a sitting hen) and pasta and has been set up on some more eggs within the safety of a new crow proof run and I have surrounded Blanche's broody box with chicken wire.
I have also set up another enclosure in which to house Jesus. His sexual advances has somewhat knackered many of the hens including the diminutive and lame Bunny. who now has large bald spots on her back and wings To give Bunny some more respite and TLC , she has been moved into the last one of my broody boxes and has been given a small, quiet run of her own. (above)
Bloody hell. sometimes I feel like a nanny rather than a (small) smallholder!!
I must say that Bunny is one of my favourite hens. She is not a looker, is definitely a runt and can only hop spastically with both skinny wings flapping hysterically. Her knackered hip (damaged two years ago when she and her adolescent flock mates were attacked by a dog see old post) prevents her mobilizing very well, and if she is not careful she bares the brunt of the cockerels who see her as "easy meat".

http://disasterfilm.blogspot.com/2008/10/ewan-saves-day.html

Bloody Crows

Last year Kate Winslet hatched out a healthy bouncy brood. Her first brood this year was almost read for piping!
Yesterday evening I found her broody box empty and her eggs smashed, pecked and cold. I suspect a crow had driven her off the eggs or had sneaked in when she had briefly left them to feed.
By the look of the shells most of the eggs had been fertile and when I checked on the intact eggs, each one had a perfectly formed but dead chick inside. It was a bit of a blow as broody hens literally go out of condition when they are sitting (they hardly eat and drink), so the prospect of another 3 weeks sitting is a daunting one to an animal that is already thin and slightly out of sorts!

I gave the dead chicks to the hens to eat (no waste) and tomorrow after I feed kate up a little I will start her off on some more eggs in another more robust broody box.

Chris was up at 4.30 am to go to London for the day, so I am writing this wide awake in bed surrounded by dogs. It is too early to let the birds out...that fox is still around, I could smell his scent markers by the field bottom....
time to get a gun me thinks

huh?

stole this from Marks blog

very funny

Am I?

I am 48 in two weeks!

Am I a little too old for a celebrity crush?

Well Chris certainly thinks so.......having said that, he was highly amused when Russell Crowe flexed his pecks at the audience of Robin Hood, and I let out an involuntary sigh!

I guess that if you have a crush at 48, then the base line is that you HAVE A CRUSH....plain and simple....and there is no real harm in it

Is it a sign of immaturity? (......hummm perhaps)

Is it a sign of not being content with a partner? (nawwww)

Is it just a little daft (humm probably)

Am I bothered? ( defiantly not!)

But I do feel just a little guilty......

Not with sighing at Mr Crowe

But acknowledging that I have a secret guilty crush on Derren Brown too!

War of the Weeds

Not the most interesting Blog!
With the warm weather following a good drenching, the usual "WAR OF THE WEEDS" has now started. This morning I did a Russell Crowe and with trusty hoe in my hand I faced the growing mountain of weeds with a gruff "On my command, unleash HELL"
For 7 hours I have toiled away clearing the vegetable beds and ripping up the armies of spring meadow flowers and grasses. It is a backbreaking, sweaty but necessary job.
Right is one of the newly painted rabbit hutches I blagged from the animal rescue centre. I have had to remove Blanche from the ark and relocate her inside with her eggs, as the other hens were "adding" to her clutch on a daily basis by parking their bums neatly into her nest..thank god I had marked her original eggs as today she had 16 in her nest and was going slightly frantic in an effort to cover them all!
Broody hens do not take lightly to being moved, but she settled down after I had covered the front of her hutch with some wood.
I have not even had time to start the back garden weeding as yet. Scores of pink columbine are starting to flower but the garden has not quite come into it's own as yet. I weeded the front garden and cut the grass today too, but again the flowers have not yet started to bloom so the place looks need if not just a little dull

Chris asked if he could have a herb bed made on the allotment and I sorted that out too this afternoon. (below) I planted out sage, thyme and flat leaf parsley, and moved containers containing rosemary, chives and mint from the four corners of the allotment
All of the herbs are now safely behind chicken wire.....hungry beaks are everywhere

Marion

Now while Cate Blanchett makes for a spunky and not so maidly "I'm as good as any man" Marion...My mind got to thinking about probably the best and most famous of the cinematic Maid Marions.....namely Olivia deHavilland.
On reflection, de Havilland was a stunning and rather charismatic film star. She was beautiful,charming and had the most perfect modulated speaking voice that belied the fact that she had a steely strength beneath her English rose looks.

I guess that the closest film character to the real Olivia deHavilland's personality was in fact her most famous creation, and that was the southern belle Melanie from Gone with the Wind.

Polite, socially warm and dignified yet when the chips were down, a woman who would fight tooth and nail for herself and her family...
Some of this personality was evident in her earlier film The Adventures Of Robin Hood.

Ok her Marion was a real Maid, and not as practical as Blanchett's interpretation of the character ( I couldn't quite see deHavilland shoeing a cart horse as Cate did), but for me the quintessential Marion must always be Olivia deHavilland

Robin Hood

There is something quite attractive about the gruff, testosterone filled Russell Crowe. I think that his appeal ( well to me anyhow) is that, as a film actor, he knows how to use his masculinity to such good effect.......so in a similar vein to the likes of Robert Mitchum, he commands the screen and attention in a typical alpha male power house kind of way.
Having said that, Crowe (like Mitchum) is not just manly eye candy! both men have acted quite wonderfully; indeed Crowe's performances in productions such as LA Confidential, The Insider, 3.10 to Yuma, and State of Play are some of the best I have seen in recent years......
Ok, Ok...I am a fan...can't you tell?...perhaps I am acting just a little like my female turkeys? I am a sucker for a pretty masculine face!

Anyhow back to Robin Hood!

Hummmm.......well let's point out the good points!

Crowe gets his kit off (albeit briefly)...

Spunky old Cate Blanchett does a wonderful South Yorkshire accent

and Max Von Sydow is rather sweet as Robin's adoptive father

oh and some of the action sequences of this rather original retelling of a tried and tested story are exciting and worth the price of a cinema seat alone.

However.....there is plenty to test even a Crowe fan like myself....

That old chestnut of the time taken travelling from the coast to Nottingham (165 miles) is , as it was in all preceding Robin Hood movies, ignored totally; a small point , I know, but it is one that grates.

Russell's accent ( supposedly a South Yorkshire accent----one I know well) is truly awful. Most of the time he sounds Irish and his attempt at the flat Yorkshire vowels is very distracting. However Scott Grimes ( remember Archie Morris is ER?) is the worst culprit in the accent stakes....his Welsh accent has to be heard to be disbelieved!)

..............................and most importantly the love affair between Crowe and Blanchett, (they have some rather sweet little scenes) is only touched upon oh so briefly, which is a shame.

Robin Hood, is a nice Sunday afternoon epic. It is neither great or average......and unfortunately lies somewhere between the two!

I gave Russell a manly 9/10

Robin Hood I gave a slightly disappointing 7/10

Turkey sex

I moved Bingley, Lizzy,and Kitty the Bourbon red American turkeys (with Jane the single slate turkey) down into the pig house a while ago now. All four of them seem to dislike their quarters with a vengeance, and spend most of their day marching up and down the perimeter fence gazing up at the other poultry way up the field.
I have wondered about this yearning for escape, so today I planned some covert observation. Before I replanted some runner beans, I let the female turkeys out of their enclosure and watched what they would do.
As one the three girls marched the length of the field and immediately joined Boris, Theresa and Gloria. As soon as they reached the older stag, all three females immediately "relaxed" and literally sat down in the grass and waited to be.....well.......to put it bluntly..........well shagged!
It was as though all had responded to their biological urges and had "picked" the older, bigger and obviously "alpha" male in order to fulfill their needs!
Above is a photo of all three girls having a post coital relaxation (if they could have smoked a cigarette, I think they would have done)
Poor Bingley...I think they know he is firing blanks!

With all this sex in the air, I am glad we are off to see sex-on-legs Russell Crowe in the potentially awful Robin Hood later.......review later!