Forest Gardening and Romance

Well last weekend was the weekend before Valentine's Day so we put the whole weekend by to be romantic. Yes we cleared out the garage!! Such a good catharsis - which is why "dump" is a much better name than "tip" for the place you take all the rubbish (though my BFF will disagree on that one)

We did also manage to start planting the edible forest garden I have been planning/designing along permaculture lines. DH did the digging while I did the planting - always felt I should be the Queen really. First priority is to grow a windbreak so we have gone for mostly hardy trees that should manage in the North East of England - Crab apples, medlar, rowans, hawthorn, some hardier plums, a mulberry and a couple of Siberian pea trees.

I am also planning a Lindsey lavender bed in memory of a very dear and special friend who died a fortnight ago. She had sent me a card last year with lavender seeds and these I am going to grow indoors first, to then transplant to a sunny spot in the forest garden - she was a sun lover too :) This way every time it is sunny and I can smell the lavender, I will smile and a little bit of her will live on.

Chicken update - the eggs in the incubator have less than a week to go, I have been candling them and am hopeful that three of them have viable chicks. We are down to one remaining cockerel now - the small but stroppy Lavender Aracauna was waking the neighbours at 4am. Hopefully the remaining one will learn the lesson of his fellow cockerels and stay a bit quieter.

Must take the time to put some pics on here at some point.

Feathered Frenzy

Well we've had an interesting week from the chicken point of view thAt I thought I would share with you all....sorry!

Having opened the shed to a bloodbath last week I decided to move the loudest cockerel on to death row.

Meanwhile the enormous yellow crowing "hen" started jumping every hen in sight. Not funny to carry that weight on yr back if yr just a little hen. Chuck, the white one, seemed to be the most frequent, resigned, recipient of all three cocks amours. Bit weird as she was the one that hatched them out.....eugh. Jeremy (named and owned by niece who was 2 at the time) however, was having none of it. Obviously giving her a boys name has encouraged her to think like a boy and I pity any cockerel that tries to take her on.....or should I say tries it on with her. The cockerel on death row was getting noisier by the minute....clearly thinking there is some kind of appeal system. So I put Chuck in with him for a bit of company and to give her a break from enormous yellow crowing "hen".

So on thursday I'm sitting in the cinema with bf ( yes...in the middle of the day!) when I get a phone call from our neighbor. The bull mastiff lodging at number six has escaped and is prowling the chicken run. To cut a long story short the big yellow crowing hen is no more. I came home to find it left for me at the back door....by a human not the dog! So Thursday evening was spent with laptop, gloves and filleting knife and now we have a plucked and gutted chicken in the fridge for lunch tomorrow. However death row cockerel has to be finished off too this weekend so think I might take Bruce (said bull mastiff) for a walk through the run again!