Dawdling Ducks, Missing Chick and Blooms

It's getting dark so late now that I am having to stay up to put the hens away! I usually go to bed earlier than most people, my back likes being in bed rather than sitting up watching the television before I go to sleep. The next eight weeks or so will see me having to wait up for it to be dark enough for them to go into their houses.

Last night I went up to the field at 9.50pm and started rounding up the ducks, who always wait for me to appear in their run.  They are laying eggs everywhere at the moment, never in the same place, and I have to watch where I put my feet in the twilight in case I crunch an egg underfoot.  I then close their run access door and go into the barn to give the goats a last snack of cereal before shutting up the hen house door.

With the two lots of chicks, who are always the last to go into their house, I wait for the last one to hop in, which is always the largest white one, shut their door and then open the hinged roof and count to make sure they're all installed. Last night I was one short. I glanced around and could see this tiny black hen in the goat field. She was so frightened that it took me ages to catch her. Lots of time my fingertips brushed her tail feathers as she ran past me, trying to avoid the goats at the same time. Eventually I caught her and she made a lot of noise, not having been held since she was first transferred to the run, she was not amused by me clasping her close to me. I walked back through the barn, along the veggie beds and back into her run before popping her into the chick house and finally being able to drive home. I was exhausted. Just walking up the garden and back is enough to finish me at the moment, and I had done far more than that trying to catch her. She doesn't know how near she came to being left out for the night. 

The moon was just rising above the calvaire in the sky, it was a full moon the night before, and I stopped to take a quick photo - you may have to swing your screen back or forward to see it properly as it's so dark.

I can't resist posting some more photographs of my delphinium which is so amazing this year that everyone is commenting on it.  The colour in these photos is not true.  The blooms are much more purpley than they seem here.

The other side of the door from the delphinium is my postbox, which is a double sided box, so the postwoman puts the letters in from the outside and I open the inside - clever eh? 

Then next to the postbox is my honeysuckle, which is so beautifully scented and every small breeze seems to waft the perfume across the garden.

In the driveway I have a small plant which is a wonderfully blue salvia.  The blue is so intense it's almost gentian colour.

I have the same, but bigger in my border. The cats obviously like it and they've been lying in the middle and have pressed the centre flat, so it needs gathering up and tying round some stakes now.

The roses are all blooming now and suddenly there seem to be flowers everywhere.  I particularly like this pink one which grows beside the pond pergola.  I am not sure which rose it is though.

And for more, glorious colour, one of the marigold flowers from the driveway.

I have always loved Monty Don and am so pleased he's back doing the TV programme Gardeners' World with the old team of Jo Swift, Carol Klein and Rachel de Thame.  The late Geoff Hamilton was my favourite presenter of GW, but Monty runs a close second for me.

At the moment I'm reading the book, The Jewel Garden, published in 2005, which he wrote with his wife Sarah. concerning their lives together with their gardens and particularly The Jewel Garden, part of their current garden in Herefordshire.  I have several of their books, Fork to Fork, The Weekend Gardener etc. etc. and enjoy them all.

Three things I don't like:

1.   Curry

2.   Dogs which bark all night

3.  Having to bring in the washing in - not quite dry - because the rain has started