Surprise Bunny, Garden Tasks, Lunch and Plagues

The last two days have been very grey.  Yesterday it was really foggy and depressing.  Today no fog, but still grey and a cold breeze. 

In the early evening yesterday something weird happened.  I was watching television when Daisy shot past me and up the stairs with something fairly large and white in her mouth.  I went to investigate and found that she had a white fluffy bunny - unfortunately already dead.

This is clearly not a wild rabbit.  Both of my male rabbits were neutered after their first litter of two bunnies in August 2009 so it shouldn't be from my rabbits, but I've a feeling that it is.  We last cleaned out their large house two weeks ago, and as I didn't do it, I have no idea whether there was a nest within the straw that was cleared out.  In their last litter of bunnies there was one just like this, so I think perhaps the vet didn't do the job properly.  Sad.

This morning the fish pond pump which has blocked over the Autumn and Winter is  being cleaned out.  The fish look good and healthy and seem to have survived the times when my pond was iced over without a problem.

I spotted the frog I'd relocated from my kitchen to the pond, swimming around happily.

Weeding has also been underway, getting the long bed ready for some more perennials.  Here is the clean result and another photograph showing what's still to be done.

I sat down to have a rest from tying in plants and drank a mug of coffee in the sunshine which is now out and very warm.

 I had my camera and took a couple of photos of things I was looking at.

The electric post at the end of the driveway and honeysuckle buds on the stems I've woven through the wires on the top of the pergola.

I went in for my lunch - prawns in a garlic, lemon, parsley and pili pili sauce with thick slices of freshly cut bread.

As I got up from my lunch, unbelievably, another frog by my laptop table - I nearly trod on him when I got out of my chair.  This one was much smaller.  I popped him on the slate where the water runs down to the fish pond.

Could this be a plague of frogs visiting me, I wonder? What next?  Locusts?

We put up the fly nets on the doors to the garden this afternoon, as I am already getting flies coming in.  Hopefully they'll stop the locusts as well!

Chicks, Hedges and an Amphibian

The chicks born last week are getting bigger very quickly and have the beginning of proper feathers on their wings.

Only one of the four brown eggs hatched – yesterday during our Writers’ Group meeting – so I have popped it in with the original five as it was looking very lonely alone in the incubator.

They are now housed in a wooden box with a heat lamp over it. This box is part of the outside system they will live in for the first few weeks of their lives outside. It gives the older hens to get used to them before they are introduced feather to feather.

As I went over to look into the box to check on them, I passed the cats’ food dishes. Hiding between the milk and biscuit containers was a frog, or perhaps a toad, I’m not sure.

  

He seemed fine, so I walked over to the pond and gently slid him into the water. He breaststroked off, away from the goldfish, and disappeared immediately under the plants.

The flowerbed by the pond is ready to be weeded now that the very tall hedge behind it has been cut. 

In this photograph you can see that this side of the hedge has been cut, but the other side still has high growth, which has disappeared in the next photograph.

I think the chap who came and shortened it must have taken 4-5ft (120-150cm) away in many places.  It makes such a difference to the light coming into my garden and I can also enjoy my neighbour's forsythia!

I went off to the hospital on Friday last to have the tests regarding my parathyroid glands.  The scintigraph confirmed that there is a tumour - benign - on one of the right side parathyroid glands.  I am having another blood test on Friday morning to see how my calcium levels are.  If they are not raised further, I can wait to see the endocrinologist on 21 April, but the appointment may be brought forward if they are very much higher.  When I've seen her, I will go in for an operation to remove the the tumour,  after which my energy levels should be much better, which will be very welcome with all the gardening to do.

I came in from taking these photographs of a hellbore and a primula denticulata

to find myself unable to use my laptop because of these two.

Friends on the Mill Stream Walk, Seeds, Cockerels and Hens

My friends, Lesley and Roy, arrived with me on Sunday for supper, bed and breakfast. It was a flying visit, packed in amongst other visits, so far too short, but lovely to see them. The weather was glorious for this time of year and we went for a walk by the mill in St Nicolas du Pélem.

I returned to the car after about 20 minutes to read my next book club project, Stone’s Fall, and parked again so that I could open the door and be in the sunshine as I read. They continued their walk and returned a little later.  The path was really busy, with lots of familes out - it was Grandmothers' Day in France yesterday and most of the familes were of three generations, walking, cycling, with dogs and pushchairs - it was lovely to see so many people enjoying the fine weather.

The bullrushes in the mill stream were bursting with seeds, the catkins were turning brown and the celandines were like little drops of gold in the grass.

After they left on Sunday morning, I went down to the field with some of my seeds to plant up in the polytunnel. 

I put in broad beans and butternut squash to start and later transplant.  The butternut squash were very successful last year - I love them in soup and all the family love them roasted. 

I still can’t do much at a time, so after planting those seeds, I sat in the hen/duck run and took photos of some of the cockerels. The colours of their plumage were brilliant in the sunshine of another beautiful day.

And here are some of the hens in my kitchen - you can just see them on top of the cupboards.  The yellow box on the left is the incubator where I am hopefully hatching some chicks.

Tomorrow I have my hyperparathyroid tests at Yves Le Foll Hospital in St Brieuc.  I have an ultrasound booked for 10.00am and then at 11.00am I go to the Nuclear Medicine Department for the scintigraph.  It's a three hour wait after that before I am allowed to drive back home, so I shall have the chance to get through quite a bit of my book.

Lastly, another photo of Daisy.

As I was finishing this post, a great tit flew into my windowpane and stunned himself.

I brought him in and held him gently for about ten minutes while he recovered and then released him back into the world outside again.

New Fish, New ducks, Sheep and Josselin Chateau and other buildings

I’ve had a week which has concentrated on the animals here.

There were angel fish advertised on the local expat website and I exchanged some of my Kribensis, born in October last year, for two lovely angel fish.

The new fish have a knack of swimming off just as I am taking a shot of them, so the photographs aren't brilliant and don't really show they're lovely yellowy orange colours.

Later in the week,  I collected four Indian Runners. I haven’t had this breed of duck since I was living in Cornwall and I love them. I got a white pair and a black pair – they’re so funny to watch. Then the following day the same sellers advertised some Khaki Campbells, a breed I also had in Cornwall and I couldn’t resist and went back to collect them, plus another black Indian Runner drake who had always lived with them. They have settled in well and aren’t interested in the separate house I had made ready for them, but rush in with the hens each evening and sleep in the hen house.

That was the good news.  Now the horrid news.  Bramwell, my ram lamb from last year, died overnight and this morning was found in a shelter near the barn.  His mother, Mary, died this afternoon.  Neither of them had a mark on them, so I have no idea what happened but am thinking that it might be poisoning of some sort.   I spent about half an hour up with the animals yesterday after bringing the second lots of ducks back and they both seemed lively and absolutely fine.   It's very sad.

 

Yesterday, I had time to waste before I collected the Khaki Campbells, so I drove on down to Josselin, a place I had never visited. It’s a lovely town. I parked by the river and watched the fast flowing current and the dog walkers and joggers using the bank, while eating a scrumptiously moist leek and lardon quiche I had bought from my favourite Mur de Bretagne bakery. The sun was out and I opened the car window and enjoyed the warmth of it.

 

 
The spring flowers are out in profusion here now and I took these photographs of part of a bank of daffodils near St Caradec and forsythia near Josselin.
 

 

 

I can't wait to get on with sowing seeds in the polytunnels.  On Friday, we washed off the inside and outside of the polythene and tomorrow we should dig some of our homemade compost into the polytunnel beds and then I can start in earnest.  I bought in some batavia lettuce plants yesterday which I shall be planting too, and they should be ready for the Easter holidays when my daughter and grandson will be here.

 

I have the potatoes chitting in the gym and when the potato bed has had compost added too, then I shall plant them out at the beginning of April.  I've bought Charlotte which I find a good potato, and have been given some others free by the garden shop but have already lost the label, so they will be a surprise!

 

The eggs in the incubator are now on Day 13 and if they  are fertile, then hatching should begin on 7 March.  Fingers crossed!     

 

The hens are laying well now, and the eggs from the older hens are really large in contrast with the eggs layed by the chicks hatched in the early Autumn.  

My first year here, I had two pigs.  They were Gloucester Old Spots crossed with Saddlebacks and were lovely animals.  I spent ages up on the field with them as they were so friendly.  If you scratched them behind the ears they lay down on their backs to have their tummies tickled.  After the awful time I have had with the sheep, I am now thinking of having a couple of piglets to grow on instead of going the sheep route again.  The pig shed is still on the field and it will ony need a dozen posts and some pig fencing to extend the existing fencing to make a secure and good area for them.     I'll just have to find someone who's selling the sort of piglets that I would like to look after.

Right - to end on good news, my daughter who finished College last week with a Triple Distinction, had her first interview on Friday and got the job!  I'm so proud.