Friday, 14th January, a day in the garden

Although the skies were rather grey it didn't look a bad day outside, so after letting the ducks out and sorting their food and water I determined to tackle our 'heather island'.  Laid out as a rockery originally, we had added various conifers over the years and everthing was totally overgrown.

The recent damp weather made digging and sorting out vetch and grass roots a very sticky job, I was soon several inches taller with the mud under my clogs.

We forwent our normal coffee break at 10 as John decided to go and do our weekly shop, so I carried on until his return.  The ducks weren't interested in what I was doing at this stage - too busy indulging in feelings of Spring!

After lunch we both went out, John determined to carry on with pruning the apple trees and I cleaned the top duck hut [it needs to be done more than twice as often as the bottom one as more than twice the number of little bodies spend their nights there] before returning to the heather bed.

The ducks soon spotted John on the steps and made their way into the orchard:

Anabelle then saw what I was doing and came up in expectation.  Soon the rest of the clan followed and there was fierce competition for worms, with our new girls - being very nimble - getting more than their fair share.


The sun actually came out for a short time mid-afternoon and put a bit of a gloss on these photos:



No, I didn't finish work on the heather island and John didn't quite finish pruning, but while he stayed pretty clean I totally muddied up everything I was wearing, trousers clean-on in the morning and all.  Does anyone remember Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoon?  Well, that's me!

We finished in the garden around 4 and played Mexican Train Dominoes over a cup of tea  -  and here comes the great announcement:

John has topped my previous record of gathering 147 penalty points in a single game [not from all 10 games double nine to double blank]: 163!!!!!!!

I must admit that is highly unusual for John - he does normally come out the winner.  So I was chuffed!

PS from Petra: I had186 points in one game - John has to "practise" to achieve that *LOL*