Saturday, 5.2.11, morning

My first look out of the window this morning showed me about fourteen little visitors [pheasants, pigeons and waterhens] polishing off the ducks' spilled grain:

I love to see "our" waterhens around the house and they've been making appearances every day.  I only wish they can raise a couple of broods of youngsters this year without them falling victim to the cats next door.

Another enjoyable experience this morning was to be able to walk out of the back door again,

 

it's still a bit draughty out here without windows but with a bit of imagination it's recognizable as the conservatory/sunlounge it will be before long.

After the fiercely strong winds yesterday [don't know how the builders coped] and overnight, I got an extra job to do this morning, the five different climbers we had going up the wall in front of the house had been torn down by the winds and broken the drain pipe:

 
















It took me 2½ hours to chop it all to pieces and ram the huge green bin full and cart away three overfull barrowloads [John's out this morning, in case you're wondering why I got the job].

The photo below from last year shows how even the deep red rose among these 5 climbers used to reach the roof ...... I had intended to prune all 5 very severely and quite soon,  the broken pipe has brought that job forward.
I'm sure everything will grow again pretty soon  -

The duckies have made me smile again this morning.  I let the top lot out first as they went in first last night, and they stopped in their little pond with just the odd excursion into the old chicken run. 

They were being very noisy, though, Braith in particular [I still think I should have called her the onomatopœic "Tröte", she is noisier than Decibels used to be!].  She kept on and on, encouraging the others to make a move to the big pond, I imagine, and then they were off, without going for the food:

I apologize for the apalling quality of these shots, I was so keen to catch them on camera before they disappeared that I wobbled a lot!  Got some better pictures of them later when I put the wheelbarrow away at the top of the garden:

From the look of the poor gooseberry bushes in front of this photo that will be my next weeding job, methinks.