Tuesday, 22.2.2011 - Pearl's son Philip's birthday

The roof tiles were delivered today, from two windows inside it looked frightening:

We've had 3 pretty miserable days as far as the weather's concerned, this afternoon the skies brightened up a bit.  So when the workmen had gone home I tried to take as many photos as I could before the light faded.


The electrician had been busy ....

 











... and in the new place upstairs the builders had nearly finished enclosing the extra thick roof insulation:

In the picture on the left you can see where the doorway to the existing house will be, and on the right where some of the roof tiles have been stacked on the scaffold.  The view from this window is going to be terrific once the plastic sheet is replaced by a proper window.

Tiling has already been done on the rear part of the roof, you can just see it in this picture where John is painting the facia:

The duck food has been put into a couple of new locations recently, we moved it from the front gate to below the small greenhouse because rats had been sighted again, and this morning I moved it to the bottom end of the frog pond because hordes of pheasants had been around the greenhouse.  I'm not so much worried about the pheasants stealing the food as to the diseases they might spread to our ducks.  I need not have worried about the ducks finding the new location - not 10 minutes after I'd let them out and seen them 'playing' in this mud

they were at the frog pond.

It didn't take long before the mallard drake joined them, any chasing away doesn't seem to impress him as he was with them all day.  I took some dark pictures shortly before duck bedtime:

At first he tried to hide - you can just see him in this picture to the right of the island.  But when he realized that I presented no danger to him  -  and that I'd brought food  -  he came out more and more.  He can be seen in the next three photos at the very back.