Saturday, 9.4.11

Another glorious day, and again, I can register a FIRST - something I had not seen before [it's great to have that view from the top window in the new studio]:

I had never seen any of our ducks go into that narrow strip that used to be the middle section of our triple pond, and now Morf had found her way in there and it looked as if she was getting ready to lay.   And indeed, when I checked a little later at 10.30, Morf had gone and in her place there was an egg!  I had to fetch it out or it would have fried in the sun.

 

John and I have been laying floorboards the last two days.  This first lot we bought was about the same shade of wood as the spiral stair; we struggled all Friday morning trying to put the boards together. It only worked by sliding the tongues into the grooves rather than by clicking them in as we'd done in the front room, and even then we had to use the rubber mallet to hit them into place.  John called in a chap from the shop where we'd bought them .... who declared he'd never seen a bad lot like this and said we'd be refunded the cost if we returned them to the shop - which is what we did, all 11 packs [of 6 boards each] including the boards we'd cut and the underlay. 

So, back at the shop we chose another set of floor boards, darker this time and a lot easier to assemble, and tonight we finished laying them: 

 

Now there are the skirting boards to be fixed and varnished, window sills to paint and roof beams to put in, then we can move the furniture in!

While we were working in that room we had a great view over the garden and could keep an eye on the ducks, which is how I spotted Morf making her nest.  Captain and the other two boys were up to their usual tricks and the poor duck underneath was Circle again:

I think I mentioned that BBD had been limping for about a week.  Well, the last two days he'd been fine, running as normal, and now he's limping heavily again - wish his brain would tell him to give up the fighting!

The blackthorn blossom has now broken out all along the hedge, but in this picture it struck me that the eucalyptus, seen at the bottom left, looks very brown.  A couple of weeks ago I'd pruned out all the dead branches, I thought, and left just these few showing green leaves ................ now I think the eucalyptus may be the eighth or ninth casualty of the harsh winter.

Every time I looked out of the window while we were laying the floor boards I could see something happening outside - apart from ducks laying in an unusual place or the drakes fighting.  There was our cheeky mallard boy,

 

or the pheasants and other wild birds, but I finally got a couple of snaps of the thrush we'd seen near the garage a lot lately - having wished for thrushes in our garden for many years we're particularly pleased about this one:

And we had yet another birdie delight: while having our lunch in the sun lounge we could see that a pair of bluetits were flying in and out of the round nesting box that John had repaired, at the back of the house.  I took about a dozen shots with the camera but only managed to get this fuzzy view of one of the little birds: