Friday, 13th May 2011

Brother Helmut used to say Friday the 13th was NOT unlucky as he got married on such a day.  I missed mentioning his birthday on the 11th, but I did remember and think about him.

The enormous egg from last Sunday 8th was a disappointment!
We were so sure that it was a double yolker and had been looking forward to seeing what's inside, so decided to slice it up for our kedgeree at lunchtime on Thursday.  John started to take off the peel and stopped - it didn't smell bad, but it looked black inside, and when I sliced it in half it looked like this:

 

I asked on the German duck forum if anybody else had seen anything like this.  Just one answer came, he'd had an egg like this from his chickens.  Apparently sometimes a little blood gets into eggs and when you boil these eggs the blood spreads through the white and it looks black.  What a disappointment, and we still haven't had a double yolker egg from our ducks!

The rose bud I posted a picture of a few days ago didn't disappoint, though, it opened up beautifully:
 
It's the rose in front of the house that was already here when we came in 1998, and which a few years later decided to climb right up to the roof.  It's the only one of 5 climbers that has recovered after I had to cut them down when the drainpipe behind them was broken off in a storm earlier this year.

On Wednesday we were on luncheon duty again, and in the afternoon I spotted the top group on our drive, snail hunting along the wall next to the Post Office:

Yes, all nine of them were there hidden amongst the leaves.

John coming up the drive in the car scared them off and they stood around wondering what to do next;  then they decided to go off and investigate the front garden a bit more:

Yesterday afternoon I came to realize how deceptive a peaceful duck picture can be.  The top group were all lying down flat in a corner below the frog pond, like in this picture from Sunday:

But I could see only eight of them and realized - as there are only two white ducks in that group - that it was Decibels who was missing.  I didn't worry about it, thought she was lying behind some bush out of sight.  But a little later, when I was topping up the food and she was still nowhere to be seen I started searching - and eventually found her sitting behind their hut.  Of course she jumped up as soon as I got close and I could see she was limping as she came out of the enclosure to rejoin the others - I had to stop the two drakes raping her before I went back into the house.

We had a very heavy shower just then, and as Braith presented a great picture standing almost on tippytoes and facing into the streaming rain I rushed off to get the camera  -  too late, they'd all disappeared.

I found them again when I opened the bedroom window facing the road, sheltering from the heavy rain under the pergola.  The opening of the window scared them off, lastly Decibels who hobbled out into the open.  But she was soon rejoined by some others and spent the rest of the day close to them.  At bedtime we found her lying under the hut with one of the fawn&whites for company [to keep away from the drakes, maybe?], but she went up the ramp and into the hut without trouble.