Wednesday morning, 6th July 2011

We’ve had several ‘arrivals’ the last couple of days!  First, our builders came back and started work on the path and steps outside the sun lounge.  Then, yesterday morning, the flat-packed shed arrived, as promised.  And thirdly, also promised by the weather forecasters, the rain!  It’s been raining heavily since about half past 6 this morning, and unfortunately rain always seems to affect our broadband signal  -  don’t know why it should, but it does.  I’ll try and get a few pictures into this blog while I have four lights on our ADSL router.

The ducklings were out in their run for just a couple of hours yesterday.  Although they had cover I fetched them into the sun lounge early afternoon and let them run riot in there having supplied them with their tin of water on a large bath sheet and food and water.  I fetched our two builders in for their 3 o’clock cups of tea and coffee and let them watch duck cinema!

They did get some of the slabs put down outside the double doors before they finished for the day.

PS on Wednesday afternoon:

You can see how well our workmen [3 today] got on today.  Pretty soon we shall lose the building site look!

 

The rain eased off a bit later. John had been able to do preparatory work on the shed base and door, and later I helped him put the four sides together.

We thought a lot about where to site the shed, the new temporary home for the ducklings.  At first it was going to be against the old conservatory behind the garage, near the smaller greenhouse.  But the wind really blasts along there, so we put it where it’s going to be a lot more sheltered, between the first big cherry tree and one of the wood piles with its back towards the Post Office.  We’ll make them a little run outside it once the area has been thoroughly disinfected.  No sooner had the four sides of the sheds been put up than a cheeky robin came to inspect it:

Talking about disinfecting an area after the disaster - after emptying the frog pond some days ago I at last got around to using the dairy hypochlorite [for the ponds] I'd bought last week along with a huge can of Jeyes Fluid [for the thorough disinfection of the hut of the 9 who died and the area we quarantined them in].  John did the calculations of how many gallons of water there were in the frog pond when full, and I poured in the proportionate amount of hypochlorite as I was filling the pond; it turned the water white and you could smell the strong bleach.  After 5 hours the pond was full.  Emptying it again with the new pond was very quick, and then I scrubbed and rinsed the pond sides and bottom thoroughly - I don't think any DVE virus could have survived the treatment!