... while I'm on ...

Annie's been going great guns with her paintings of the ducklings. The first one I've already put in here, and now you can see Nos 2, 3 and 4 and a sketch of 6/7.  I've lost Annie's favourite among my emails, the mini-Campbell in the flowers  -  please send it again!  PS on Monday afternoon  [broadband still on, my complaint to the provider worked a miracle!], I nicked the mini Campbell off Annie's facebook pictures, no need to send it now.

This is my great favourite so far - keep going, Annie!



                                                                            The next two look promising as well.

My darling brother Gerd has been delighting me with some photos, here's one of him gardening:

Great hat, Gerd!


And then there was one of Susi with a Clanger, what was the significance of that?

Other things that have given me joy recently were to see that two trees in full leaf which I thought the late frost had killed, the Indian Bean Tree with its lovely, velvety and purple leaves, and the Walnut:

                  

Three mornings ago, as I was filling the waterbuckets of the five, I spotted the waterhen pair on the pond and they were making those calling noises.  To my delight there was a single little baby, which vanished very fast into the reeds on the island.  I've not seen it since, but I'm glad that I've seen at least one this year.

And one of my Mothering Day presents, the calamondine, is in full flower again and smells ever so sweet in the sun lounge:
                                    

You know how devastated I was when an accident killed one of the ducklings because I hadn't taken enough care or had enough foresight to prevent the accident.  Well, these little creatures remind me of the times when the children were babies and just crawling and picking up everything they shouldn't - only these duck babies can RUN!  I've posted a little video on facebook where, just as I was filming two of the little tyros fighting over something, I realized that that 'something' was a thin piece of stiff plastic which we must have dropped while carrying stuff to the recycling bin. Still filming I could just manage to take it out of the duckling's beak although it really didn't want to give up its prize.  And then, a week ago now when I was still putting loads of kitchen towels on top of the towels in their drawers to soak up some of the mess, I just went to the top of the spiral staircase before going to bed, to see if they were alright.  I could see that one of the fawn&whites was chewing on something, a triangular piece of paper was dangling out of its beak.  I shot downstairs and pulled the piece out, it was nearly 12 cms long, can you believe it ..... and there was ANOTHER piece I could pull out, all chewed up and mangledit was and nearly 11 cms long, this one at the top of the photo:  

Needless to say I haven't put paper towels anywhere near them since!