Rainy Tuesday not so rainy

I'll start with a couple of pictures from Monday.  I knew from a previous occasion that some of our 10 had enjoyed the grapes we'd thrown them, so as I was finishing a small bunch of grapes when leaving the house to start gardening I rolled one or two down the steps to them and started a commotion:

I love this picture, you can see the grape and all!  Our newly-confirmed Gertie on the left is obviously not bothered about grapes.  You can see she has lots of white on her back similar to Braith, and I wonder if she is her daughter.  Right in front with open beak is the one I thought was a drake and I don't know what to call her now.  After tentatively naming our duo of first hatched Boss and Boy I'd been ready to re-name them Bill and Ben.  I'll stick to 'Ben' for our now only fawn&white drake [after all 'Ben' does mean 'son', and with his markings he's definitely BBD's son!]; what about calling the open-beaked one Billie then, or Billie-Jean?  Suggestions?


So to rainy Tuesday then.  The weather charts had shown a sea of blue all over England for this day, coming up with thundery concentration from the South-West [did you get very wet, Annie?]. And we did have gentle rain in the morning, more of a drizzle, enough to wet me as I was seeing to both groups of ducks.  It got stronger later as John was trying to finish his concreting of steps behind the house, but by lunchtime it was all over and we'd missed out on the steady downpour AGAIN!  The garden is incredibly dry just below the surface.


But I do have a few 'wet' pictures:

 That's 'Billie-Jean' then, trying to leap in between the two black ones, Ben is right in the vanguard in the water with Gertie on his right and George and Praline on his left - you can see they are the first four at the pond in the previous picture.


While I was taking the photos from the window in our new build there was a constant in-and-out of the water and digging in the grass and plant pots at the side.  Bess was seriously considering if she could reach the agapanthus in the big pot from where she was standing here:

[I might have thrown something down at her if she had managed to tackle it!]

Ben is showing off his wings in the photo above, and HJ in this one:

  


I cannot get the water level any higher than this [hence the stones for easier getting out] because the liner isn't high enough in some places at the steep side left of the concrete steps, and the water runs off there after filling the pond to the top until it reaches this level.

This photo shows the layout of the frog pond very well - and you may detect that the mole has been active again!  What I was also trying to show, in the next three pictures, is the area behind the fish pond with the original brick flooring left from the houses that stood here before White Gables was built.  I like to preserve any bits of heritage and have spent no end of time digging out the weeds that keep coming up between the bricks.  After finishing scratching them out on Monday night I used my newly bought "flame thrower" on that area, and will do so again as soon as any new weeds dare to show their faces!

 

 

John has finished concreting these steps at the back now, the small area where the blue plastic is lying and the rake will be filled with small pebbles again and the alpine trough will stand on top of that.

While 'hanging out' of the upstairs window taking photographs of the ducklings I took a couple of snaps in the direction of the 5 at the big pond, and there was Hedda at their food container and I could see Anke coming back from there:

While taking these pictures I suddenly saw our 10 grown-up ducklings filing past on the way to their enclosure, in the hope of finding some food - I was very cruel to them all day.  Trying to get them used to just two meals a day I didn't give them any extras and made them wait until their evening's dry mixed grain about an hour or so before bedtime.

By the way, our new terrace is looking very nice when it's wet!