4th Advent Sunday

Yesterday morning was only the second time I found the ponds frozen over and unable to use the water hoses, but I didn't carry several water buckets from the house like I did the first time, only enough to put into Hedda's special bowl with her medicine.  John very kindly did all the buckets in the afternoon when everything had thawed out.


I never got around to writing about our 10 new ones' first experience with ice on 6th December, did I.  Having bashed part of the big pond free I thought I'd let the 10 out of their shed as they were making such a racket, and the plan was to break the ice on the frog pond - their first port of call after breakfast - while they were eating.  Well, you know about the best laid plans ....................... they beat me to the pond, slithered and slid all over the ice which then caved in and left the 10 floundering in panic among the big ice floes.  I was then astounded to see them FLYING to shore from the middle of the pond!  Yes, I did feel sorry they got that fright, but I DO wish I had got the camera ready -





They must have remembered that experience yesterday, because they turned away from the frog pond three times and returned to their shed, even though I'd broken the ice up very well beforehand.  In the end they took a short cut along the side of the garage to the big pond.

When the sun came out later I took some photos of them all on the big pond - they had obviously calmed down by then and were splashing about to their heart's content.




Pheasants[we counted 19 near the house the other day, and every morning they are waiting by the food station near the big pond] and waterhens can be seen in these shots as well.  They still partake of the ducks' food as in every year.


Friday lunchtime we had a big event at our Communal Bakehouse in Coleorton which is one of the very few remaining in England.  Some of you may remember that I took some photographs of it with the intention of producing an illustration for our Heritage Leaflet:

I was glad I took these photos when I did, because shortly afterwards the roof and one side fell in, and our Volunteer Group set to with building it up again and trying to make it weatherproof before the winter weather could do more damage.

The only involvement I had with it other than producing the illustration was helping to clear the site on two occasions before restoration work could begin, but all the volunteers on the project who were able to came to the "topping out" ceremony on Friday with our local MP Andrew Bridgen:


The work on the house is by no means finished, but our Heritage Group hopes to get the building listed and maybe even get it functioning again as a bakehouse ....... Swannington Mill nearby is being restored, what if we got some grain ground there and used the flour baking bread again in our little bakehouse ................. we can dream!

I've not done much in the way of "christmassing" [as Annie would say] our home, still trying to get a parcel ready to send to Salisbury[!]  -  but the tree in the sunlounge is almost decorated,

and I thought the rain on the kitchen window in this picture looked magical!



Then Gerd and Maria did a bit of magic and sent us this lovely  arrangement: