one more HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Maria!

This probably won't be posted till Saturday morning, but here's one more Happy Birthday! to my "little sister" Maria for Friday 1st February.

[PS: having just received photos from the actual day from Susi I thought I'd put 3 in here, they're lovely!]

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After the rain washed all the snow away we had a little sunshine in the morning a couple of days ago:

The ducks can just be seen through the tall, spent stalks of the Eupatorium in the 'wild flower patch',

close-up below:

I managed to get 30 pink hellebores out of the garden and some greenery for the 7 little bunches on Wednesday [luncheon club duty] .....

... and yesterday somebody came to the door and sold us a framed aerial view of our patch, taken on 26.9.2012 [Sarah's birthday].  The big duck pond is hidden from view by the trees bottom left, but some of the ducks can be spotted  outside the frog pond left of our house.  I should have taken the photo out of its frame to eliminate the reflections!

 Talking ducks, while friends Pat and Graham were visiting this morning I noticed that Honey was nursing her right leg, as if she didn't want to put weight on it, when the crowd came up for food.  I had also noticed that she'd stayed in the duck pond earlier while all the others went into the field.  I managed to guide her into the duck shed same as we'd done for Jubilee, called the vet and managed to get an appointment for 4pm.

Avian vet Brian found that her right leg was slightly swollen - his first question was "have you got drakes?", oh yes we do!  We did a bit of jiggery pokery at duck bed time - just four girls are in the hut in the enclosure now, the 5 boys from there are spending the night in the garage!  And they will the next two nights as well so no more harm can be done to Honey [she's on medication twice a day].  On Monday our Derbyshire friends Samantha and Eric are coming to collect 7 of our drakes [let's hope there's no more flooding to prevent them from coming!]