yet another catch-up

I've been taking a few photos here and there during the 8 days since I last wrote, let's see if I can get them into some kind of order.

Our ducks are well clued-up now on their new feeder, they use it as a matter of course, even awkward-walking Honey uses it well.  Unfortunately a cock pheasant is also of the right weight to open the food hatch, I caught one on camera early this morning:

I think the black shape behind the pheasant's back is one of the jackdaws that were hanging around.

This little wild duck was also there, I don't know if she managed the feeder, she ran off when she saw me.  She seems to have lost her mate, I sometimes hear her calling by the big pond where the pair were practically resident while Captain was still there.

I still haven't spotted a hole in the liner of the big pond, but the water level has been the same for a while now.  One of the big blue tubs has fallen over today after John's grandson Sam did some strimming:

Tuesday 15th

Anke has found an even smaller bowl to do her ablutions [Dotty looking on]: 

                                

Most of the day I was busy in the "formal garden", on my way there I spotted a little ducky huddle under the juniper on the heather bed.

That's Mocca looking up, and the others I guess are Purdy, Caramel and Honey [who can often be found there]

I gave the large-flowered clematis a climbing frame, you can see in the later photo in the middle that it's doing well on it.  In front of that picture is the tall yellow asphodeline, one of the many plants I put into that trapeze-shaped bed last autumn and which are all doing well [see big daisies and achillea below] apart from the red lupins who didn't survive the winter.

I've not finished all the hedge-cutting or tidying up there, it'll take time, and one of the 4 box balls in the centre had been chopped in half - either John's or Sam's mowing, I know I didn't do it!!  But the roses in the top bed are looking lovely:

Most of these roses were presents from our lovely friends Michael and Peaneh in Germany.




              

           

                   

While I was working in the hedge I could hear splashings going on in the big pond, and as I stood up a line of ducks and drakes came out of the water and ran to join the group in the field:

 

Wednesday 16th

I was on Luncheon Club duty, my flower bunches were these:

I had a nice surprise, one of the helpers gave me this beautiful bunch of white rose buds as a thank you for her flowers every other week:

 [The 6 cucumbers on the table are some of the dozen-and-a-half or so already harvested, I've also picked lots of tomatoes, raspberries, blueberries and little cucamelons - which taste more like cucumbers than melons!]

I finally made a start on trimming the spirals.  I can only manage a little bit at a time, but this morning the rough cut was done - just a bit of fine tuning now!

Thursday 17th

Friends Graham and Pat turned up early in the morning with a whole lot of their cucumbers which had turned yellow - they know that our ducks LOVE them, even Dotty had a go below right:

Later in the day I happened to be looking out of the window when the ducks looked alarmed.



Lucy was the cause of the trouble:


                                                                                                The ducks decided to skirt around her.

Saturday 19th

was John's granddaughter Leah's birthday.  All week we'd had a mix of sunshine and rain, but Saturday the rain just didn't want to stop.  The ducks just stood and took it, only when it got extremely heavy with hail did Billie-Jean and a few others go into the shed for shelter.

 

 

John felt well enough to come along to Leah's birthday party.  Our present to her was a basketful of utensils for the home economics course she's going to do at school next term.  The stars among the presents were these wooden spoons which our friend Peaneh had personalized beautifully:

                              

 

Taking a little walk around the garden on Sunday we noticed that after all that wet weather two rows of potatoes had blight.  Rather than letting them go to waste I dug them up yesterday, most of them were still sound:

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John is due for his second chemotherapy treatment tomorrow, and because the first session affected him so badly practically knocking him out all last week until Friday, Dr Iwuji is reducing the dosage by 20%, let's hope he'll recover better after the second chemo.