Yesterday started with what is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Friday morning activities - a bike ride down the High Peak Trail. It's the best place to get a flat bike ride round here, and I don't mind it being the same out and back route each time as the seasons always change, and I'm mostly there for fresh air and exercise anyway. Yesterday there were plenty of wild flowers. I like to go early in the morning, partly because the car park is free (which didn't matter when I had an annual parking permit, but does matter now I have to find change after months of not using cash), and partly because it's so quiet - I only saw two sets of dog walkers in five miles. I was home by 9.15, and we spent the rest of the morning preparing for our visitors. We planned to stay outside, even though we're allowed to have people inside now - six visitors, including small children (they're all in a support bubble together) plus us seemed a little too many to handle inside at the minute. Bessie came inside for a while - she's swelling up with fluid again and off to the vets on Wednesday, and in the meantime seems to have done something to her foot. It can't be that bad because she's still walking on it, but yesterday she looked rather gloomy about the whole thing. I attempted to catch her and have a look at it in the mirror, but she wasn't impressed, and the implant is causing her to moult so feathers were falling out everywhere. I left her alone in the end, and after standing in a corner for an hour or so she toddled off outside quite happily. I made food (including a very quick gooseberry jam) and Peter re-worked yesterday's shelter in the garden. When we've done this type of thing before, we've put sheets of plastic down under the blankets, but this time we had the ingenious idea of spreading out a bale of hay. It worked really well to keep us warm and comfortable, although of course now we'll be pulling hay out of the blankets for weeks. We had a lovely afternoon of eating and chasing Rusty the chicken - she is by far the most tolerant of small children and they often ask for her by name. Beaky is still annoyed about the new chickens, and not much interested in people anyway, Bessie is poorly, and the three new ones haven't been properly let out at all yet, so those five were all shut away for their own good. Rusty played along nicely and got plenty of treats in return. She even let the new chickens go to bed without too much pecking.
We lit a fire and sat under the shelter while the sun went down, and it was a lovely end to the day.
1 Comment
Amanda Schofield
11/7/2020 08:48:39 pm
That sounds like a lovely day and what a lovely way to finish it! X
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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