Today has been a good day. This is the second vase of roses from the bunch our friends gave us last week, and I'm very much having them on my desk. I worked part of the day sitting here, then moved to the sofa, where I tucked myself under a blanket to read some stuff for work, and it was so cold and rainy I would have definitely lit a fire if the chimney wasn't full of twigs from the jackdaw nest. Much excitement this evening, when we visited some friends for the first time since lockdown. Since the guidance changed a couple of weeks ago we've had a few visitors here, but not been to anyone else's home. This was doubly daunting/exciting as it meant a trip to the city, where we've not been for nearly four months. It was a welcome bit of novelty sitting in someone else's garden, although strange at first. So nice to see faces in real life, rather than through a screen. Of course, us being out for several hours meant the chickens had to cope with being shut in the run together - we don't leave them roaming free if there's the remotest chance we'll be back near or after dusk, just in case. None of them were impressed - the older ladies at first refused to go into the run and had to be carried, and then all three of them set about chasing the new ladies and looking menacingly at them. We did what we could, creating all kinds of perches and through routes and places to hide for the new ones, and lots of different food and water bowls, and plenty of treats. Eventually we had to just trust that they'd work it out between themselves. We got back around 9pm - two of the older ladies were fast asleep in the hen house. Rusty and the three new ladies were out - I suspect Rusty had been in bed, but heard the car (and the new chickens) and came back out - she has form for doing that. All four of them immediately ran outside and started scratching around and behaving like it was first thing in the morning. We sat inside the run, and within five minutes all four of them had come back in, and the three new ladies went straight to bed. Rusty then arrived, and we picked her up and put her in the other end of the hen house with the two snoozy older ladies - no point letting her go in straight after the new ones and be stuck by the door, or wake everyone up with her jostling. After a few minutes, all was quiet.
I suspect they'll all be glad to be out of the way of each other again tomorrow though.
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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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