Another busy week. More rhubarb bought and planted, the last of the early crop spuds also planted whilst the vacant egg boxes have been filled with main crop spuds waiting to chit. The framework of the potager is now pretty much in place, apart from the legume tripods, and I’ve made a significant start on removing the blind daffs to make room for new bulbs. Meanwhile, the hens are living up to their Cheeky Girls names and making their own contributions to the task of gardening, some useful such as eating bugs and other creepy crawlies, others less helpful like scattering the rose bed mulch over the lawn, eating the newly sown grass seed, and trolleying the best winter primrose display we had.
The other pets are starting to fight back now. Megan is fascinated by them so I still can’t let dogs and hens loose at the same time, but I’ve just caught one of the cats trying to stalk them as well. It could be that Minto was putting on an act of bravado in front of me, as he is wont to do, but I had to haul him in to be on the safe side. I tried bribery to get the hens to go back in their run, but whoever coined the phrase ‘chicken-brained’ hadn’t met these two because they’re as cunning as foxes and work as a team. Several handfuls of soggy sweetcorn later, I’ve admitted defeat. Cats and dogs are confined to barracks with me and those two are, well, Gabriella is currently enjoying another dust bath whilst Monica is staring into the porch, waiting for me to go out with more sweetcorn. Meanwhile, the dogs are sitting mournfully on the step desperate to go out.
Just been out again to try and persuade them to go into the run as I feel sorry for the dogs and I don’t want to have to mop up any puddles. I got Monica in, somehow, but Gabriella kept evading me – she lets you get so close, then throws you a dummy with a shrug of the shoulder/wing - allowing Monica to escape again. The pair of them are now strutting around the lawn, chuckling.
1 Comment
March 31, 2009 at 7:44 pm
oh how lucky to have chickens. That reminds me so much of my childhood and of my dear mother. Thanks to her we had chickens through most of my childhood. I was delighted to see this post!