Hobbies and Crafts

Have just found a swift by the kitchen window. Took it to an upstairs window and released it. It flew off and gained height so should be OK. Fortunately it didn't have any of those nasty louse flies on it.

It is a fairly regular occurrence in that few years go by without at least one swift getting stuck in the house or becoming grounded in the garden.

The people who now have chickens have a totally paved garden, I thought they liked to scratch around in the dirt. The run doesn't look very secure or solid either, don't think they will last very long ..... Too many foxes round here.

The other, empty, run and coop the other side are still there and yesterday Himself saw a big " you know what " crossing our lawn going between the gardens. Just like you had Jane. First time ever we have seen one in the garden. Don't want our garden to become a R* T run !!!!

Still horrible and wet and cold and miserable today.

M.

Hello everyone

Sunshine and no rain so far today, although there is rain forecast for later.
Washing already on the clothes line but I will be watching it closely.

Maryanna and Jane.... no noisy cockerels or chickens around here, so no horrible ra*ts thank goodness. A neighbour at the top of the road used to have a pigeon coop. He raced pigeons and the coop was spotlessly clean and painted various colours each year. Sadly this gentleman has died and his lovely wife in a care home now, but we remember him rattling the food tin for his pigeons to come back.

Now all we get in the road are the fat wood pigeons that look as if they are much too big to get off the ground and not the sleek, trim racing pigeons of years ago.

Maryanna.I am just keeping my fingers crossed our next door neighbours never have anymore Chickens.They were kept in squalor :-S :-S and never let out other than in a tiny run.They have a garden of just under 2 acres !!!.Shame on them.
We also had Chicken the other side for a time.The rats had a great time going between the 2 gardens(through our garden :-|)

The other neighbours have kept chickens for about six years, to start with they got half a dozen young ones and two turned out to be males who would try to outdo each other with their crowing, they drove us mad.

She didn't seem to notice it and it was only when a few people complained that she got rid of one of them and then the other. The hens were very noisy as well, every so often she would forget to put them away at night and there would be a rumpus.

As she was having her building work done she got rid of them a couple of weeks ago. We were just enjoying the relative quiet, although the builders were making up for it.

Last weekend there was a lot of hammering coming from the noisy neighbours and blow me if they didn't bring home some chickens. No sign of a cockerel so far but they are just as noisy as the other lot and certainly don't seem to like the Gulls.They were some of the ones who complained about the other side as well.

M.

LOL Maryanna ,It was you buying the new table and chairs that put the mockers on the weather :-D.
We don't have seagulls here .Well we do but they are just passing over high up .I'm glad we don't have Chickens next door any more,especially the Cockerel .They had 2 Cockerels at one point and they would start their crowing anytime from 3am onwards.
I slept in the front bedroom the other night and was woken about 7 with the sound od Crows.I looked out the window and in the horses field opposite was a Red Kite just standing there but surrounded by about 4 Crows with one that kept dive bombing it.
I guess there might have been a bit of 'food' on the ground that they were all after.

Kandj it is fascinating watching cat stalk something .If I see Thomas doing it I go and make a loud noise to try and distract him.But he is so focused,like in a trance :-S
I thin kthe rain over the last few days has stopped him going far so we have had no unpleasant surprises.But I am always on my guard and make sure the back door is shut when he is out.I have taken his collar with bell on off for a bit as he seems to be scratching his neck a lot(it's not fleas).I just think he can't groom his neck properly and being a long haired cat it can get a bit matted.So for now the birds need to be on extra guard :-D :-D

It's absolutely freezing down here, we have even had the heating on a couple of times this week.

We did some outside painting earlier in the week, decking and railings and an outside wall. Luckily the rain waited until later in the evenings so didn't all wash off.

Since Wednesday it has been cold and wet and windy and on the odd occasion the sun has come out it has sometimes even been raining at the same time.

I bought a new patio table and chairs and no sooner sat on them than it started to rain, so much for that.

We went into town earlier, instead of sitting outside the pub and having a nice cold glass if cider, we sat in a cafe and had hot chocolate.... In July !!!!!!!

How's the garden doing Vera ?

The Gulls have been making a racket, they start around 5am ...... Then they start next doors chickens off.

M.

No more evenings sitting on the patio in the sun if the forecast is anything to go by. wet and windy until at least mid August. Hope all the people who complained about it being too hot a few weeks back are now happy :-( :-(

Hello All

I spoke too soon as it has rained throughout the night and all day today. It certainly doesn't look like a typical July day or anything like a Summer day...... more like Autumn, in fact the leaves from the tree at the top of the road are blowing down here and ending up on our drive....... what on earth is that all about???

Nasty weather to be driving in Ann, but glad that you both are now home safely.
Always a job to be done in the garden, but makes for a relaxing scene afterwards.

Jane, we don't have goldfinches at all here. Sounds like you have our share ha ha
Hubby and I have been sat watching a cat opposite high on a fence and stalking the birds. He keeps crouching as if to pounce. We watched for about 20 minutes and then the cat must have got fed up and has disappeared. I was thinking of your cat Thomas. He obviously has much more patience than this one opposite.

I wonder how Vera is coping with planting up in the new garden. Won't need to water them in too much if this wet weather continues. Might suit Humphrey better.

Sun shining here now and quite warm in it too. Wet underfoot but the garden is looking good. Lots of dead heading needed though :-( :-(

Glad you are home safe and sound Ann :-D.It sounded like a rotten journey :-S
Still raining here.Hopefully tomorrow will be a better one.
Makes you feel really miserable when it's like this.

Well, we have driven down from the Lake district today, down the M6/M5 and allo but the first 40 miles or so it rained non stop, traffic was horrendous (although going North was worse, two very long traffic jams.) and spray off the road was nasty. Took us about half an hour longer than normal. And it is still raining here.

Well it has been raining all day here so far :-| and looks like no let up.

I have just counted 9 Goldfinch on my TV aerial :-D :-D.I have never seen so many !!!

Good morning all,

Thanks for thinking of me dealing with the horrible maggots. They are nasty wriggly things but although not a good experience, I didn't freak-out like I would with mice!

Dare I say we have had NO rain here in Yorkshire for almost a week. Each day the weather is forecast to be wet and there have been very dark rain clouds many times but then all blown away and blue sky, white fluffy clouds and all washing dried nicely.
The only down side really is that I have needed to water the lawns, borders and tubs daily but I'm not grumbling although the ground is so dry it could do with a heavy downpour, but at night would be a good time ha ha.

I have cleaned both bird baths and filled window and ground feeder so the bird feeding station is up and running for business as usual. Will see what turns up!

Maggots...ugh, horrid things. I can deal with them though if I have to. When our son was a lad he was very keen on fishing and used to try to sneak containers of maggots into the fridge without me noticing. We had a number of "discussions" about this.

Our council seems to be a bit behind the rest of the world. We have had fortnightly collections for a long while - blue recyclable one week and black non-recyclable the next. You can also buy a brown bin for garden waste though OH takes our little bit to the garden skip at the tip. The problem is with what can and cannot go in the blue bin. For instance glass can't be put in, but there is no separate collection for glass so we have to take it to the nearest bottle bank. Presumably if you are housebound you have to put it in your ordinary non-recyclable dustbin.

A couple of years ago I organised a group tour of the large recycling unit where our council's stuff goes. It was really interesting to see how the stuff is sorted and graded (mostly by hand it seems). The workers were all Eastern European, not because they were cheap but because the company could not get any local people to do the work. Our local unemployed don't want to dirty their hands or work too hard it seems, but they are the first to complain about foreigners taking "their" jobs.

Ugh, maggots. We have three wheely bins, brown for garden rubbish, green for non recyclable waste and blue for mixed recyclables which includes, paper, plastic and glass bottles etc, yoghurt cartons tetrapaks, meat and veg trays, foil, cardboard and card. We also have a weekly collection of food waste, the rest is collected fortnightly with brown and green together one week and blue the next. Had this for several years now and thankfully no maggots so far.

oooh Kandj ,Maggots !!...Now I cope much better with Mice lol.Maggots just give me the shivers.I suppose it just takes one or 2 Blow Flies to get in the bin and Boom....Maggots :-S :-S..Our bins are emptied fortnightly too.One week it is the recycling stuff ans the next the household rubbish.Some people have a small one for food waste I think .But we don't have one of those.3 wheelie bins.One Black,One Blue and one Grey .Then a red plastic box for Paper and a blue for glass,plastic etc.
Good job we have room for all of them !!!

Hello All

Woke early this morning and drew the curtain to see the back lawn with lots of hedge sparrows. A lovely surprise and a good start to the day. We have the occasional sparrow but I hadn't seen so many together for a very long time.

Bin emptying day today. I went to put the last bag in and had a nasty shock!
Maggots were inside the bin and the smell was just awful. I put on the gardening gloves and emptied the bin bags and hosed out the smelly bin with bleach. I put the few bags back in the clean dustbin after double bagging them and the bin men arrived soon after I had finished. Another hose inside and out of the bin and more bleach to make sure the horrible maggoty smell had gone .
We only have this bin emptied fortnightly and the hot weather doesn't help, but all is clean and fresh again. I will keep my eye on the inside of this bin in future.
What I thought was a good start for the day soon changed. Maggots make me feel itchy and dirty BUT I can cope with them so much better than MICE!!!

I hope everyone has had a less "eventful" day that I have today.

Not a lot going on in our garden either at the moment ,except a visit from the Green Woodpecker.
I am still getting Goldfinch sitting and singing on the TV ariel.They just don't seem to come down into the garden except for a quick drink from the birdbath.

Talking of TVs .We need to unplug ours tonight including all the leads for Sky,Broadband etc as we are having a new one delivered tomorrow :-D.I think a big dust and hoover too :-S

Hello All

Quite a nice morning so far, although a few rain clouds hovering nearby. The gardens really do need a good soaking, but I'm not wishing for heavy rain as I have a line of bedding and towels out needing to be dried.

Nothing very new around here lately, I kept shooing a big fat pigeon off the top of the window feeder yesterday. He comes often now but rarely eats the food but has managed to dislodge a window sticker, so I must go and re-fix this before it crashes.

I hope everyone is well and will have an interesting day today.