Z will have four fewer beaks to feed (which is good news)

The gravel has become very weedy.  There’s not enough depth of gravel to make clearing it by hand possible without making quite a mess, apart from the work involved, so there wasn’t much option but to use weedkiller.  There is a pump-action 20-litre spray.  Unfortunately, once it was full, it was found that there were little cracks in the pumping mechanism and it was a bit leaky.  So we loaded it onto a trolley and Stevo pulled it around as he sprayed.

I biked 250 yards down the road to the convenient store (this is not a convenience store, it’s just nearby) and found that they had a replacement, at a truly shocking price, some £93-something.  I declined and went into the town instead.  Although there were ones at half that price or less, they were smaller and, though good quality, were really more than I wanted to pay.  So I bought a new watering can for £5.99 instead and Stevo has used that.  The tennis court is also alarmingly weedy – even when we’ve kept the gravel under control, that has to have weedkiller put on it.

I kept the chickens in, of course, but one was running around looking anxious.  She was the one who didn’t come home last night and she was hungry.  So I let her in – but later, Stevo said that he’d come across another one and let her in too.  There was only one other, so I went to check the eggs (the nest in the compost heap where I’d left her four eggs) and she’d abandoned them.  There were nine in the nest, so I picked them up.  I’ll throw the four away.  At least, now, I don’t have to make a new coop, though I’ll still need something for the chicks to go in when they’re a bit bigger, they’ll be a bit short of space where they are.

My friend Mary came over for coffee – or rather for tea, which we drank under the shade of the plum trees on the lawn, where it was nicely airy.  She’s just home from a visit to her parents – her unmarried younger sister lives with them and all three are in denial about mother’s Alzheimer’s.  In excellent physical health, she hasn’t been to the doctor in years and she, while getting increasingly muddled, tries to keep going as she always has.  It’s very sad.  However, Mary and I had a good chat, as we always do, and afterwards I took her for a quick lunch at the excellent local café.  I had a carrot and caraway pâté, which was tasty and unusual and she had a sandwich with hummous and sunblush tomatoes, which she said was really delicious.  I thought it was great to have imaginative food for vegetarians – vegans, indeed – as well as all their other stuff.

I’ve ordered a new sprayer, the watering can isn’t ideal, though it dealt with the matter for now, I hope.  I bought various other bits and pieces while I was about it – I’m not really that great at shopping and rarely do it, in shops or online.

Tomorrow, it’s the last governors’ meeting of the school year and also my final one as chairman, after six years.  They’re laying on lunch beforehand – you can see how my reputation spreads, when they want to thank me, they naturally think of food.

 

2 comments on “Z will have four fewer beaks to feed (which is good news)

  1. sablonneuse

    it’s so long since I popped in that I had to log in again. Gosh you have been busy. Glad to hear you are becoming fluent in ‘cat’ and hope all the mother hens and their babies are doing well.
    I have one hen wth two babies and another one due to hatch her remaining eggs (she has thrown most of them out) any day now.
    Hope you and all your menagerie are surviving the heatwave without too much discomfort. xx

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      They’re all fine, they’ve got a coop with a wire run but it’s too hot for them out there at present so they’re mostly indoors. I check on them several times a day to be sure they’ve got plenty of water. I don’t mind the heat, I can’t stay in the sun for too long but you don’t hear me complain about it!

      Reply

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