Out and about

Too busy being a busy bee in the garden!

Back soon x

Bletchley Park

Saturday's trip to Milton Keynes included a visit to Bletchley Park, the famous home of the Codebreakers, and "spiritual home" to one of my neighbours who used to work in intelligence somewhere in a past life!!

It was busy - very busy.  We should probably have expected that on the first Bank Holiday weekend of the year, when everyone thought they would have a day out on the Saturday.  We snaffled one of the last dozen parking spaces before they started to turn cars away from the main gate.  But the weather wasn't that great and it was definitely chilly as we wandered around the site.

The highlight for the YFG was the special exhibition associated with the film about Alan Turing, The Imitation Game.  The bombe [the name for the machine] below is the one they used in the film.

There was far too much to look at than I could manage in one visit.  There are hours and hours worth of exhibits to look at, display boards to read and artefacts to wonder over.  It is all incredibly interesting.  Those people contributed so much to the war effort and yet so little was really known about them.  

We did get 20% off my ticket, and the £23 odd I paid for the YFG and I to go in actually bought season tickets so we can go back for free within a year as many times as we like.  That sort of arrangement I like!  I support national heritage as much as I can, and this is definitely a site where there is still more work to be done on preserving the buildings [some of the huts are derelict] and there are more opportunities to share the history - I would love to see a bit of a living history workshop going on there with people re-enacting the period for example.  

I am certainly hoping that we will make it back to have another look before the year is out.

Easter Sunday

He is risen! 

He is risen indeed; Alleluia!

Happy Easter, friends x

Bye Bye Beryl

This is our Beryl.  One gorgeous chook, and a very brave one today too!

I let them all out at 7.30am including her, so that she could have a drink and something to eat.  At 9.30am, I picked her up and we had a last hold before I put her in a big box with some straw and corn, and we put her in the boot of the car.

Several hours later, after being taken down the A1 at 65mph and round and round the roundabouts of Milton Keynes and then over multiple speed bumps, I have to say that I was a little apprehensive about having a look in the box when we drew up at the lady's house in Bletchley.

I needn't have worried!  Within minutes, Beryl was happily pecking around in the run which the lady had prepared for her, and was looking quite interested in the other chooks living in the house next door.  The new owner is a very nice chicken-keeper, and her hens look to be in excellent health, so I am sure that Beryl will be in good hands.  She will be gradually integrated into the group which is very small, and they are all "special" in one way or another.  I have the lady's mobile number so I think we'll keep in touch!

Operation Downsize begins

Tomorrow is the start.  

Our first rehoming of chickens will begin in the morning, as we take Beryl to her new home in a village just near Milton Keynes.  She can't go in a flock of other hens as she has a funny flappy habit which is a sort of twitch; she is well in every other way and lays eggs in season. But I think she is too frail from that twitch to be in a large flock, and when I rehome the other chooks, I know that some of them will go to a home where there is a cockerel and a larger flock.  She is going to a lovely lady who has a special home for special chooks who need just that bit more TLC.  We will be delivering her to the lady's home and then going on to Bletchley Park.

Some of the other chooks will be moving on in the next few weeks, and then I need to find anther home for my special Gold Partridge Orpingtons with their cockerel.

When you raise them from this

and they grow into these

you want them to be looked after!  

When all of the girls [and boy] are in their new homes, I can set about redeveloping the land on which they have been living and making it more acceptable for the house to go on the market, possibly next year.  We know that the land is going to take some turning around and it won't be done overnight, so we need to be planning ahead a little.

It is not going to be made into a posh garden but probably just grassed over and kept neat.  I know it is going to involve a lot of lawn mowing in the future, but hopefully it will not be my responsibility for too long!  It will be a blank canvas if a gardener wants to do something more ambitious with it all in the future - and well fertilised too!

And let the holiday begin...

Yes, three hours on the phone over and it was H O L I D A Y feeling time!  

It was such a lovely day here in the Fens with the sun shining bright, that I went outside and first of all, pushed the poor lawn mower through the over-long grass!

The chooks loved scratching through the grass and pecking up all the wee bugs that they could find.

Then it was time to slap on some wood preservation treatment.  The conservatory had been destined to get this done last summer, but the FH ran out of energy and I ran out of time!  This sits in full sun and gets thoroughly baked and faded in the summer and so a paint job was well overdue.

A rummage in the workshop unearthed some Cuprinol in the FH's favourite shade of "Rich Cedar" which goes on orange and then fades a little.  This is a sort of before and after shot - it was all like the right hand side before I got started, and then, by the time I had finished, it looked more like the left hand side.  I also impressed myself by banging in a nail where one of the boards had come loose.  I'm not great with a hammer, but I am getting better!

The troughs that the FH made me for my tomatoes also needed a coat, so I thought I would do those as well, since I had to move them to get to the conservatory.

The YFG and I had a lovely chat with the EFG on the phone tonight, and the YFG made cakes too.

Tomorrow we have to do a little shopping as my dad and MB and UJ are all coming to lunch.  The vegetarian daughter wants to make a spinach and ricotta lasagne, so I have a list of ingredients that I also need to get for that.  Sounds interesting - but expensive, so we will be heading to Lidl first to get as much as we can in there.  

Hope you are all set for a great Easter weekend xxx

Looking ahead

I managed to escape any April Fool jokes this morning whilst being amused by several I came across from some of my favourite imaginative bloggers - Ang had a very believable one over at Tracing Rainbows, which I almost fell for until I looked at the lady's name a bit more closely and remembered how much Ang likes anagrams!  Then there were the purple strawberries at An English Homestead....

I do love the beginning of a new month, but I am putting off thinking about targets and aims for the month until the weekend.  I have Friday till Wednesday off work this weekend, taking advantage of the bank holidays as well as taking two days of my annual leave as well - but this means that my files are not likely to be called through by anyone else whilst I am off, so I am working hard this week, doing some hours of overtime to get through them all this week.  I am really looking forward to the break at the weekend, and taking some time to recharge my batteries a little - not necessarily by doing nothing, but by getting some gardening done, some seeds sown and some hoeing done!  Some fresh air and exercise will be lovely, and a little less sitting at the computer at work - bliss!

I am hoping to get a monthly meal planner done, as well as some rootling around in the freezers to see what is lurking in the depths!  Keeping our dosh locked up here is really important.  The savings will lose out a little this month as I think we need to get some more heating oil, and one of the fences is looking more than a little dodgy after all the wind we have had this week.  

The EFG will be here in just three sleeps - we are a little excited......more than a little!