Good Fortune

You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family...or so the saying goes. Well in my case, I have the good fortune of having a most excellent brother, and he has the good fortune of benefitting from my good taste when it comes to selecting his birthday gifts. He's actually knocking on a bit now, so it seemed only right to push the boat out this year and get him something meaningful. (He'd also actually remembered my birthday this year for the first time in aaaaaaaaaages) We bought it late-his birthday actually being at the beginning of June-and he's still going to have to wait a bit longer to receive it since it's much too delicate to entrust to the vagaries of the postal system. Revealing it this way also gives him time to prepare a suitable display area in his home. As you (and now he) can see, the figure is of a hunting man accompanied by dog. The man is mysteriously wearing lipstick. Perhaps this is traditional. The dog is of indeterminate gender. My brother likes these kind of dogs although they also stress him, and he also goes shooting hence this gift. We got it at our local Vide Grenier (over-priced boot fair) a few weeks ago. It was on the first stall we stopped at not least because a) it was too hot too look around much, and b), the stall holder was quite pretty and so M found her wares to be of particular interest. The figurine had a tag attached saying 15 euros. M managed to bargain this price down on the basis of damage (a missing gun). If you ask me, he was still robbed. The piece is labelled underneath 'The Leonardo Collection' so likely to be of some value I feel. My brother is pretty canny with finances and investments so will appreciate this aspect of his gift. Here, the first picture shows a standard view of the figurine. The second a side view (unfortunately the missing gun gives the impression the hunting chappie is doing something rather odd). It also shows how recklessly I've placed the figure with a big overhang from the shelf. It could easily have fallen and broken. I honestly didn't realise this at the time.The final pictures here show M's current progress at manufacturing a replica gun. So far, the end result is pretty effective-and done with only a cheap scrap of timber and two (used) toothpicks. So there it is! I don't know when this gift will get to you, big brother, but it's well worth waiting for as you can see. yee ha! I bet that's cheered your day up no end!!!!...and you thought we'd forgotten you!

Teasing the Cockerel

...and here is Wellington, our youthful cockerel who is now approaching maturity. He has won the day over Napoleon, the bantam cockerel, and Napoleon has had to return to our neighbours', from whence he came. Being young however, Wellington can be over-exuberant with his love-making and so, every afternoon, I let the girls out on their own for a peaceful saunter. They can be seen doing this in the distance in one of these photos, expoing their feathery bottoms-two white, two brown, as they bend over to peck at some tasty morsel. This drives Wellington absolutely crazeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee with frustration, as he paces up and down beside the fence, waiting for their return in the evening. Yee-ha. Go girls-that's Girl Power for you!

harvest home!

Directly behind our garden (the boundary being the wire fence), is the hay field...and on Saturday, after a series of checks, and much rumbling of heavy vehicles, all was ready to do the harvest...which when it came to it, hardly took any time at all. I always find it exciting for some reason-even though the serried ranks of sweating men with scythes have been replaced with these machines which can do the job quicker than you can say 'giant haystacks'. The little tractor in the second picture is towing a yellow trailer. When this gets full of the hay which the big green and white machine is cutting, the yellow trailer thing suddenly splits itself in two at the middle, and spits out one of those round haystacks. Marvellous.

Counting Your Chickens

A lot has been happening recently...but since our human lives are really pretty tedious, it's best to focus on the chickens. The neighbours bantam cockerel, Napoleon, has joined our girls-and even been roosting with them overnight for the last couple of nights. His fancy feathered tail can be seen here. I have also 'rescued' another chicken-who has turned out to be a cockerel. So there will be trouble at the coop before long. Wellington (the new cockerel) is trying out his cock a doodle doo at the moment which currently sounds like a gurgling sink. Once he crows for real, it will be war between the two of them, or so I'm told. Currently. Napoleon has a harem of all four chickens, whom he looks after very conscientiously, and Wellington has to make do with raping the ducks when they can't run fast enough.

Here, the chickens are trying their new night-time game which is trying to see how many chickens will fit on the roost before it breaks. It is already bending. The posters in the background, which some of them are studying, have their pictures and names on them. I hope they might learn to read one day.
On a more serious note, some of them have deveoped a discolouration of their combs. They have no other signs of illness so I am hoping this is just a temporary affliction. The traditional approach to sick chickens here is a firm hand grasped around the neck and tightened. it is cheap, and effective. They have been warned...

A baby kestrel

It's been busy here recently since the sun has finally come out, and many things have started growing. Our neighbours have put their horse and foal back in our field for extra grazing-they did check first! As it happens, it's really useful to have the grass kept down. The French around here must think we're all mad for using lawnmowers-after all, you could have an animal grazing the grass which you could eat or sell later on. At any rate, it does not look as if the french use their grass to practise football on if the world cup is anything to go by...Our other neighbour also had a return of the baby kestrels on his window ledge. Sadly, the one which was pictured here probably left the nest a little too early-but there were at least two others left looking over the edge and trying to judge the right moment to leave the nest-it's never an easy judgement-even for a little bird...

A Broody Duck

One of our ducks has gone broody. I had thought this might happen to one of the chickens, given that they now have a cockerel, but no-things always happen a little differently here, and for us, it's the duck. For the last few days, we've been lifting her off the favoured egg box after about 10.30, and shutting her out of the coop. Sometimes, I've just lifted the nest box up vertically to turf her out (and yes, tesco's do deliver their shoping orders in very similar baskets), and at other times I have called upon any ill-prepared sandal-wearing man in the vicinity to do the deed, whereupon he gets his toes pecked. Today, I gave up. I have lost out to the forces of nature. Whenever I go in the coop, this duck gives out an odd chirruping noise by way of a warning. She is currently sitting on 3 hens eggs which are probably fertile, and one duck egg which i don't think possibly can be. I've looked on the net, but still can't see any advice for what happens if a mother duck does hatch baby chickens. Will she try and take them on the pond??? For the moment, I'm just amazed at her commitment. Usually, the ducks are very sociable and wander all around the place, and especially love to know what's going on in the house, but now she just sits there all alone, in the darkness of the coop, gazing at nothing, and just listening to the buzzing of a fly as she sits and patiently waits...and waits...and waits....

The Gaspers

Run fast, little teckel. Run fast and run true. Run 'til your small heart beats like a drum inside your deep chest. Run until your breath pushes your chest in and out like bellows.

For here in the woods, the Gaspers live. I have just seen one behind you, his matted hair fouled with the slime of a thousand slugs, his breath as putrid as the deepest swamp, and his yellow eyes swivelling constantly round in search of his prey. I can hear him crashing through the trees and snapping the twigs in the forest as he chases you. He can run fast on his bandy legs. If he catches you, he will cut off your legs. Already your legs are just stumps because long ago, one of your ancestors, Ruben the Digger, dared to dig in this part of the woods. When a Gasper came upon him, he was angry with Ruben for digging so hard, and he started to chase him. Then he tripped in the hole which Ruben had dug. Enraged with pain, he caught the dog, and cut off his legs so that he could dig no more. Later that night, the wood fairies came and found the poor suffering dog, and with their woodland magic, they were able to sew his paws back on again with tendrils from ivy leaves, and they placed spiders webs around the wounds to help them heal. But, before he had left,the Gasper had sat and gnawed upon Ruben's legs, and they were too badly damaged to be replaced. This, as you know, is how the teckels came to have such short legs, and this is also how the Gaspers came to have bandy legs and bad tempers. It's the reason why the Gaspers hate teckels even more than tax officers, or social workers, or MP's or even bankers. So keep on running little one, and do not stop until you have crossed the bridge and run out of the forest and safely into the sunshine.