Another day dawns.

What to do...,

Another mixed summer. Today is the village summer fête yet so far the rain has lashed down and the promised sun is merely peeking out from behind grey clouds every so often to raise our hopes. I have loaded up the washing machine, believing that the warmth of the sun is only an hour or two away and then everything will be basked in it's light. Here's hoping anyway.

So what can be done when the garden is boggy from days of rain? Well, I have been able to thin out the carrots and marvel at how badly my peas have done (although to be fair I did have to move them to make way for the fence although seeing how long that is going to take I am not sure we couldn't have left them where they were).

Although Shakira is broody and needs to be placed in the broody box we are loath to do that as the dog next door is still coming into our garden on an almost daily rate and will only alarm her. So we are just plucking her out of the nesting box every time she goes in there and hunkers down. There's no cruelty in taking her out as she will not lay any eggs whilst broody and her sitting on an empty nest is pointless. She does cluck away when Buck Bucky comes near her but as Buckster (Buck Bucky's other name, whilst we shorten Shakira to Shaksta or Fattie) is the top of the pecking order she takes little notice and soon Shakira gives up and gets on with her life (which consists of eating and brooding). Although we still miss Sweetie it is very easy having just our two original girls as they know their roles and Shakira can't pick on any other chicken. She's always been second in the pecking order, much to her chagrin as she would love to be 'top dog'. Buckster was the oldest chicken of the original four and because the others were so little she automatically became the boss although as she is such a calm bird it's always worked well. Shaksta though is a bit of a bully and weirdly enough always clashed with any silver pencilled chickens we owned. Sweetie and Pom Pom were both small birds in relation to the others but had such brave and audacious characters that they were happy to scrap with Shakira who, like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz is mainly bluffing it. Because the two remaining chickens live harmoniously together we have decided to keep just the two for now. If we introduce new ones there will be the usual argy bargy and I'm enjoying the peace and quiet (remember last year we had to split the chicks because the fighting got very serious between the outmatched Shakira and Sweetie. I did admire Sweetie's tenacity but she was so much smaller than Shakira and so it was always an unfair fight (not that I like any fighting of any sort). Sweetie's hydrangea is starting to bloom and the sunflowers which didn't get eaten are building up fat flower heads.

It's gorgeous seeing all the young birds feeding on the nuts and seed and there is always colour and movement in that corner of the garden. I haven't seen or heard the wrens since but I'm sure they are out there, just waiting to tell me off for straying too near to them.

I hope the sun comes out ; our summers seem to only last days nowadays rather than weeks or months and who remembers that glorious Queen's silver Jubilee year of 1977 when the sun seemed to shine non stop? If and when it does appear I so want to get in the hammock and feel the sun on my face.