June madness

Luke said to me only this morning, "You haven't updated your blog" and I answered, "Haven't been able to garden this week". It's been wet, wild and windy all week; not a great start for June. Of course the plus side is I haven't been spending on plants although we did enjoy an English cream tea yesterday; a pot of tea and two large scones with strawberry jam and thick, clotted cream. Today we visited a different garden centre and found it was packed with cut price annuals. Because we've had such a dreadful half term week (which is when the garden centre would have sold their hanging basket plants) they have plenty of stock left. I ended up spending forty pounds on many bargains (trays were flying out of the store once reduced from £6.99 down to £1.00). It seemed wherever you looked there were people buying stacks of one pound tray loads.Luke insisted we took a photo of me in the back of the car with all the bargains! How embarrassing.

Morning glory.

The sunrise at 4.30.

Breakfast from the big girl's feeder. Poppy sneaking layers pellets instead of her usual growers pellets. She can hardly reach. It's like a child at a wedding, sneaking the dregs from a champagne glass and hoping no one sees you.

Have a look at Lola's shell shocked post as the photos of the shell less egg are loaded now.

AuOldricula.

Only small but very beautiful.

When is a plant a weed?

When it's in the wrong place - here, an acorn has thrown up a little oak - half a metre from our conservatory. That needed to come out straight away - not bad for a year's growth, is it?

The scourge of the gardenl  these little pieces, just snapped off from the main root system, have produced new shoots of bindweed. Left to it's own devices it will strangle any plant around. Pernicious little blighter, this one!

Pot bound.

I bought this agapanthus recently and when taken out of it's pot this is what the root system looked like - healthy but getting a little pot bound. There's nothing wrong with knocking the pot off if you think the roots may be too tightly packed, This plant is okay but it's important to carefully loosen the circling roots so that they can reach out into the soil and get their 'feet'. Five minutes after I'd teased them out they were ready for planting.

One plus four equals...., four?

So, last night was the evening Mega-Lola and her new homies met. We let her roam the garden for one last afternoon of grass eating and mischief making before having to catch her (no mean feat when she is broody) to drive her down to Gloucestershire. About eight pm we walked down to the new hen run with Lola in her travelling box and each chicken had a light spray with vinegar to lessen the difference in their scents. We picked Lola up amidst much flapping of wings and  handed her over to Wayne, her new owner. We wanted to make everything as smooth as possible for the transitional period and introducing hens at night when they are at their most placid is really the only time they should be mixed for the first time. Wayne popped her in to the hen house where the others had already found their usual places on the perch. Closing up the house we listened for any noise from them but it was silent - a good sign.

This morning we opened their pop hole and down came Wayne's original four followed by Mega, looking a little curious. Wayne's set up is very different to ours but the run is much bigger so there was space a-plenty which meant the chickens could peck around and give one another a wide berth.before the inevitable bust up. However - what happened next was totally unexpected and not in a good way.

One of Wayne's chickens, the smallest of his flock suddenly took a turn for the worst with two sneezes and a cough which produced a  shower of clear liquid from her mouth. This is something I'd only heard about, never seen first hand and one remedy for this almost certainly fatal problem is to tip the bird upside down to drain off the liquid. We think it is sour crop which is when food compacts in their crop and creates a fungus.

I went to grab the chicken but she had already stumbled and started fitting. I couldnt' get hold of her so Luke went to grab her to help her when she slumped over, closed her eyes and was dead. All in a matter of seconds.

Two minutes after this photo the buff hen had died.

Nothing to do but pick up her body and move her off the ground away from the other chickens. As her head fell forward a stream of liquid pooled on the ground. So, although Wayne had four chickens yesterday and took on a new one last night, by the time he turned up to check the hens he was still only the owner of four hens. It was really very sad but Wayne told us that chicken had not laid an egg for over a year and was poorly for a while. What a shame.
It seemed that Lola would be accepted quite quickly as she is bigger than the others so they aren't going to give her a hard time. I'm glad we were on hand to open them up this morning for some continuity and reassurance for her but I'm still rather sad about it all. I hope she settles in and see no reason why she won't. We chose our hens over her because she is too big for our set up but I still feel mean. Wayne has promised to keep us informed so I'll keep you in touch with how she is doing too.
A bit of a traumatic morning!