Wow!! Doesn't time fly!!!

It's been 2 months (well nearly) since I first started my blog, and it's one of those things that keep getting put on hold - "I'll do it tomorrow". Anyway, tomorrow's here now, so I'll try to remember what's happened, and hopefully add a few pictures this time too.

This is Rose on the left, and Daisy on the right when I took them for a day out at the allotment. As you can see, there was loads of weeds etc for them to scrabble around in and eat, but I also loosened the soil a bit so that they could dig out a few worms. The chooks have been down to the lottie with me a few times, the last one was August 14th when we had an Open Day down there. I took 2 of the "oldies" - Hazel and Myrtle, and 2 of the "newies" - Petunia and Daisy. They were admired by lots of visitors and had their photos taken for some publicity stuff. Hope it will encourage more people to do a bit of rescuing some ex-battery chickens for themselves.

I had a very sad day on 11th August, my beautiful chicken Rose died. I don't know why, though I suspect it may have been something to do with the fact that she nearly always laid eggs with no shells, or a very thin membrane around the egg. Maybe an internal infection of some kind? Anyway, it must have happened very quickly as I'd checked on them all and collected the eggs before going to the allotment at 10.30am, then when I got back at 12.30pm to check again for eggs, Rose had died inside the coop. I remember reading somewhere that you are not supposed to bury chickens in your gardens, but I thought "What the heck" she'd been one of the first pet chickens I'd ever kept and she was really beautiful, had all her feathers and was soft, silly, and an escapologist :) Anyway, I dug up part of the back lawn (well a weedy bit of grass) and dug a really deep hole to put her in. My mum had bought me a tiny Olive tree when she last stayed with me and as I'd been thinking of putting it in the garden anyway, I put it on Rose's grave so we'll always know where she is and will always think of her when we look at the tree.

Things are moving along slowly but steadily at the allotment. There's still quite a bit of deep digging to do to get out all the nettle roots. The brassicas are enormous!! How long that will last I don't know, there's loads of fat caterpillars that I'm fighting with. I keep spraying them with Garlic Fire Spray to kill them but for every 10 I kill, I find another 20. I should be able to start picking some climbing french beans in the next day or so providing the flipping rain eases off. The peas are starting to swell, and the pumpkins are starting to flower with some tiny embryo pumkins behind the female flowers, no sign of any male flowers opening yet though.