RIP Mango

Sadly yesterday Mango the very poorly Guinea Pig was found to have diabeties. We took her  to our vets  where she stayed in overnight and had blood and urine tests. Sadly she was found to be diabetic but the prognosis was not good and we agreed she was too poorly to survive  :( and so it was decided it would be most kind if she was  put to sleep, saving her any more suffering

If she had been younger, maybe she would have had a better chance , but as an already elderly rescue guinea pig  sadly it was not to be.

RIP Mango lovely piggie.

Saturday - soapsuds and soil.

Hello lovely people!

Another cold but sunny day and yes, yet more blankets and sheets were washed and put on the line to dry today - this time I did our normal weekly bedding and towel hot wash and also washed and dried the very last king sized blanket. That is now all the spare bedding and blankets clean and packed away AND all our bed blankets now clean and fresh and a couple of those are also packed away for next winter. 

Next in the washing machine will be the curtains from the Pink/Guest bedroom - they can then be ironed and packed away until the room is completed. I am keen to take advantage of the sunny weather as we are generating lots of electricity and lots of hot water, so its a good cheap time to be doing a lot of washing :-)

The Guinea Piggle girls

went outside into their new run today!

They pop corned in delight and wheeked a lot, they were obviously very pleased to be outside in the sunshine with fresh grass! I thought about it and realised that they had not been outside on grass since Oct 2012 - they have only been out in the run inside the Polytunnel since then - so no wonder they were so happy ;-)

Have any of you joined the B & Q Club? I was having a look around for more gardening ideas and found out about it . You simply complete the sign-up form , including your contact details and a little bit of information about your DIY preferences and then you get an email with your membership number in - and away you go!

B & Q say on their website

Most members will receive a welcome email immediately, which includes your membership details. From time to time, there may be a bit of a delay for some customers. It's usually because loads of other people want to join too! So we're grateful for your patience.

The B&Q Club is card-less.  All you need is your 16-digit membership number to access its benefits.  No cards, no vouchers. You can show your membership number or bar code in any format – a printed copy, on your phone or written down on a piece of paper.  Simply present your membership number or bar code at the tills in-store to take advantage of any of The B&Q Club rewards. It's that simple. 

I got my membership details within 5 mins. I do shop at B & Q and so am always keen to get a discount offer. At the moment they are offering 

3 for 2 on smoke alarms & carbon monoxide alarms and 3 for 2 on all bedding plants

 

Hope you are all having a good weekend :-)

Taking stock

I have lots of tomatoes and peppers germinated, all the earliest varieties of tomato I grow (and grow to sell as plants) are up and thriving well. I will be potting them on into individual pots in the next week or so, burying the stems a little to encourage stem roots to form.

I am now on my second wave of seed sowing of peppers and tomatoes - these are the slightly later cropping varieties (mostly beef and coloured cherry tomato varieties)

I have also just been sent some intriugingly named Chocolate Sweet Bell Pepper seeds and have found a new supplier of Long Purple Aubergine seed, so some of those will be going into the hot box in seed trays later today,

Apart from that, and some salad and the Broad beans and Garlic in the Polytunnel not much new is yet growing, even though it is early March. After a few dry days and one day of glorious sunshine it has gone wet (again!) and cold here in deepest Herefordshire -  - so  I have been largely inside bathing the three Guinea Pigs in advance of treating them for lice - where they get the lice I do not know, but they do, every year!

As we don't want to risk the piggles getting cold after their baths, the girls will then spend the night inside our house, in one of the plastic hutches we keep as a spare, while their wooden house dries out from being scrubbed and de loused. Tomorrow they can be treated with lice killing drops on the back of their necks and then go back into their larger outside hutch again.  It is so sweet to watch them in the water having a bath, they wheek and put their heads back and grunt with pleasure when I rub the shampoo under their chins, but they also attempt to swim, even though the water is only an inch deep, presumably because they are programmed to respond to water in this way.  In my opinion they have all the fine buoyancy qualities of a brick - so I don't actually think they can swim at all (well, I don't think so, anyway - does anyone know? Can Guinea Pigs actually swim?)

And we have been washing the inside of the Polytunnel - amazing how much more light there is inside, now!
Thanks to Compostman for all his help (he does the overhead bits and so gets the armpit full of water! - my excuse is he is taller than me and I can't reach)

What have you been planting or doing recently?

Random shots around the garden

A good day to line dry some washing - I have a washing dolly in the kitchen to dry clothes on but I prefer to line dry if I can - you can't beat the smell of fresh washing!

Guinea pigs in their run in the Polytunnel.

Yarrow hen getting more feathers and her limp is getting better as well.

But oh! What a mess having her, Comfrey, Marjoram and Marigold  in the polytunnel! I will have to re arrange things, now some of the girls are getting feathers and are strong enough to go outside.

Packing up and making friends.

I am packing books out of the main sitting/hearthroom and having a clear out as I go ready for the major works to start in there.

I am amazed at just how many books on an eclectic mix of subjects we actually have between us. I am  doing a full count so I know exactly how many books we do have at Compost Mansions. I have not done this for several years!

Peter Rabbit is now back home having had "the op" and is recovering well. In 10 days or so he can have a doe as a friend so it will be worth it!

Guinea pigs now getting on very well, so the two new boys can stay with us and not have to go back to the small animal charity. Their names are Snowy and Chalky.

This is Snowy sniffing Fudge.

I have a meeting later to go to later on today in Hereford but for now am continuing to clear out the polytunnel, doing washing and packing away books on a rotating basis.



And what are you all doing today?

A very dull day indeed!

Horrible and damp here all day but I made a start on clearing the Poly tunnel

so having made some space I moved the various small animal runs inside the polytunnel
I now have Guinea Pigs plural as I got 2 more rescue ones,  in what was once the Broody Ark but is now GP central.

The two new boys have settled in with Fudge and apart from a bit of posturing and teeth chattering, all is well (phew)

Peter Rabbit also in the polytunnel in his run, he goes to be neutered tomorrow and when he has healed up is getting a rescue doe as a companion.

Compostman has laid a path to the hens today using some of the Freecycle slabs we got a few weeks back, which will cut down on the swamp like appearence of the garden I hope...we make numerous treks out to the hens and it is already a sea of mud.

Day in my life - June

Time for my June post in this series. Well actually I wrote this a week ago but have only just got around to tidying it up to post (oops - sorry!)

This is actually describing an exceptionally busy day for me even by MY standards, its a very busy time at Compost Mansions at the moment! I am out teaching or doing a Forest School/Environmental Education/Eco club/composting/gardening session somewhere most days in these last few weeks of the Summer term, on top of my normal schedule of tending animals, veg patch, polytunnel, house, family etc..AND the house is covered in scaffolding and we have people re-doing our roof at the moment..and Compostman is up on the scaffold painting or repairing wood work or doing other stuff...so its even more chaos here than usual!

So...a (very busy) day in my life in June 2009

Got up early (before 5 am!), had a shower and dressed in manky clothes to go and do stuff in the wood and with the livestock. I was expecting a party of 30 school children arriving with their teachers at 9 30 am for a session in the Wood, so it was going to be a very busy day.



This is the sound I listened to as I went outside....



As I was up well before anyone else, I made some tea just for me and drank it whilst in the wood to check on the log circle, the perimeter rope and the general area to make sure it was all still as in my risk assessment of the previous week. I ticked off items on my pre session checklist as I checked them. I also started to take things down to the Wood ( buckets, trowels, tool bags etc)



At about 7 am I opened up the polytunnel for the day and went to let out the hens. It was a very quick session with them this morning as I was very pushed for time, however I was rewarded with some lovely eggs from 2 of the girls.

I said hello to Compostman who had now got up, we made tea and toast, I did morning stuff with Compostgirl ( hair, book bag, check homework etc...), I got changed into my Forest School clothes ( slightly tidier versions of the manky ones) steel toecap walking boots, rucksack with emergency kit, consent forms, risk assessments, other paperwork, waterproofs etc then I greeted my friend T, a fellow Forest School Leader, who was going to join me in the Wood doing the morning session with the party of schoolchildren we were expecting.

The builders arrived and Compostman took Compostgirl to school, while T and I used the wheelbarrow to take first aid kit, water, towels, loo roll, wash basin, soap, tool bag, craft items, buckets, clay from the wood, and other assorted stuff down to the wood to set up for the morning. I came back to the house and quickly ate toast and had a second cuppa, then breakfast stuff cleared away I went to gather up the last of the required stuff for the Forest School session I was about to embark on. The 2 other practitioners involved with the morning arrived and were greeted and then we all went down to the log circle site.

The children arrived at about 9.30 by coach, along with at least 7 members of staff plus a parent and the next 3 hours were spent with all of us having huge fun in the Wood, playing games, exploring, making dens, finding treasures, running around exploring, having a campfire and making popcorn.







The children went back to school by coach at 12.30 with their teachers and the rest of us sat round the fire and I made a hot drink. We discussed the morning, reflected on how it had gone and relaxed a bit around the fire.



Everybody left, I had a quick lunch with Compostman and then spent the next hour or so tidying up, which involved delights such as emptying and cleaning out the toilet (its just a commode type, so I can tip the contents down the loo as we have a septic tank so I really didn't want to use a chemical toilet!) taking everything back to the house, cleaning and checking tools, first aid kit etc. In the long term I will build a composting toilet and a low impact building but for now I make do with a tarpaulin shelter and a toilet tent.

At about 3 pm I sat down for 10 mins with a mug of tea, having made a round of drinks for the roofers and builders, and did a catch up with my emails.



Then Compostgirl came home, very excited and tired from a long hot day at school. She wanted to go down to the wood to see what had been going on, so after a drink, snack and a change of clothes we wandered into the coolness of the wood. We made some mud monsters and I made the Green Man and Summer Lady to honour the Solstice the next day.



The builders went away for the day and we all had tea, then I did some work in the garden (weeding and planting out more beans, digging potatoes) and polytunnel (watering, taking off side shoots from tomato plants, planting more salad stuff)

By 8 pm I was very tired, so I did bedtime with Compostgirl, got the hens back in the Orchard early and then had a shower. Compostman had been doing stuff on the roof and in the loft and workshop all this time and came soon came to have a shower as well. We watched HIGNFY on BBC1 and the News and then not surprisingly I went to bed! And not surprisingly Compostman wasn't long behind me as he is working very hard doing stuff with the loft and the roof as well and has been putting in some very long, hot days of work. I slept very well that night, I can tell you!

So, a long day but a very satisfying day, the Forest School activities at my site went smoothly, I got good feedback for the site, the teaching staff and children really loved what we all did and all in all it was a good day. The building work is also going well and Compostman is very tired but happy with the progress of stuff.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my day, I have certainly enjoyed doing it

Lets make her do some work!

I have had an infested, plague rid sort of day ...have discovered
Fudge the Guinea Pig is crawling with lice ( yuck...poor thing!) which he wasn't before I opened a new supply of Hay for him when I cleaned hin out 2 days ago.........

AND the lice are all over the porch, on the floor, windows, blanket which covers his run...etc

AND Babs the new Rhode Rock is poorly and I am off to the vets with her in about 5 mins..( she is new, was bought for lots of money last week and is very sweet and I am worried about her...)

BUT I can't take her to the Vets until after I disinfect the cat carrier because that's where I stuck Fudge the GP, after his bath to get rid of the lice, whilst I disinfected his cage, the porch etc..

Have done NONE of the stuff I wanted today...zip, zilch, nada........ I PLANNED to make some chutney and dehydrate, blanch and freeze some veg ,

But I DID get to help Compostgirl make a puppet out of scrap materials...:-)

later on tonight....

Babs the Hen IS poorly..my instincts ( always good!) were right..she has a respiratory virus and she and ( as a precaution) Goldie are now isolated in a cat carrier ( insulated against the cold and the rain and with lots of straw inside) inside the Guinea Pig run..with antibiotic in their water. So no eating the eggs from THEM for 10 days!


And I am lighter by £11, and have further supplies JIC the other hens start sneezing, also.

I am NOT happy as MY hens didn't have this.....and I have only just bought in the 2 new ones.....

Ah well...is today ( in the doing stuff by the moon calender) a run compostwoman ragged with cleaning out/de lousing/spraying hens bums purple/going to the vets/cleaning up lice etc etc Day ..or what?



I TOLD you she had a purple bum!





I need Alkyhole and LOTS of it so will retire to the sofa with red wine I think!

Busy in the garden

Today, despite having wrenched my right shoulder badly yesterday I had to get on with animal chores. Cleaning out the Hens was one job which couldn't wait, also checking their little feathery bums for signs of Fly strike ( YUCK!) Fortunately no fly eggs or maggots were visible, but at this time of the year it IS important to keep on looking....otherwise the eggs hatch, the maggots VERY QUICKLY eat their way into the living flesh and ....uggg.....

I also had to clean out Fudge the Guinea Pig and check him over too....and he too was ok.

Having done THAT it was time for tidying up around the polytunnel.

The back of the polytunnel, where I do my potting on in the summer...it needed a tidy up!

The garlic drying inside the polytunnel it has been very poor this year, sadly. The Sweetcorn plants went outside into a raised bed to join the plants which have been out there for a month (ooops)
The Aubergines , yum more for supper I think!
My Sweetheart melons, aren't they doing well!

These are Red Cherry, a variety I have not grown before. The organic seed was a free gift from "Organic Gardening Magazine" earlier in the year.
Cucumber plants , producing well at this time of the year!
Peppers growing fast

Tidied up!














Oh and the hens laid 4 eggs today but I have not yet picked the produce....

I had a snooze instead.

Fudge the Guinea Pig joins the blogging world.

Here are a few pictures of Fudge the guinea pig investigating how the computer works.

Next thing he will have his own blog I expect!!

More pottering in the polytunnel

Yesterday (Fri) I tidied up more in the polytunnel...aided by the 2 hens...it was pouring down here and the drive flooded...
So I enticed them into the polytunnel where they had a fun, dry few hours eating slugs and ants eggs etc....
The hens will NOT go in, even when it is like that!

I got a lot of tidying up done , too and it was VERY companionable with the hens werking and crooning at me and the guinea pigs wheeking.....
I put the trays out to be washed in the rain..why waste water when it is falling from the sky??
I also got some mint and strawberry runners packaged up to send to a friend.

Then the rain turned to snow.


Will post more later..I have to go and get warm and later on watch Jamies Fowl Dinners....

more (un)revelations about the crap way we treat animals in this world....

This was written on Fri butwas posted the next day because our ADSL line went down due to flood water..(sigh) ...one of the slight downsides to being rural..( do NOT get me started about BT!!)

Pottering in the polytunnel...

After I posted yesterday about giving the Guinea pigs a cuddle because they couldn't go out in their run, I had a 4am "smack on the head" moment...why on earth didn't I put their run in the largely empty ( at this time of year) polytunnel??

So we did.


The polytunnel needs cleaning up now, ready for the ( rapidly approaching) growing season.


So compostgirl and I had a bit of fun this afternoon, cleaning pots, putting stuff in the wheelbarrow to go on the compost heap, cutting dead stuff off plants overwintering etc etc

And then a pair of feathered helpers turned up to join in!!

A (quite) busy day.....

Well today has been a moderately busy day here at Compost Mansions.

We all got a very nasty flu type virus the weekend before Christmas...and it lasted over 2 weeks and rather spoilt the holiday season for us. I and Mr cw are getting better at last and can do stuff again....DD is STILL all wan and wobbly and is still off school!!

But today I FINALLY went out and did some jobs which have been awaiting my attention for a week or more, I have been out in the freezing cold outside doing stuff in the garden and Polytunnel! And have sorted out the hens....their Eglu run now has a thick layer of leaf mold and bark chips over the top of the weldmesh, I cleaned the Eglu out , changed the roosting bars ( I have 2 sets so one is in the wash, so to speak)....and I dumped a wheelbarrow of bark chips from the last tree we cut down on the veg patch for the hens to spread around for me...they LOVED IT :)

I also cleaned out the Guinea Pigs hutch and gave them a cuddle..( well they can't go outside in the run as its too cold, and I felt sorry for them)

In between all this I entertained compostgirl, who is improving fast and looks much better..but is still pale and tired and wobbly...we will keep her off school until we have a day of normal eating, playing, behaviour etc...as this virus has REALLY knocked her for six!!

I had to laugh today !! When I asked mr cw why he hadn't given me a cuddle his reply was

" well you have been either dripping wet with rain and/or covered in dirt all day!"

and I realised he was right!! When I was in middle of putting more chips and leaf mold in the hen run, the heavens opened on me...I was already wet so carried on, and then one of the hens came and sat on my knee....all mucky and dirty.... still they were very happy with the new pile of stuff to furtle around in!!

So I have changed my clothes and cleaned up a bit...and am just going to watch the third instalment of HF-W "Chicken Run" on C4 , with pasta and some wine. Expect there will be something in it to make me shout at the TV ; )

Guinea Pigs!

Coffee
Fudge














Well the other adition to the livestock last month were .....Guinea pigs!
Two young male piggies, called Coffee and Fudge. Coffee is still very shy and nervous, but Fudge was easily coaxed to us with food from the very beginning....he also likes to cuddle up under my chin and makes little whickering noises...

So we now have 2 hens, 2 guinea pigs and 2 cats....
(Some woolly lawn mowers I think next, to cut down on fossil fuel use when mowing all that grass....ha ha)

Catch up!

Well, sorry I have not posted for SUCH a long time, but it is a VERY busy period of the year, and a lot has been happening in our lives, as well. The first exciting news is that we now have HENS! Mr CW gave me a magnificent birthday present of an Eglu and 2 beautiful hens,


a Gingernut Ranger called Ginger (!)










and a Mrs Pepperpot called Henny-Penny.









They are beautiful and getting very friendly (especially when I appear calling "chook, chook, chook" and giving them mixed grains......

We await our first eggs with eager anticipation - Miss CW goes and checks EVERY MORNING to see if the girls have "obliged" yet...but I guess they are a little too young just now.....but...SOON!

I must say that Omlet were absolutely briliant in every respect, the ordering, the delivery ( 6 days early!) the instructions and everything - I cannot fault them at all.......

and the delight in having hens again...hearing them croon at me, and seeing them run around, flapping in excitement at my feet, is delightful.....I DO like HENS!