Ahead of my time

My early morning posting today -the Dowager House and Problems Down Below - was too early for Blogger which has registered it as being posted on Saturday! I am clearly ahead of my time. But it feels odd not having a blog dated with today's date, especially as it is the last day of May. So here I am again with ANOTHER post, you lucky, lucky people.

Anyway, we spent half an hour putting Miggo and Pumphrey into their new house and saying 'Lay your eggs in there,' because they were going frantic trying to get through the partition fence to get to the South Wing pod where laying usually occurs. And they spent half an hour getting out of their new house and saying 'but we want to lay them in the old house.'

We reached what is called an impasse - human against chicken, chicken against human. So we went to the allotment and left them to it, hoping they would get the idea before they burst with egg laying energy.

The polytunnel is now complete! I forgot to take my camera so pictures will appear later in the week. The polytunnel now contains 12 tomato plants, three jalapeno peppers and three aubergines. There is space for much more. It was very hot in the polytunnel. There was much perspiration occuring. I lost 10lbs and Andy lost two stones so we had to eat a lot of cake when we got home to recoup our strength. I planted some French beans and rocket, we ate the 4 strawberries that had ripened. Andy made a cunning net frame for the soft fruit and I made a not so cunning net frame to protect the newly planted beans.

At home, Andy checked the North Wing.
'They've laid their eggs!' he shouted with excessive excitement given we've been experiencing home grown eggs for over a year now, but I guess the novelty of this small miracle never wears off! So Miggins and Pumphrey got the message and followed their instinct to find a dark space in which to lay. Hurrah for instinct!

Also, Mrs Miggins's bottom looks fine. Nothing untoward poking out where it shouldn't be.

So there we go. Second post Sunday. The sun is shining, the weather is boiling, I must go and water the greenhouse plants which look on the verge of death if they don't get a dowsing twice a day. The pumpkin and squash plants are growing nicely and I need to decided what to do with my sunflower seedlings - I've got 24 and they are all over 6 inches tall now. Perhaps I could have a little sunflower field in the middle of the front garden. The bees would like that.

And here are Miggo, Tybalt and me basking in the sun! (And not flown into the fence in a freak flying accident in Miggo's case!)