10 things

Bertha

• Bertha is broody.  Whoever opens the eglu door gets treated to a display of her inflating herself like a pufferfish, and shouting irritably at us.  
• I went to Kew and took dozens of photos of roses, as I do every year.  They smelled incredible - I wish there was some way to replicate precisely that smell of rose.  There isn't, but Crabtree & Evelyn's rose water comes pretty close.  I love this stuff and splash it around quite liberally.

• My parents have acquired some hens, which is very exciting.  My mother, and her father before her, used to keep hens when I was growing up and I am sure that is why I keep hens too.  My Grandfather kept urban hens - long before such a phrase was used - in the grounds of the rather grand vicarage in Sheffield where he and my Grandmother lived when I was small.
• I am undecided about what sort of birthday cake to make myself this weekend.  Perhaps I should ask Olivia to make one for me?  Or am I too much of a control freak about my own birthday cake?
• I start a placement with a local District Nursing team next week.  I am excited - this is going to be very different to all the hospital placements I have had so far.
• I am still loving the running.  This pastime is a keeper, for sure.
•  On Sunday, Graham ran seven 5K Parkruns in one day as part of the Parkrun Longest Day event.  He did the North East London loop, and I joined him for the last race of the day at our local parkrun on Hackney Marshes.  Graham usually runs 5K in around 20 to 21 minutes; my fastest 5K to date has been around 33 minutes, and that included some walking.  I wondered if he'd already run six 5K races whether he might be going slow enough on the seventh for me to be able to run with him for a little bit?   In the end he very sweetly offered to pace me for a 30 minute run (meaning that he ran at precisely the speed required to finish a 5K race in 30 minutes, and all I had to do was run with him).  I wasn't at all sure I could do it, but being paced (and being exhorted by Graham to "focus" and "dig deep" in rather a severe tone as we ran) made such a difference - I ran the whole thing in a time of 30 minutes and 25 seconds.  I was elated and told anybody who would listen that the experience was "harder than childbirth" - but on reflection I think that was endorphins speaking.  It wasn't really harder than childbirth.



New PB!




Red faced, after our race

• I go bright red in the face when I run.  Is this because I am unfit or just because I go bright red in the face when I run? I am unsure.
•  I have made a rhubarb crumble every week for the past three weeks.  All of us are wild about rhubarb.
• There is still a little bit of the rhubarb and peach one I made this past weekend, waiting in the fridge for my lunch today.  Sometimes I love a day at home by myself.

Chickens and eggs

My new little hens are all settling in very well.  I have introduced new hens to the flock many times, and know that it is normally a loud and quite vicious process, but for some reason this time, the eglu and run have been very harmonious.  No shouting or bullying or pecking at all.  I am not sure why; perhaps because my older two are now very elderly - nearly 8 years old - so they are not as bothered about the arrival of three young upstarts as they would have been a few years ago.

The older ones have not been laying properly for a few years now - Maud not at all, and Queenie only intermittently. However, with the arrival of the new ones, Queenie has rediscovered her egg-laying powers and is currently giving me an egg a day.  Ethel, the young, black, maran-cross hen is also now laying every day.  Bertha and Adelaide look ready to lay, but haven't produced anything yet.

So most days, this is what is waiting for me in the nest box.

 

An enormous pale egg from Queenie, and a little dark one from Ethel.

On Saturday I used one of Ethel's little eggs to make digestive biscuits.  The recipe (from the wonderful Peyton & Byrne baking book) called for "1 small egg", so I knew immediately which one to use.  I cut the biscuits out with my chicken cookie cutter, and had a whole flock of buff-coloured chickens, cooling on my kitchen table.  I decided I wanted chocolate digestives, so I painted the chickens with melted Green & Blacks milk chocolate (thereby making them more Ethel-coloured, which was fitting).

I'd not made digestive biscuits at home before, and was delighted to find out that they are very quick and easy, and satisfyingly authentic.  It's a good job Ethel's laying regularly, because the biscuits only hung around for a couple of days. Yum!

In the school and university holidays

New things:

• The new sense of optimism and energy in our high street these days; Graham and I like stopping off for an espresso on our way out, if there's time.

•  Three new hens! Including this blue-egg laying beauty, who we've called Adelaide.  They are settling in very well.

•  The novelty of having early mornings to myself - the children now sleep in until nearly 10am if left to their own devices. 

• Visiting the Cutty Sark in its newly restored splendour at Greenwich.  It was a fascinating day, and the boat has been restored brilliantly.  We all loved the 'audience' of figureheads at one end of the boat.

•  New tea towels from Snowden Flood, who designs such beautiful things. 

And amongst all this newness, there is still the stability of well-known, familiar things. Days out with old friends and with grandparents. Watching some good tele.  Favourite meals.  Baking with friends.

Good times.

Winter and woollens

I've used Silverpebble's and Thrifty Household's excellent Making Winter project to start something I've been meaning to do for a while: taking time out of my day, every day, to stand or sit outside for ten minutes and drink a cup of tea or coffee.  I think even in the very depths of winter I would get enjoyment from wrapping up warmly, stepping out into the garden and watching what's going on around me as I sip a hot drink and think about what needs to be done with my day.

Today I looked at the lavender bush where I saw Mr Toad back in May.  The lavender bush did pretty well this year but I realised that I still need to cut off the dead flower stalks.

I checked that the hens were happy under their new rain cover.  They get a new one every winter, and I spend each spring and summer looking for perfectly clear shower curtains that I can use.  Gill found this one for me in the Habitat closing down sale.

I marvelled at the amount of cherry leaves that had fallen in just one day since I last cleared them all up.  I love how they look on the green grass, but if I leave them there, we will have no grass next summer...so every week or so I rake them up.

And I drank my cup of tea and rejoiced at my toasty warm shoulders and wrists.  As well as Making Winter, there's something else that has caught my eye this month: Wovember.  This is Kate Davies' and Felicity Ford's campaign and celebration of 100% wool.  I was as appalled as Kate was to discover, when I read her blog last month, that an item of clothing that contains no wool whatsoever can still legally use the word wool or woollen in its description.  Wovember has been set up as a way to highlight this issue, campaign to change it, and at the same time celebrate everything 100% wool.

My shawl is knitted from sock yarn, which is a wool blend of 75% wool and 25% polyamide.  This enables socks and shawls and anything else knitted with it to be subjected to lots of use and regularly chucked in the washing machine.  My armwarmers are 100% wool, from merino sheep, and I just love them to bits.  They are incredibly warm, and perfect for pulling over my hands as I clutch my early morning cup of tea.

Busy-ness

So sad not to be eating up his Granny's mince pies, but more than ever in need of one to lift his spirits, he decided to make his own.

He made 24, but needed to make sure they were of a standard worthy of his Granny, so he subjected one to Quality Control.  Chef's privelege.

O busied herself with Hama beads.

And I wrapped presents and then ventured out in the snow to put more straw in the eglu.  Although I've had them so many years, I still can't quite believe that the chickens will be okay in these icy temperatures.  But they are absolutely fine. Beatrice is even still laying me an egg most days.

And I stopped to admire the ivy hedge, weighed down with snow, glittering in the sunshine.

Chicken politics

The night before the new ones arrived I had a dream that all my chickens turned into swans and turkeys and started beating the crap out of each other in the back garden.

Maybe I was anxious about introducing two little teenage hens into my flock of grand old dames.

But look at them - they are so sweet!

What could possibly go wrong?

10 leftovers my hens love to eat

• Porridge
• Last night’s cooked vegetables
• Rice
• Couscous
• Pasta (they like their carbs, these girls)
• Apple cores or a whole apple (but they won’t eat just apple peel)
• Raisins
• Grated cheese
• Sweetcorn
• Plain popcorn

Well they might like the sweet or salted versions too, but I’m not that indulgent. Sheesh.

A video of my hens at breakfast time today. Queenie is the supremely fat (and greedy) black and white speckled one at the back. Daisy is the white one. She's the leader of the flock, and looking a bit smaller than the others because she's just finished her moult. Maud is the fluffy grey one at the front.

A week in my shoes :: Day 5

No shoes today. Just some very, very cold toes as I ran outside in the snow, wearing only sandals and pyjamas to feed the hens this morning. I threw some corn in to them, ran back inside and didn't venture out again all day. Brrrrrr.

Small things

For the past week and a half I've been on holiday and at home, away from my usual working world of Bank of England regulations, accounting standards, foreign exchange provisions and tax adjustments. I have slowed right down, rested and spent time by myself and with G and the children.

My time has been filled with small, simple things:

• Spending my evenings quilting in front of the television. I've been enjoying old Sex and the City re-runs, Paul Merton in India and the Gadget Show. Also a very spooky atmospheric DVD of The Orphanage, which I'm still not sure if I enjoyed or not.
• Raking up the cherry leaves in the back garden and feeding worms to the hens (I don't let them out of their run in the autumn, as they just head straight for the mounds of leaves and kick them everywhere in twittering exuberance).
• Taking time to do things with the children that I would normally rush through, or struggle to find time for. Things like showing O how to paint with her beautiful new Caran d'Ache coloured pencils (she keeps them lined up in colour order with the writing facing upwards, just as obsessively as I used to do several decades ago). Getting the playdoh out. Drinking cups of tea and watching Tracy Beaker with the children early(ish) in the morning while I'm still in my pyjamas.
• Wasting time playing on Yearbook Yourself. So funny - in a way that left me laughing out loud until I had tummy ache.
• Watching fat flakes of snow fall and the fireworks for Diwali go off - all in one magical evening.

I really needed this break. Sometimes you only work that out when you stop.

Must do versus want to do

Since C and O have gone back to school, and I've got plenty of time to myself once again, I've been struggling to organise my days. I'm finding that with so much more time than I've had over the summer, my mind is overflowing with things to do, and I flit between them all.

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There are 'to do' lists everywhere - in my diary, on post-it notes on my desk at work, on pieces of paper grabbed from the printer, on the back of till receipts stuffed into the bottom of my handbag, and even on the back of my cheque book (cheques to write: milkman, school dinner money, window cleaner). So many lists, scattered around my life, is doing the opposite of what I intended and merely leaving me feeling disorganised and unproductive.

I was flicking through all my lists last night, trying to make a 'list of lists' - ha! - and just getting myself in more of a tangle. I noticed that my jobs were split between things I want to do and things I need to do.

Must be done:

• washing
• cleaning
• gardening (and there are at least three sub lists under this one - its anarchy out there right now)
• cooking
• clean hens
• find jiffy bags and post office

Would like to do:

• sew (again, many sub-headings here)
• write
• read

So this morning I took a deep breath and raced through my 'must' list as fast as I could before I settled down to my 'want' list (except the gardening, which really needs the whole of Sunday devoted to it).

And after a while I realised that such a division - between must do and want to do - is fairly pointless becasue the lines are too blurred. Cooking a tray of chocolate brownies and a raspberry cheesecake to take round to friends' for lunch tomorrow is a very pleasurable chore. Chatting to the hens as I scrub out their water bowls is enormous fun, but sewing four long apron strings,turning them right side out and then pressing them, is rather tedious.

One of the last jobs on my list, which I am going to do after I've posted this, is to order prints of this photo:

It was taken a couple of weeks ago by my sister-in-law, whose awesome photography just gets better and better. There are very few pictures of G and I which I truly love, but this one has just gone right to the top of that list. If we were ever to get married I can't imagine we'd get a better photo than this. Ordering prints and arranging for them to be mounted and framed is a chore on the face of it, but it will give me and G years of delight. You see - sometimes the lines are just too blurred for everything to be put neatly into categories.

How to feel better

What to do with your weekend when one member of the family is hungover and the other three have streaming colds?


Here's what we did:

• Pottered over to We Make London and got a free goodie bag for being one of the first 10 people through the door - thank you! Got to gaze at many beautiful things and spend some money.
• Popped in to the British Museum, admired the wonderful roof and then found some Ancient Greek wall friezes with chickens on them.

• Had a restorative lunch of noodles, green tea and gyoza at Wagamama's

• Came home, ate strawberries and took paracetamol before crawling off for naps, exhausted but happy.

Oh, and just in case there was any doubt, I was one of the streaming colds posse, not the hungover one.

Talking about the weather in a terribly British kind of way

Spring has sprung.





And the chickens and I are most disappointed that there is going to be snow, hail, frost and all sorts this weekend.

Life is good again

The chickens are happy, plump and laying once more.







There are green shoots and buds popping up all over the garden.

And there is apple & cinnamon slice to have with my morning coffee.

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