Chicken sitting

This trio of hens were very friendly and so inquisitive.

We’ve been chicken sitting over the bank holiday weekend. One of Middle Mudlets’ friends, has recently bought himself three chickens. He had saved his pocket money for months and months until he had enough to buy a little chicken coop with enclosed run area and three chickens. Once the coop was in situ, mum and dad realised that it wasn’t going to be a big enough outdoor space for three birds and so they built an enclosure around the hen house and now the three chickens spend their days happily pecking about in the dirt.

There is never a Hedgehog around when you need one!

Time for a nap

We have two Hedgehogs that pass through our garden on a regular basis and Mud is convinced that the biggest of these actually lives under the caravan which currently acts as his home office. The presence of the Hedgehogs is good news for me and my garden and so I have, on the whole, refrained from putting down slug pellets, not that there has been as big a problem with slugs this year as there was last year but that is due in no small part to the lack of substantial rain.

The Wren, new shoots and the garden in July

A July morning in the vegetable patch

With August just a day or two away, the sun is still shining but interspersed with a handy rain shower or two and the plants in the vegetable patch are, for the most part, thriving.

The mangetout have fully recovered from the pigeon attacks of June, so much so that ‘pick the mangetout‘ has become an almost hourly activity for the Mudlets, with several handfuls per day making their way into the kitchen. i could really do with finding a sure fire method for preserving these – freezing them hasn’t worked in the past, as the pods are mushy and tasteless once defrosted.

The blackbirds have flown the nest

A lovely rambling rose running amok

As I passed by the open fronted shed yesterday afternoon, I got a glimpse of the not so small baby blackbirds.

“I reckon they’re going to fledge any moment now,” I commented to Mud.

I have to admit that much as I enjoy watching the parent birds raise their young each year, this particular brood has given me more grey hairs than any other.

Sing a song of sixpence…..

Up until last summer, whenever I was working in the garden, I always had a little companion, of the feathered variety. It wasn’t a robin that waited, impatiently, for a generous donation of worms, or scolded me from the fence post if the job I was doing wasn’t a worm generating one, or I wasn’t working fast enough (especially if there were young in the nest or fledglings to feed). It was, in fact a Blackbird – Mrs Blackbird to be precise.

Blackbird fledgling – trying hard not to notice me.

Our Coal shed has always been a preferred location for a Blackbird nest and, every spring, a pair move in, tidy the old nest up a bit and then settle in for the duration. Most years we get 3 broods and the female always seems to be braver than the male, happily hopping dangerously close to my working spade, in her search for food. Mr Blackbird doesn’t generally come down to feed until I’ve left the vegetable patch altogether and will fly back to a safe distance when I return.