AWOL

And we know what THAT means Children - don't we?
Yes, that's right....Absent Without Leave!

Have YOU got a busy life Children?  Wellie has!
In all seriousness, you prolly didn't even miss me, but we've had a shed load of lambs popping out on The Funny Farm here, and I've just been so tied up with admiring them, photographing them, and latterly, reuniting them with their Mummies when they get lost each and every sodding day!, and unless I do, the bleeting goes ON and ON and ON and ON!....And I can't concentrate on sowing veggie seeds then?!

And with the weather being so mild, it's been a fabulous 'crop' of Lambs this Season, without too much of a casualty in the Fox direction.....
And today, the lambs were having their tails clipped (cut off'n'sprayed) and being transferred to greener pastures.
Largely, because there's another Tamara and Rupert Event on horseback this weekend?  Pip Pip!  Daddy Gave Me This Land!
I'm 'making light of it', but Trousers and I just adore the Horsey Events here, because the Organisers work SO hard throughout the year to make it happen, and without their hard work, there would be nothing at all for anyone to enjoy.

I'll try and bring you photos of what I've been sowing for my Kitchen Garden in the next week or two.
I've got LOADS of Annual Flowers that I've sown in my own Paper Pots, and I've got Sweetcorn and Winter Squashes in Root Trainers,Aubergines, Tomatoes, Globe Artichokes, Leeks, Onions and stuff....
BUT, don't get too excited... It's early days yet, and you all have loads and loads of time to sow your own seeds, as I do, eh?!

You're kind for listening, and hopefully, you'll listen again soon.X

Sshh! It's A Secret?

 To be perfectly honest with you, until I invited a brilliant young lad from the village round a few weeks ago to do a valued line-drawing of my Fert'n'Liza Flobalob Flowerpot Peeps for the 2012 Itton Village Show Schedule, I'd quite forgotten myself how gorgeous these guys are.
It came as some surprise to me that the televisual Bill and Ben have reacquainted themselves with Jo Public for a whole new generation or three, but I'm actually quite 'blown away' that he thought these 'real life' ones were so brilliant....  To me, that's one of the nicest compliments I've had in ages.

I think it's true sometimes, that you neglect to realise your own self-worth, and the things that you're truly good at, until someone stops and points it out to you.  Even the littleist things that you're good at can mean a mountain to you if someone else appreciates them, and actually tells you so?

Down on The Funny Farm, there's a queue for free School Milk here!  At school, when free School Milk was  a reality, I made friends with every single one of my classmates that hated milk, because I just adored it.

Then, of course, we get back into the world of advertising, when that cocky little blond kid declared that 'The Milky Bars are on ME!', and this particular Ewe is in no mood to celebrate.  And where the feck is Father?

With the sheer number of Wild Kats'n'Kittens in the yard now, it's rather a gorgeous 'scampering' of tiny paws whenever I approach to take photos, but as they settle to watch me from a distance in amongst the bales, it's rather comforting to know that BC will be bringing one less Rat, Shrew or Mouse into my Kitchen.

Our local Parish Magazine has recently taken on the 'Guess The Caption' Competition, and I am seriously loving the new-look funky magazine, but also that there's an amazing amount of 'talent' out there, and an even more amazing amount of humour developing with it?  And that's just what this life needs more of.

"I've told you.....The Milky Bars are somewhere else?!"

Okay, so we come to The Secret!  Our friends were collecting their two new piglets this weekend:

I'd got it all planned out, to the 'enth degree'.....  I'd proverbially named the two little boy piglets 'Rolf' and 'Harris' and I was dropping the Rolf Harris Greatest Hits CD off to my friends' house, whilst she was in London, and her Husband was going to give the CD to his Sister, who was coming to stay for the weekend with her husband, and she was going to secrete it into The Mazda, which had a working CD player, and my friend was going to collect Two Little Boy Piglets in the back of The Mazda, and my friend's husband's sister was going to play the Two Little Boys Song on the journey home.  To make her laugh?
Forget that, because my friend caught the really bad snufflies, came home early, and totally ruined my Cunning Baldrick Plan?  So SHE accidentally took custody on the front door mat of the Rolf Harris CD, her husband hadn't got a CLUE what I was talking about to him when he phoned me from his office on the evening when he was supposed to be at home cleaning because he'd gone to work, and THEN, to add insult to injury, my friend emailed me this evening to break the news that I'm NOT Fairy Hogmother to Two Little Boys, but also a cutesy little girly piglet as well?

At which point, I emailed her back to ask if she'd pre-planned Miss Piggie, or had it smacked her a kiss on the chops and told her that if she didn't take her home RIGHT NOW, the frog would have to die?

Only two more sleeps till I get to meet my Fairy Hogchildren.
Bless you for Listening.
Keep Safe and Stay Warm.
X

A Clear Night and A Noisy Day!

My cat has developed a rather annoying habit of deciding to go out of the front door for A Royal Wee just as something brilliant comes onto my TV screen, when I've finally managed to wrestle the Remote Control from Trousers and he's gone to bed.  Unfortunately, she don't know how to open the front door, so I have to.  AND, she knocks on the door when she's ready to come back in......Once that's all over, I can settle back down with a glass of homemade Red Wine, deciding whether or not the telly programme is worthy, in which case, BC comes and joins me, or I retire to bed with a notebook , or my Quiche of Death Novel, depicting a typical local village produce show, where the newcomer cheated by buying a quiche from a deli, which turned into murder, and..... well, I've mentioned it before, and I'm a slow reader?!

The only reason I mention this, is that if my cat hadn't insisted on going out of the Front Door, I wouldn't have noticed what a beautifully clear night it was.  It was SO clear, that I was transfixed by what I could see, and for once, the batteries in my Finepix hadn't expired the last of their juice, and I was able to 'have a stab' at capturing what I saw.

To be perfectly honest, it was 'a stab in the dark', because what was visible in the clear sky didn't appear with any clarity in the viewfinder, and until Trousers put these pictures up on the blog for me (we've been a tad busy lately?) I had no idea if I'd successfully captured what I saw.

No tripod, just a glass of Homemade Red Wine on board, so prolly a bit 'shaken not stirred'?!

With the lamb population increasing at an alarming daily rate now, I've got to keep my eyes peeled, and my ears open to bleets of distress.  Largely, because Mother and Offspring tend to get parted by stock fencing as the Babes get more adventurous and inquisitive.  Luckily, Mums'n'Babies are spray-painted with numbers, so it's easy to pair them back up again.  The warmth and whoolliness of a lamb's tummy as you cup it in your hands and lift it back to the safety and security of the Mummy Milk Machine, is such a magical moment for me.

Freckles had to be rescued today, somehow getting into the First Time Mothers' Nursery quarters, where there were very little babies, and their mothers were naturally being over-protective, giving her an unnecessarily hard time.  So Wellie and BC waded straight in there to return her to Mum No.1 and Sibling 'Panda', so all ended rather happily.

Not an hour later,  No.43 had managed to get itself into The Nursery, fell asleep, woke up to find itself on the 'non-milk' side of the fence from Mum, and both were yelling at me to come with some urgency, which we duly did.  No. 43 has now been named 'No Latte'.....

It's an extraordinary thing to have your cat follow you wherever you go on the farm, and to take as much interest in everything that you're doing?  And actually, it's hillarious at the minute, on the strength of that, because some of the little jet black lambs are mistaking BC for one of their own whilst she's in the fields with me.....
Ebony, (Ivory's sibling) particularly loves my cat today.
At about 5pm every evening, as the lambs grow more confident in themselves, and each others' company, they start 'Boinging' - springing around like Spring Lambs so beautifully do.  And I'm here to tell you, no words could ever capture the pleasure that gives me to stand and watch, as they gang up like kids together, race around and have fun.

Which reminds me..... Ian and Medina's Piglets get 'scooped up' on Saturday to go and live with them (for a while?), and she absolutely blew me away that they've decided to call them Wellie's suggestion of ROLF and HARRIS, on the strength of them being 'Two Little Boys'.  What a proud HogMother I'm going to be....!

For now, Keep Safe, Stay Warm,
Wellie
xxx