Sad news...happy news

For quite a while now Flossie Chicken hasn't been 'quite right'. She has NEVER laid the right sized egg..think on the small side of bantam egg. She was a big girl but this last few weeks she went so thin...and stopped laying at all. She was wormed monthly and had lots of healthy treats but she was just a skinny girl. She could race around the garden and made regular escapes but she was just thin..
On Saturday evening I went out to make sure she had gone to bed-we had made a new table to put their house on-same height and everything, but she seemed a little put out by this. So I went and checked and she hadn't gone to bed. She was hunched up under the table, not in an odd position, just in a 'bugger off and leave me alone I'm going to sleep position.' So I put her to bed so that her and Mrs P could share each others body heat in the night. On Sunday morning Flossie was laid on the floor in the run...stiff. She was probably less than three years old, no age for a hardy chicken like her. But as I said she'd never been 'right' really. She'd had a good last day, they had a lovely treat of plain yogurt, strawberry tops and over ripe blueberries-the blueberries that she very sneakily grabbed out of Mrs P's beak as she was trying to eat them...this was laced with their regular dose of worming tablets to make sure they had them..she was then given free run of all the garden as we were working in their run so could keep an eye on them. She did her usual trick of following me down the 2 sets of steps when I had to go in the house..and also sneaked to the bird table to steal any leftovers the Great Tits had thrown on the floor. I'm sure I'm trying to convince myself |I did all I could-shes only the second of five chickens that have seen their days out with us that has died without assistance and although I tell myself maybe I should have taken her to the vets, I know she had a good life and death and unlike the others I had before her, she never knew life in a cage...RIP Flossie.

So, we couldn't leave Mrs P on her own, chickens are flock animals and need to be together, so we went and got a new pair-so that if one of them pops off, we will still have 2. Meet Hattie and Gracie.

This was within a few minutes of them arriving. They are still a bit stunned at this point. Mrs P was being particularly arsey with them even when she wasn't in the run with them she was squawking and making herself known. There have been a fair few scuffles-strangely all involving Mrs P jumping on them and pecking them in varying levels of severity. We are used to this now, its what they do, its horrible but its how it is! They were better yesterday (Monday) and I am sure today will be even easier.

Hope everyone is well..x

Fantastic art exhibition starting soon!

hi,
just a really quick drop in from me...

A cousin of D's is having his very first exhibition and at quite a prestigious northern gallery- The Salford Art Gallery.
The exhibition starts on 2nd May and runs until the beginning of September.
There's a link to the poster here >>>     The Now The North

We have been lucky enough to be able to see some of the finished artwork and it really is fantastic. Many of Hugh's paintings are of city scenes that will be familiar to those living around the Manchester area

City scapes

but there are also a few that are more rural and just as beautiful.

Landscapes
 I think this one may well be my personal favourite!

If you are nearby and at all interested in art I am sure you would not be disappointed in a visit to see this very talented guys art!

What I did on my Easter holidays..

The short answer to that would be "not much"! Except when you stop and look at it actually there's actually a fair amount been done, only it's maybe not as exciting as I was hoping for.

I have got lots of seeds planted-tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, courgettes, all things I have had an amount of success with but this year I have tried some new things including sweet corn-first sprout pushing through this morning, brocolli and cauli-they came up in about 4-5 days and there are millions of them! Peas and beans doing well and some butternut squash. On a more flowery note I have planted a full packet of sweet peas that are doing very well-they will need to be put into bigger pots this week..they are very important as we want the flowers for the wedding reception..I will be planting another packet of them in a week or so to try and stave off any emergencies.

We have bought three raised beds, two small ones and 1 larger one-I'm not too sure about the longevity of the larger one even tho the wood was supposedly treated to give it 'long life'. (I was going to insert a picture here but the only one I have of our veg plot looks terrible and the raised beds aren't even on it so I'll wait til i no longer feel ashamed of it!)

We did manage an afternoon out and a lovely one it was! On Easter Sunday we headed over to the Yorkshire sculpture park  and had a couple of hours there. The weather was lovely and I had cobbled together a small 'picnic tea' and a flask of nice coffee which made it extremely good value for money! You don't have to pay to get in just for parking which was £5 for up to 2 hours or £8 for the whole day, I would much rather have done the whole day thing but by the time we got organised and got there it was 3pm!

I especially liked a Barbara Hepworth piece and again was rather taken by this Anthony Gormley-we have been to see his installation on the beach 'another place' and really felt quite moved by it.

 So, that was my Easter, what about yours?

Glass- things that make me happy

Something that I have really loved as a thing of beauty for quite some time is glass. I began collecting in a small way pre children so a loooong time ago!

The photos I have taken are not great-again having to use my camera phone doesn't produce the greatest results. Anyway, when we moved to our home last year it was fairly obvious to me that the place to put all my (not a huge amount of) old bottles was on the 'Lancashire range'.

 As we have such horrible wall paper in that area of the house I had to put some plain paper behind the bottles to stop anyone viewing them from being dazzled! (I apologise if anyone has and loves this wallpaper, I am sure if you have chosen it you love it, however, we did not choose it and definitely do not love it and it just doesn't 'go')

Some of these bottles are old photographic ones, used for holding developing chemicals. One is etched with 'Developer Number 1', another with 'Developer Number 2' and the third from the same amateur photographer has a raised line with the words 'Acid Line' on it. I know where these came from-an old lady who's long dead husband dabbled with photography and it makes me happy to think of him in his shed or bathroom with these beautiful glass bottles.
The other bottles are ones that I have picked up over the years and I tend to go for interesting ones with a label or some writing etched or raised in the glass.
I wonder what 'Flowers of Sulphur' were-scrap the query, theres 'POISON' in raised letters on the neck of the glass...hmm
,  I am sure that I know what its neighbour held, each edge has raised lettering spelling out "Favourite, Daddies and Sauce'. There is also a small bottle of Lung Tonic. Its quite sad that these days our bottles of sauces or medicines are simply that, a bottle with something in it, not things of beauty anymore.

We regularly travel to Amsterdam-if once a year can be called regularly, the fact we go on the same weekend each year makes it regular for me I think! Each time we go anywhere I like to bring 'a thing' back as a reminder of a happy time and one year we went to an eclectic shop near Keizersgracht and I was happy to see they had lots of glass-modern but I was drawn by the colours. I got 4 of these balls-one has fallen down from the window so it missed having its picture taken, that'll learn it! When we go to Amsterdam we only ever take hand luggage and I can remember wrapping these glass spheres in socks and then t-shirts and hoping for the best before placing 2 in each of our duo of rucksacks. Happily they survived and now I see them several times each day as the hang on either side of the french doors and it often makes me think back to the city that I love so much.

Winters walk.

In an effort to try and help my mood I have decided that I really need to start making an effort to go out more. Where we are it is easily possible for me to see no-one from one day to the next-other than D. This is mainly because of the layout of the house but also because where we live is a quiet area. With this in mind i decided to go for a short walk this morning-no matter what. I have taken a small amount of pictures but they really arent very good but sadly this is all I can manage for now!
It was absolutely bitter today and I was confident I had chosen the right time for me to be out: a hail storm had just paid and I could see brilliant blue skies when I set off.I decided to start off with the hardest bit first, I walked up the steep hill-very very steep past the golf course.I peered over the wall and I could just spot some snow still lingering. I do love the look of a golf course but its such a shame they are usually such private places with no-one else allowed in.

I carried on, down the lane a little while...The golf course is on the right of this picture just over the wall. It might look like this rather uncared for road is full of potholes but no, its just a dirt track-no tarmac here! At this point, the hail started again, and boy did it come down, my hands were freezing, if I hadn't been able to see them I would have disputed that my fingers were still attached, it was so painful. I turned around and headed for home, but instead of heading back down the oh so steep hill, I thought it would be better (more interesting) to head back at right angles down a 'path' using that term loosely that runs between two fields. In the summer the fields had some young bulls in and I was wondering if maybe there would be some more livestock but no, just empty fields, for now.

All the time the hail was still hitting me quite painfully and because I had decided to go this other-very muddy path I had to take it slowly as I was slipping quite a lot. At one time my boot came off, luckily I noticed before I put my foot back down! Oh how we would have laughed about that tonight when I told D.

Now this last, even more rubbish picture is where you will need you very large magnifying glass and even larger imagination! If you look kind of in the middle and to the left ever so slightly there is a pale coloured building, it's not ours, but if you move you eyes slightly to the right theres what is an obscured by a tree house, that's where I live. The walk has reminded me why I love where I live, even if I don't see other people much. Being in a semi-rural area, with neighbours (very nice ones) around us and countryside like this right outside our door is wonderful.
My walk left me feeling ready for the day and I came back and have washed the bathroom, scrubbed the horrible showerscreen..seriously cant wait to rip all this out, but for now scrubbing and cleaning will have to do. Anyway, whe I had finished that I felt invigorated and decided to go downstairs and have a go at some more tissue paper pom-poms. I'm making some for the wedding. However, as soon as I sat down at the (very messy) dining table that I use as my HQ for all things makey I suddenly had company...company of a furry mewy kind.

Slinky, in the middle started off at the other end, then he moved onto my ripple blanket and then started backing up into Cleo who had positioned herself next to the iPad..as he moved slowly further back (towards me) she moved closer to me. So, I have come upstairs on the PC to complete this..closely followed by Slinky, aka the Singing Cat. Hes had a quick burst of something from one of his favourite power ballads and has now settled himself down under a huge groundsheet on the floor (don't ask)..when I say settled, hes moving around and is sighing a lot. Its a hard life when you are such a beautiful boy.
Right I better get back to it..those chickens wont let themselves out

Be well all x

Wedding stresses and dresses

It's now officially less than six months to D (or W) day, and yes, I am getting very stressed about the whole thing. We are having a 'small' day. In theory I was imagining around 20 guests. We are now up to 42...the registry office seats 40. I am spending some time each day hoping that maybe some of our guests will have a holiday or another, more important wedding to go to. I hate the idea of being the centre of attention, I would like it to be just me and D and some random witnesses or just witnesses who mean lots to us. I would also be happy to go away and do the deed-I have done the whole wedding thing before, however, D hasn't, his mum has never seen him do this and I couldn't take that away from her-or him.

So, where are we up to? 42-ish guests, all pretty much D's family, many of which are now friends of mine. We are having a registry office wedding and then our friends will be joining us back at the house for champagne, probably some cocktails and food.

A nice simple day, so what on earth am I stressing about? Well, there's the cake...I REALLY and I mean REALLY, REALLY would like a naked wedding cake, if you don't know what I mean look here: Naked cake
I really don't like the whole fruit cake, marzipan etc. so this seems like an ideal choice. It also seemed fairly obvious that it would be easy to make...except I don't really bake, but as a number of people have said, it's only a Victoria sponge, multiplied by several. I was up for doing this til I read last night that it would need to be assembled on the day. When I told D this he put his foot down and said no. No I am not allowed to make the cake-he knows how stressed I get over stuff and this (probably correctly) would be a step too far on the morning of the wedding. I a looking at other options, including an iced cake :0( we could buy different tiers, with different fillings, still iced though..hmm.

We are now in the process of buying 'stuff' for the wedding. We are also having a 'sweet bar' as an addition to the buffet, just as abit of fun..like the 'cheese-cake' we are also having. Cheesey!
This is a particular treat for D-he's abit of a cheese monster on the not-so quiet!

So...my main stresses are-getting food ready for the 'not so big' day. Sorting a cake, we have agreed to bite the bullet and buy a ready made cheese cake-it will be slightly dearer but not enough to make it a ridiculous spend. Getting decorations ready-I've bought the tissue paper and am going to have a go at making some Pom-poms...Oooh, did I mention the photo-booth?

(not so) happy Friday-emotional baggage discussed here, please move along..

I was planning on joining in with the whole happy Friday thing starting from this week honestly, I was! Except this last couple of days have been not so happy until it kind of got unbearable last night. I heard D come to bed, and I couldn't get back to sleep so I got up (it was about 2.20 am). I decided not to go and get in the spare bed so I came downstairs and put the TV on. I made myself a coffee and got a piece of (stale) cake. I just got sat down when I heard a noise, it was Cleo cat on the other side of the door. "Aw..." I thought, she's come to keep me company, bless her. I opened the door and she shot in and climbed straight on top of the TV recorder thing...hmm. I started watching something on TV, then another, and another until I looked at the time and it was nearly 6 am so I climbed back upstairs and got in the spare bed. I was woken by D at just after 10.15. He had thought he'd heard the TV on when he'd been up going to the loo during the night but had thought it wise to leave me alone.

This is where it gets to the unhappy bit...

Something I haven't shared here is that I am seeing a counsellor, working on my 'stuff'. It's been a long time coming and now the time is finally right, I am ready. But it has also got to a point where I am at the feeling worse before I get better bit. And it's shit-sorry if anyone's offended by that but it truly is. I get to sit in a small room with someone who's not much better than a complete stranger and talk to him about every nasty horrible thing that's happened. Some of them so nasty and horrible I couldn't even say them out loud last week, I had to write them down. Then I get to go home and feel terrible all on my own-last week even more so because D was working away for 6 days. So last weekend past in a haze of misery, tears and bacon buttys. I went out looking at wedding dresses but couldn't enjoy it as I was on my own, and also I just know I'm going to struggle to find one I like.

I have been to see my counsellor again, this week there were tears during the appointment when I told him I don't feel loved, or cared for. And today I have managed to tell D exactly that. It can't be easy hearing the person you love, say that they don't feel loved by you but he took it. And when I'd finished he told me just how much he loved me.
I'm still feeling numb, and on my own....but I'm trying to hold onto the fact that just because I feel it, doesn't make it so.