At last - an update!

I have been AWOL for quite some time  -  lots of reasons why - but I won't bore you with them.

I have had a number of emails asking after the chooks - they are alive and kicking and gorgeous.   Sadly I can't find my summer chicken images - but as soon as I can I will add some.

Andrew's allotment is still keeping me in wonderful flowers - for 50p a bunch,  but I doubt there will be any waiting for me tomorrow as we have had torrential rain today.

So I will update you with what I have been up to this past week - heavy work!

My gorgeous little bantams have spent a blissful summer in the garden freeranging, and still love Peckingham Palace.   So I have decided to add to my flock of rare breeds and am expecting quads!  Or maybe even quins!   The weather has changed and Autumn is fast approaching, so I have been getting on with landscaping alterations in the garden (in between harvesting and cooking, and freezing the produce - but that's for another day)

To make the garden more manageable and less work intensive, another flower bed had to go.

 

It has been jam packed with flowers non stop since spring to now - and also veggies, squash, courgettes.  I have been hacking back the foliage in readiness for turning it into a lawned area........and......

 

With the assistance of the bantam babes

We got together and decided that it was about time they had an extension to their palace grounds for the winter.

So I dismantled Peckingham Palace - work in progress above and moved it off the patio - in order pressure wash the slabs as well as their home and run.

 

So here it is all nice and clean.

 

And so is the patio - still drying out but it looked perfect when it did.

At ten o'clock yesterday morning I had two huge boxes arrive (I played truant from college as I so wanted to reveal what was in them. )

It was a giant jigsaw puzzle which took me from 10am until dusk yesterday to put together - there's a clue above.

Mr Lottie started on the heavy work.

 

You won't believe the hours I spent putting this all together.

I used lawn edging along the - well edges!

And it is held together with little green clips that really really hurt my fingers wrapping them around the wire and then squeezing them hard to click together to create the run.

Andrew arrived around 2pm to give us some much needed assistance and advice, as I was otherwise occupied building the extensions to the Palace

Yet more soil was dug out

Of course the girls were a great help as Andrew had to go.

And I was still clipping hundreds of plastic thingies around bits of wire until the  light faded - so I was out there at 7am this morning doing this

It's huge - and brilliant and I have made some adaptations to it so that I can open the front door panel and get in. Can you see all the little clips on the 'roof'?  The bar with a hook on the right is the food hanger.

Without crawling in through their door on my hands and knees!

I was able to carry a bale of bedding in and easily spread it.

The rain started.

So I had to cover it up as best as I could.

Luckily the tarpaulin I ordered arrived after lunch.

So as soon as the rain eased I was out there again.

And my girls really appreciated all my hard work - I think - and the happy chirping sounds they were making were a joy.   

The football was added as I have seen others with a ball in their runs - those with big chickens who stay in the run all day.   Mine free range - and were not the slightest interested in the football - they get all the exercise they need running around the garden I guess.

It was raining really heavily by the time I was finishing - just a few minor things to do.

For example to create a 'shower curtain' for the front of the run, and add some roosting bars.  

The middle panel I have turned into another opening 'door' for when I clean them out - and also at the back - so much easier.

But there is still all this soil to relocate.

But in a couple of weeks time this will be transformed into a gently sloping lawn and it'll be hard to visualise what it looked like before!

And after all this, I made my darling Mr Lottie and banana and sultana loaf for all his help - I could never have managed to move all that soil and lay slabs on my own.