Raining

The newly strawed up chick pen area.

As i write this it is POURING with rain. Heavy rain warnings are out for tonight and fellow teachers and I have concluded that if school is cancelled tomorow due to flooding..well...so be it !!!

(Actually it was a cheering thought!!)
It is only 3.30 and I have already given the chooks their tea. Wheat and mashed potatoe leftovers with cookie crumbs and a few bits of sausage. Lunch was porridge which cream and brown sugar and golden syrup had been added as Alex didnt eat much of hers this morning.  I was totally thrilled when I found hidden under the straw five eggs,this has never happened before. i was so excited i immediately rung GHIu  ut he provided me with the downing thought that we had thre eggs yesterady and maybe it was one from yesterday that was hidden (as i had to hunt for thenm today eneath their bed of straw) Talk about feeling squashed. i went from wanting to hug the new producing sad chook to wondering if GHIU could have been correct...time to check the "vent" again!!~!!!

I promised a picture of my latest fully finished quilt and here it is (folded in half..it is really big took me ages to bind it!!):

 And now a few scrapping examples just to show you that i havent been slacking off during my unblogging period... My blogging is so unpredictale I wouldnt be surprised if noody reads this anymore!!  I wouldnt if i wasnt me:

Happy crafting to you all
Love from Cherry the unpredictable

life in the lttle farm continues

Well i had more pics but blogger is doing strange things as i write and I only have these two. The top photo is our new vege garden planted with greens and some cloches (I havent got enough for all of them!)Ive planted caulies, brussel sprouts and pak choi.  Hope they survive. theyve survivied the horrendous flooding rains so far..the pros of having a raised garden.
The next pic is Sam my mad lab who I have to dodge and duck by each day in order to get to the chook shed. He is one crazy dog who sooooo needs a farm of his own. He is five but acts likes a puppy.
The final phot is of georgia at the Suzanne Prentice concert which she sang at.
On the chook front the chooks are all laying we get three to four eggs each day and on one occassion only two. I am continuing to learn more about poultry by doing lots of reading and lots of trial and error.  Sad Chook is now lookiing remarkably happy and healthy and has lovely red colours around her eyes and on her watttles. Im pretty sure she isnt laying. I picked her up the other day after hearing repeatedly aout checking her "vent" for evidence of laying. Much to GHIU dismay i pointed her rear end in his direction and told him to have a look. he said he wasnt doing that, but fortuiously a wind blew her tail feathers asunder and he said regrettibly it was white not poink and moist, (Thos eing the two choices I gave him) I hope she does lay!@!!!! She is only 18 months old, ut the condition she arrived in and they fact that the others gave her such a hiding all the time wouldnt help expediate laying. She is still bottom of the pecking order (Christmas being at the top)  but has otherwise melded in well. I would NEVER introduce a single hen into the pen again (lesson leaarnt).
I have een doing a ton of scraping (slight overkill there..) and will take some photos to share next time. Also I have finished a quilt a scrap quilt that has only been in the closet for four years (!). photos next time.
With warm winter love
Cherry

It had to happen....

Oh Christmas!! 

yes it had to happen. GHIU went to feed the chooks yesterday morning. "Cherry" he yells to me "How many chooks do we have'

"Five" I yelled back

"nah theres four here"

Well, with that he raced one way to the park, I raced (to get dressed) the children fled to the neighours and general pandemonium ensued. Alex came back saying that the neighbors had seen Christmas walking past their place (park side) a while back. So we all raced to the park. The park is 20 acres long and has a zillion trees, usheds a huge duckpond, many stray dogs wandering through, tame dogs and tame people and not so tame people. The chances of Christmas being found at all or alive were slim.  The opportunity for Christmas to be in a dogs mouth, or in the pot by the night were fairly assurred if we we couldnt find her. Fortunately Alex has her bionic vision and found her a few hundred metres away. She was very friendly and you could just about hear her saying that the flight had seemed a good idea at the time.  Following her arrest and return we realised that there were only three eggs. I rashly thought I could go and search for an egg but as GHIU pointed out finding a egg in a 20 acre area of land would be stretching things. The thought of our precious egg lost in the park though was pretty awful!!  GHIU clipped one of her wings ut she is still today flying to the highest point in the garden, although a bit wonkily. She is the chook that thinks she is a rooster.

This is a little area in the pool area that I planted with perpetual spinach a while back. I covered it with mesh and put all sorts of sticks and deterrrants in it, but each morning I was alarmed at the disturbing scene of a brown chooky head poking up over the top. So yesterday i completley redid it. I remeshed it, put in heaps of sticks to deter downward flying chooks, reinforced the sides of the mesh with blocks of rick so the girls couldnt squash themselves up and under and into. I spent AGES on it. AGES. Then I went to the organic shop and bought punnets of mustard salad and  NZ perpetual spinach. And I had won the war. Oh i didnt doubt that they would try, but I would win. The this morning, Christmas flew up and over and landed amongst the sticks and managed to clean up half of the spinach, dig up the sticks and leave a big hole.  So now i have thrown a whole number of objects, mesh like and others over the top in an effort to get this [project growing. Tomorow i think I will buy some cheap netting material to throw over it. I AM SO FRUSTRATED!!!!!

This week is going to  a sad one as the end of last week was. On Friday We lost our School social worker. He was only aout 38 and maried to one of the teachers and all his children were at School. even tho he had kidney failure he was one of the few people around who was trained to do his own dialysis at home. The day before he had happily been helping  out at out Maori week on the Marae with the children.and coaching the basketbakll team. Then his wife woke up to find him gone beside her the next morning. AS you can imagine the School is in shock. GHIU went to school with him and they had just had met up again at CHristmas which then menant I was on friendly terms with him having that mutual thing. On Friday he came back to the marae (My born and bred place that I LOVE in fernhill) and we went to the eginning on the Tangi. Tomorrow (monday ) the whole School is going to the tangi and then on Tuesday GHIU and I weill be going to the funeral. It is so sad and frankly seems unbelievalable. He had helped so many in our school and now he is gone.

Love Cherry