Sunshine - Mother's Day delights - and the unveiling of Sandringham...

I'm whispering this very quietly - just in case whoever is in charge of these things hears me - I think it might, really might, be Spring!!

What a beautiful day today.  Admittedly not that promising a start, but those Met Office types had hinted at a lovely day, and by mid morning it had come up with the goods.

I celebrated by officially letting the ladies out of their winter quarters to dip their toes in the green grass and paddle among the newly opening daffs.  It's still a bit too early really, it has been so chilly the grass isn't growing dramatically - I haven't contemplated the first cut of the year with the mower yet, and I had sworn when they went into winter quarters that I would be firm and not let them out onto the grass until it was growing enough to be able to recover easily from their daily nibbling and scratching onslaughts!

My ladies enjoying their first forays back out into the outside run

It's also a bit precipitate as the Engineer is still in the final throes of adding their pop holes, of which there will be two, to lead from the enclosed undercover 'barn' run into whichever of the 3 rotating outside runs is operational...so just for the next few days they have the luxury of wandering in and out of the big personnel door.

When the blossom emerges on the little apple tree, this will complete the picture of what my good smallholder friend Garth calls 'the most extravagant des res for a bunch of hens' he has ever seen....It is true, they appear to live in greater comfort that we do in the house! Priorities...

As always, Delia likes to eye me quizzically through the netting, even if sadly now she can only do it through her one good eye.  The other one has gone completely blind now, and although slightly enlarged it doesn't look infected or sore.  I can only assume it is a peck injury - she is fairly low in the flock order, if not at the bottom, poor chicky.

On my catch up diary entries, I am pretty much almost up to November, when we finally managed to undertake our long planned but much delayed construction of 'Sandringham' (named appropriately, I felt, after the favourite Winter Residence of our jolly Queen, that other old bird who does her duty uncomplainingly too and always carries herself well, just like my ladies).

I seem to have managed to upload the photos in reverse order, incompetence!

There's a strange new bird in the flock!

The official opening of Sandringham - the ladies thought the straw bedding was the most thrilling thing that they had ever experienced - it was hilarious watching them scratch about enthusiastically, raining straw down on the unsuspecting chicken behind.  Snug, warm, and dry at last but still well ventilated.  It's own very own Hyacinth Bucket-inspired 'indoor outdoor BBQ with finger buffet'!

Under construction - we can see the poor ladies having to put up with the generally grim and damp autumnal weather with only the shelter of their little dustbath roof and the space under the chicken house when the rain got really nasty.  This section of garden wasn't ideal as it was so exposed, but they needed to be kept well out of the way while the Engineer was busy swinging around great lumps of wood and sections of wriggly tin roofing.  They punished me by digging ridiculously large holes in the cricket/tennis lawn...

Leaf fall and it's still not finished! Time is pressing, but the half term break to Cornwall got in the way and delayed it all even more....

All in all, it took us (well, mostly him, bless him) quite a few more weeks than expected to build - mostly of course as in November the light is completely gone by the time he was home from work so progress could only be made at the weekends.  As I was generally taking on the whole of the normal weekend child-ferrying and supervision duties in order to allow him unfettered time to work on it, he was also mostly working single-handed, which also slows things down considerably.

Yes, I know it should have been done in the summer with the leisure of no weather deadline and the lovely long evenings... but there have been so many priorities for that time this year.  I was thorough in my design planning though - I knew it needed to be covered but well ventilated and visible, as I didn't want to feel like they were shut up completely in an enclosed dark barn environment, out of sight, out of mind.

The grass definitely could not have supported their maraudings when it cannot grow to replenish itself, they would have made a complete morass of the whole orchard area.  And the poor cheapo chicken house was already after only one season showing signs that it was not up to the job of an unprotected winter in the West Country wet...the hinged end of the roof was starting to rot and everything was expanding so that I couldn't slide out the droppings tray to scrub it clean.  The hope was that with the rain kept off, this little house might last a few years at least, and as the chickens themselves were not getting wet through in the rain every day, and then sleeping in a dry house, they ought to be able to cope much better with the cold of winter, being dry and fluffy.

But here we are emerging blinking from the other end of the winter (more or less - fingers firmly crossed!) and it has worked even better than I could have hoped.  The ladies have been dry and well.  They have not stopped laying or even slowed down at all - 3-5 eggs a day has been the pattern still - though whether that is because they are all young and still in their first year, I'm not sure? But I had understood that they ought to stop laying in the depths of the winter when the light levels drop? The house has been clean and dry and presumably warm and comfortable in the night times, and I have felt confident that locked inside the house, inside the 'barn' with its welded mesh dug into the ground, surrounded on the outside by the electric fence too, that I have done my best to protect them from the winter risks of the hungrier predators.  I can't really do any more.

They seem to have been content with their feed pellets and daily corn treats, but I have also regularly treated them with their favourite cut kale from the vegetable patch and any weedlings that I removed in my general winter tidying round the garden.  So, I hereby officially declare Sandringham a success! God bless her, and all who sail in her!

And on that uplifting note, God Bless the Engineer, who wisely took note of my not-so-subtle hints about potentially ideal Mother's Day gift ideas - and so I was the joyful recipient of these gloriously cheerful mugs, just exactly what I need to keep that Spring-is-coming positivity flowing - thank you!

Along with these stunning irises from the lovely flower stall man at Wells market, from amongst whose wares I was allowed to choose my pick on Saturday - hurrah to that I say....Not that I would ever, ever openly criticise the good Engineer's choice in cut flowers, you understand...but I much prefer these bright spring beauties to the samey samey bouquet jobbies at the supermarket.  Who really wants Chrysanthemums and lilies in March?Not me, anyway.

As always, however, my little phone camera has struggled with the colour (it seems to have these problems with blues, purples and reds)... Please be assured they are not quite such a technicolour electric blue, but the normal, fabulous purpley blue dutch iris, with that flash of yellow on the fall that just makes the zing and lifts my heart every time I see them.