Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Musical Monday

There's lots going on at the mo and I'll post a catch up when things have settled a little. Just as a teaser ... we have a kitten to add to our fast growing list of pets. That's it now - no more ... except perhaps a new rabbit later in the year to keep Billy company! I haven't completely decided yet so haven't mentioned it to anyone else in the family.

Anyway, I'm always late in posting our Musical Monday. We do listen to the music on the Monday, I just forget to post about it!

Ben received a fab harmonica for his birthday and loves making tunes on it so this week we endeavoured to find some interesting harmonica playing on You Tube. Browsed for a while, but nothing really struck a chord, although we came across a harmonica duo of the "Hovis" advert section of the New World Symphony. Not impressed enough to link to it though! Found some harmonica jazz too, but eventaully settled for one of the movements played by the Dublin Philharmonic of the New World. We're going to listen again over the week so will link to them next Monday.

scaredy cat.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Art and veggies

Katie continues to enjoy art at the mo and is learning lots from her new book "How to Draw and Paint the Outdoors" by Moira Butterfield. Here's some horse pics and a lovely sunset:

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On the veggies front the garden is looking brill. We've pulled and used all the onions and have now pulled all the shallots too (some were nearly as big as the onions). Tried pickling some, but they don't taste quite like the ones from the shops - perhaps they need to sit for a while to absorb the flavour.
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The cabbages have been attacked big time by caterpillars which means we have a constant supply of butterflies for the cats (and chickens) to play with! I couldn't bear to squash the caterpillar eggs as suggested by websites and gardening books in order to save the produce. It's been fascinating watching them grow from tiny slithers to chunky crawlies; we're even watching one turn into a cocoon on the swingball pole! I did result to digging up four white cabbages which were really looking worse for wear in order to get some extra light to the corn and beans.
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Obviously a little naive, but the dwarf beans I bought are dwarf in plant size, not in fruit! Having put in 6 foot poles for the plants to grow up, I was rather surprised to see them stop at about 45/50cms tall! The beans themselves are fabulous, real whoppers in size and taste wonderful! So, dwarf beans are great if you only have space for large tubs in your small garden/patio etc.
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We still have some potatoes and carrots left in the ground/tub; saving them for a "rainy day" so to speak. Leeks are fattening up very well and certainly survived their thinning out a few weeks ago. Next lot of spring onions are coming along well too. The corn, which I'd only left space for 6 in two rows (needed so they can pollinate each other), are doing well but only the two middle ones are growing a good size. We'll see what happens. The "honesty box" in the village is selling individual corn-on-the-cobs at 30p each, so if mine don't produce, it'll not be the end of the world! Next year I'll dedicate a larger area for them, rather than putting in cabbages with lots of holes in them! Finally, the chillies and peppers. The indoor chillies are growing longer by the day but attract the hover-flies! The outdoors ones still have some flowers but no chillies as yet, probably due to the unpredicatable weather, but the peppers outside are now small chunky balls!
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Musical Monday

This week's piece is the theme tune to Jurassic Park by the very talented John Williams. A pretty powerful piece of music I think and quite moving too. It lead us to start exploring other John Williams' tunes on You Tube and then further afield for other powerful film themes like Pearl Harbor and Gone with the Wind (watching the "I shall never be hungry again!" and "Frankly my dear ..." sections just for good measure). This, strangely, lead us to the good old musicals like Oklahoma! Katie had a laugh at the strange horse riding style (it gets worse as the tune progresses) in "Oh what a beautiful morning!". So, quite a few tunes for our Musical Monday this week. Happy listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8zlUUrFK-M&feature=related (Jurassic Park theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KIJFbFc-AE (Pearl Harbor theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikVeY0brtXU (Gone with the Wind theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiFqjyBJ2o ("Oh what a beautiful morning")

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Friday, August 08, 2008

Georgina Gallina plus a visiting pigeon

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Our neighbour mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he was expecting a delivery of 150 ex-Tesco free-range chickens that had done their year's work of egg laying and needed retirement homes! As we'd been thinking of getting Georgie a friend it seemed the perfect opportunity to have one of them. He delivered our brown hen on Monday and she promptly escaped over the garden gate so not a good start with the chap and me trying to catch her among the nettles in the pub garden!

Georgie has been going through a rather annoying brooding session this last week and a half where she just wants to stay cooped up in her coop trying to keep invisible eggs warm ready for hatching. Poor love! The websites and books say to turf her out in order to break the broodiness and to stop her from over heating (which, naturally, it dangerous for her health) but my friend suggested I just leave her alone. It can take up to three weeks to return to normal (the time it takes to incubate eggs), and during this time we are not given our daily egg! We left her some of the time and enticed her out at others, but she's been pretty grumpy with puffed up feathers and angry "words". We wondered how the introduction of "brown hen" would go down, but all seemed quiet and peaceful (as we introduced early evening. Apparently resident hens think the new recruit has been there all its life if you do it this way!).

Couple of mornings later, brown hen (now named Georgina Gallina (Latin for hen)) woke me up at 6.30 with the most awful sqwarks and bashing noises. I was kind of hoping it was perhaps feeding time for the other 149 hens at my neighbour's house but closer inspection showed a desperate Georgina pleading to leave the coop as she was being pecked by Georgie. Not too sure how to deal with this. The poor girl has already gone through alot of pecking with Tesco (she's lost feathers on her back and bottom) and I really don't want it to continue.
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Having secured the garden of escape routes (hopefully) we let GG out to pootle around on Wednesday and have been watching her and Georgie closely; things have been improving, but Georgie still has the occasional peck and chase. No major noises from the coop this morning although Katie noticed GG's comb had been bleeding. I'm hoping it's just the "pecking order" thing and it'll settle down. Any ideas or tips, please leave your comments. One good thing - Georgie's forgotten all about her broodiness now, I guess she's got bigger fish to fry!

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A rather interesting thing happened on Saturday afternoon (apart from the W visit - see below). A lost racing pigeon turned up in our (empty) swimming pool looking rather forlorn. By the evening it had gone, but reappeared in the morning and continued this routine every day. It was a pretty friendly thing and was happy for us to get close enough to read the ID tag on it's foot which revealed that it was very young, having an 08 birthdate. Through some web searching, we found it was registed with the Royal Pigeon Racing Association and they responded very quickly to my "lost pigeon" email. It seemed to enjoy it's food - dried rice, split peas and lentils (had to laugh at this website about the bread, it certainly did turn it's beak up at it!) Lovely gentleman and his wife turned up from North Lincs. earlier today to reunite it with its brothers and sisters and to have a well-deserved rest! Apparently it had been racing from the Yorkshire area on Saturday and must have either got lost or homed in to the fact that Katie wants to look after every animal in the Kingdom!
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The W family visited!

Had a great time last weekend as my cousin came to stay with her hubby and two girls (nearly 5 and 9). They spent most of Saturday travelling up to us from "down South" but arrived mid afternoon which was fine as the weather had perked up by then! We spent most of the time outside in just perfect warmth with a bit of a breeze so everyone stayed reasonably snug, rather than scortching hot like the majority of last week! The children all got on fabulously and us adults were able to spend lots of time catching up (it had been a year since we'd last met). Lots of trampoline play and woollie making!

Original plan was for our visitors to camp outside on Saturday, but the weather from Thursday afternoon onwards had turned much cooler, very windy and pretty wet too so we had to quickly make other sleeping arrangements. Although the weather decided to behave in the end, we still gently moved Ben out of his room for the night and the "W" family moved in with the adults in the bunk beds and the children on blow-ups on the floor.

We were hoping for a quiet Saturday evening in the garden, drinking wine and eating nibbles enjoying more adult time chatter, but we had to laugh as the local pub had one of its local band nights. These are usually quite good, and quite enjoyable to listen too when sitting outside of an evening. However, on this occasion it was by far the worst ever rock tribute band with screeching voices and ultra loud music. To cap it all it didn't stop at 11 as is usual, but went on until midnight with revellers hanging around well into the early hours. Didn't go down too well with our guests who thought our talk of a "very peaceful area" was a little over the top! They also hoped to see perfect clear skies in order to get a fab view of the stars, but the clouds did their job of mucking that up! They did manage to see a number of satallites fly past though and a rather eerie low flying jet that's not the norm after dark for around here!

Thanks for coming to see us D, P, H and L. Hope you have a fab 5th birthday L!
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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Musical Monday (on Tuesday)!

Seeing as how we are studying deserts for our "world" project, it seemed fitting to listen, and enjoy, the fabulous "Lawrence of Arabia" theme tune by the composer Maurice Jarre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzFnyN0dP8w&feature=related

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Friday, August 01, 2008

In need of HE encouragement?

You should read this then .... Many thanks to Dawniy for posting it on her blog.

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