Drip. Drip. Drip.
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♥May. 1st, 2014 // 06:16 pm♥
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(That's the noise that the ponies are making. I think we'd better go and let them in a bit earlier than usual!)
Why doesn't our lawn look like this...?
Mike's obviously not trying hard enough. And not using a tractor.
We went on a small excursion today, as we needed three things:
- vegetable stock, or celery to make same (bizarrely, the Marigold that we use has lactose as an actual ingredient, not as a part of an ingredient. The low salt Marigold doesn't, nor does the vegan one, just the regular variety. This is odd and stupid)
- a dried flower arrangement (having decided that it's now warm enough that we're not going to need a fire, I tidied up the fireplace today and wanted something to pretty it up. My apologies for the inevitable upcoming cold snap)
- to pop to the vet and check what the pooch weighs (I came back from Eastercon, having not seen her for a few days, and thought she was looking a bit tubby. As it turns out, she's bang on where she was last time - 35.5kg - so that's good)
In a one of those lovely coincidences, we managed all three things in a single stop: Jodie's vet is in a farm courtyard that also has a somewhat odd farm shop (big on cake decorating, runs courses in it; also sells incredibly fancy food) and a rather expensive florist that specialises in hops and dried flowers (as they grow it all on the farm). Handy!
In the florist, I was wavering between three different arrangements (actually, there was one that I *really* liked but I know Mike wouldn't let me spend £50 on dried flowers!). I asked Mike which he preferred: the one with the blue flowers, the one that was just wheat or the one made from different shades of grasses. He was much keener on the blue one, as the others were all too beige, until I suggested that he look at the prices. "Ok, the beige one is growing on me...."
We also picked up a Hops plant, as an experiment. We'll need to rig up a wire on the front wall of the house for it to climb up. I'd never really considered it, but I hadn't realised that hops is a perennial: we're apparently not to expect much from it this year.
Made macarons, in what I'm sure was exactly the same way as last time. They didn't go splat and look like they should, though I've not yet assembled and eaten one. God knows. |
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Sigh
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♥May. 1st, 2014 // 08:14 pm♥
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So, when ratty was coming to visit we moved the bags of feed from the barn into the tack room, where there was an old metal feed bin (with, annoyingly, a wooden lid). We didn't inspect it too closely: TWWOTV had had the room built around it, and said it was marvellous: it was so big and dry that she kept her rugs in one half of it and her feed in the other!
(You can see where this is going, can't you?)
The next time I went to get a bag of GB's feed, I pulled out one that ratty had ripped open but not completely trashed. As I was tipping it into the metal dustbin that we keep the open feed in, I saw movement, and as the level got up to the top a couple of very confused little meeces dashed off into the shadows. I put it down to the fact that it was open, so smelt, and to the wooden lid having a broken bit, which we resolved to keep firmly pressed into place so that there wasn't a meece-sized gap.
Some time later, I opened Baby's dustbin and thought it smelt a bit funny. The same thing the next day. I asked Mike what he thought, and we inspected the feed: some of it was looking distinctly blue around the edges. We ditched it, and got a new bag. It looked fine at the top, so we tipped it into the bin, only to find that the bottom of the bag was not at all fine. We went and actually looked at the feed bin, and it's not bloody marvellous, it's got a gap around the bottom. A meece-size, water-sized gap. Annoying. Throw away half of two bags to make the equivalent of one, and Mental Note to Do Something About It.
Today, Baby again needed a new bag of feed. My heart sank when I got it out of the feed bin and saw that there was white fuzz growing on the outside of the sack, and when Mike poured it into the dustbin I could see the mould spores flying off. I went to check on the other bags: Baby's all looked a bit faded and damp, and when I picked one of GB's up it was not only half empty where the meece had been at it but also slightly damp to the touch.
So, Baby's having GB's feed for his breakfast in the morning, and we're going to stop off and buy a couple of bags of feed on the way to pick F&E up from the station tomorrow.
And we need to get a new feed bin. We'll get a smaller one (TWWOTV's one is much too big for us), and probably put it in the barn, but I suspect that we're stuck with the old one taking up room in the tack room as well, as it's probably too big to fit through the door.
(On the plus side: at least we weren't keeping the feed in there when the weather was actually wet!) |
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