important duties all day, and all night.

blog 31 / November

We are now well under way with the window painting project and the past 7 days has been one of optimism that turns to despair as the job of preparing these windows for painting roller coasts from the logic to the ridiculous. So we took the windows out of the frame and put a board in the hole. We sanded, putted, sanded, undercoated, sanded,  top coated, sanded, second top coated both sides. We have secondary glazing panels on the inside to close and clean and this morning on day 8 we put the windows back in their place.

 

And very good they look too, except that the secondary glazing panels were closed too soon and got stuck to the new paint, then the windows would not shut well and the tape we used to stop us painting the glass leaked a bit and the putty did not like being painted straight away, so, all in all, we wished, for a mega second, that we had got the professionals involved. We had a coffee at the board room table in workshop 5 and made a new plan where we will replace putty in situ to allow a good drying period before we paint. We will not do both sides but prepare and then paint the inside when they go back up and we can leave the secondary glazing open for a week…..are you all bored yet, because we are terminal, but the money we save will give us the spare to get on a plane to Canada for a visit next year, that is the motivation…….

 

 A little catch up with the whacky ducks and as you can see they are eating out of Mikes hands. The big girl on her own is one of our originals bought from Carentan Market in the first week we moved to Brevands in August 2007. She lost her mate years ago but she was happy to play with her girly playmate and the swan, who have both died this year. We thought she was probably on her own last legs but the arrival of this happy bunch has given her a new lease of life and she runs in and out of the pond coming up behind her quacking clutch. She does come forward to feed out of the bowl but she is very fussy about who is watching.

 

I decided that this year we would let the chickens have the poly tunnel as their winter quarters but now that I have the poly doors repaired and looking smart I did not want to leave them open in the wind and rain, so Mike cut me out a new little door just for the chickilicks so they can come and go as they please and if we should get some extreme weather, then they can bunk down in there and live their lovely stress less lives as normal. I hope they appreciate the efforts we make to keep them content and laying us a couple more eggs a day might be a nice way to say thank you..

 

 

 

 

Although the temperature is still above the seasonal average it does not mean we can sit on our hands and we have been busy closing down the gardens and putting all the delicate plants in a place where, should we get a spell of freezing, keep them protected. Now that the hens have the run of the poly I have had to think like a hen and protect the plants from curious, pecky and scratchy type interest by making hen proof enclosures.

 

I am still working on my cushion making hobby  and  have dedicated one day a week, called sewing Wednesday to  lose myself in my sewing room catching up with all the cushions I promised I would have done before I start my  on line shop. The problem is that I love all of these cushions and  I actually don’t want to let them go but I have twice as many tableaus waiting to be made up and only one sofa to put them on, so they will have to go sooner or later…….or Mike might have to leave home as the sofa is his place …mmmmmmxx

 

 

I have become so interested in these needlepoint tableaus that I bought myself a kit to work on throughout this winter. I will never be able to let this one go, it is such a great picture of HOSS that it will stay on the sofa, along with my mandarin duck and cat cushions that got this interest in needle point tableaus started

 

And finally, how quickly the winter sets in and we get into the cosy and well-rehearsed routines of winter. We changed the front doors so that we now come in through the lobby to keep the cold draft out of the kitchen and we light our fire every day. HOSS knows where he needs to be and operates his Head Of Site Security protocols from this vital location in the house, laid out in front of the fire.  He is very flexible and the command ‘upup’ gets him on his feet whilst we tend the fire then he settles down again to perform his very important duties all day, and all night.