Carol's Chickens

We have big poppies in our garden. Every year just as they flower the weather is unsettled and the wind and rain knocks them down just as they are looking their best.

This year our big poppies have started to flower later than usual. It has helped them as we have had wind and rain while they were still in bud and they remained quite sturdy. They have just begun to flower and I thought I would photograph them before they have time to get battered.

We are having showers but at the moment but it’s not windy so they have a chance to flower for a while.

Big poppies

Delicate pink

Vibrant red

Contrast

They remind me of flowers made from tissue paper. They have only just started flowering but I know from past experience that this could be as good as they get. They are very vulnerable to the changeable weather at this time year.

It’s best to enjoy these short lived blooms while they are here in the moment.

Emerald is moulting the most heavily and is still looking really tatty.

Emerald

This is Emerald’s favourite place to perch while she is moulting and she spends a lot of time preening in this spot. Her white tipped under feathers are on show here.

Preening

Toffee

Toffee is missing some tail feathers creating a gap between her remaining tail feathers. Other than that she is looking pretty good though.

Peaches and Barley

Peaches is in the foreground with Barley close behind her as usual. They are never far apart. They both have the odd loose feather on their sides.

Speckles

Speckles still looks pristine and hasn’t lost a feather yet.

Butterscotch

Butterscotch’s pins are opening once more. I have never known a chicken moult for as long as Butterscotch. She has been moulting at the end of each broody spell since last summer. She seems to almost get her feathers through then she is off again.

I really hope this time her feathers come in and stay in. As usual for her after missing laying an egg yesterday she laid her egg at first light this morning. It is good to have her laying again.

Speckles has become very much my girl. From such a shy start she has become quite attached to me. Her routine first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening is set like clockwork.

She will always jump on to the inner gate when I open the outer gate. I never need to worry that she will jump outside the gate. I simply turn my shoulder towards her and she jumps on.

Tonight I thought I would try to capture this on camera. Photographing her on the gate is easy because she will stay there until I turn my shoulder towards her.

Speckles jumps on to the inner gate

Her comb is magnificent

She jumps to my shoulder and I take a selfie but I am blind as to what I am going to get. I hold the camera to where I think she is and click.

Speckles jumps on to my shoulder

You can tell she is on my shoulder as she is just under the roof of the run

I reach into the store cabinet for some sunflower hearts and stoop down so that Speckles can jump down safely as I throw out the seeds.

The girls scratch together for the seeds

They continue to scratch after the seeds have gone

This is the bedtime routine and we go through the same routine first thing in the morning with a handful of corn.

Just occasionally Speckles has jumped from my shoulder to the shelf in the store cabinet and attempted to help herself to the seeds until I lifted her down. Maybe that is a future photo opportunity. Her little habit is very endearing. She is such a sweetie.

It has been a week since Butterscotch finished being broody. She has moulted so much during that week that I wasn’t sure she would start to lay again. The feathers have stopped dropping over the last few days and she has become more vocal. She started looking in the nest box once more and I felt sure she was getting ready to lay again.

Yesterday she went in the nest box for a while in the morning and then gave up. In the afternoon she went back in and settled.

Butterscotch is back in the nest box

Her head is covered in pins once more. She seems to be in a permanent state of moulting and getting pins through. I wonder if her head will finally feather up this time or will this never ending cycle continue.

A little later Peaches was half in the nest box with her. I wasn’t sure if she just wanted to watch her or if she wanted to join her.

When I returned Peaches was in the nest box and standing in the egg laying position. When she left the nest box there were two eggs side by side.

Butterscotch’s and Peaches eggs

Butterscotch’s egg is on the the left and it’s first time in ages we have had a beige egg. Our other three, currently laying girls, lay the white eggs.

It is lovely to have another girl laying once more as eggs have been a  bit sparse with only three girls laying. Butterscotch is the best layer between her broody bouts so we will now be getting an egg from her nearly every day.

Welcome back Butterscotch. She is amazing!

The roses are amazing at the moment.

White rose

Red rose

Pink rose

The first of the big poppies is open.

Pale pink poppy

The self seeded fox gloves are in full flower.

Fox glove

The snap dragons add a bit of colour.

Antirrhinums

In the front garden there is a mass of blue.

Campanula

Little snapshots of colour are around the garden. This is a lovely time of year.

I bought a pack of asparagus to make a starter of asparagus wrapped in pancetta and baked in the oven. I only needed half of the asparagus. I wondered if the girls would like the rest. I thought it would be too hard for them raw so I cooked it for them.

Will they like asparagus?

Butterscotch is last to come and investigate

The girls check it out

They are not at all sure about this

It turned out that they didn’t like it at all. I was surprised because they love things like peas. Maybe they would have preferred it uncooked. At the end of the day it was untouched and I had to pick it up and remove it.

So what do you know! My girls don’t like asparagus!

Yesterday morning I did all my weekend chicken chores. I swept the patio, washed the food and water bowls and dug over the run. I opened all the panels to let the sun in.

In the afternoon it started to rain gently. It was so dry and dusty in the run that I thought I would leave the panels open for a bit to dampen down the run.

The next minute the rain turned into to an absolute down pour. I ran up to the run and frantically started closing up the panels. Rain was dripping into my sleeves and my wellies were soon were caked in mud. The girls looked a bit perplexed.

It is so warm at the moment that it will soon dry out. No doubt the girls will leave muddy footprints on the patio that I have just swept. It was so clean and dry one minute and wet the next.

Oh dear! It’s raining

I love the way the girls line up

Then they bunch together again

They have gone from sitting in the sun the day before to standing watching the rain the next day. That’s a typical summer here in England.

The girls love to sit in the sun. Toffee especially loves to find a patch of sun and will stretch her wings out to soak up the rays but I just missed the shot of her on her side with one leg and one wing stretched out.

Sitting in the sun

Emerald isn’t in this photo because she prefers to sit in the shade or perch in the shade. She is having such a heavy moult that she is staying out of the sun.

Poor Emerald perches in the shade

Butterscotch is also moulting like crazy. I am not sure if she will start laying again because she is dropping so many feathers but I have thought that in the past and she did start laying again. I am picking up loads of feathers from the shed and the run.

The good news is that she has loads of pin feathers once more. It is now looking like she may get fully feathered again after all.

Butterscotch has lots of pins again

Butterscotch has now been moulting on and off for a year. I wonder if she is ever going to be done with this. Whereas it is really taking it out of poor Emerald, Butterscotch just seems to take it all in her stride.

Our rambling rose, Paul’s Himalayan Musk, has just reached it’s peak so I thought I would photograph it again.

The view from our bedroom window

The rose on the side fence

Over the cabin roof

A closer look

Closer still, a clamatis flower peaks out

Another close up

Our patio

Our patio and the veg plot

The veg plot from the other direction

The rose is beautiful, the garden is lovely and the veg plot is coming on well. The weather has been sunny and I have been really enjoying sitting in the garden and making the most of it while it lasts.

A few days ago I wrote a post titled  “A girl’s eye view“. This view is from the perch where Peaches and Barley always watch me whenever I am sat on the patio.

View from the perch where Peaches and Barley watch me

I thought I would reverse this view and show my view of them watching me.

Barley watches me from the perch

It seems so far away but whenever I sit in the sun on the patio Barley always keeps an eye on me from this perch and makes her squeaky little noises to me.

Barley and Peaches watch me

If I move a bit closer Peaches will join her. This is the view that I always have as I walk up the garden. The other girls all run down to the wire as I approach. You can see them making their way down.

They then run back up again beside me as I walk past the side of the run. It is lovely to be greeted by my girls every time I go up the garden and it is amusing to have Peaches and Barley watching over me as I sit on the patio.