We had a nasty moment yesterday with that sweet, innocent looking hen on the right of this picture. That’s Willow, usually found wandering around the garden on her own, looking confused and, well, a tad gormless. She never knows quite where she’s hidden her gorm. We love her anyway. She’s Willow.
So, verisign is putting the price of com/net/org domains by 7% again. I can’t understand why they need to put the price up every year. It’s not as if they have to buy a lot of stock that’s also gone up in price. So I’ve decided to let most of my com/net/org domains drop and replace them with co.uk instead. Those are cheaper and Nominet don’t hike up the price every five minutes when they feel like it.
In other news: Shelley has been laying eggs for around 16 days now! She lays the cutest little eggs that are half the size of Inara’s. However, she’s now gone broody and is proving to be a stubborn little madam about it too. Typical black rock! (Even though she’s only half a block rock.) I’m doing my best to stop her, but I’m not hard-hearted enough to force her to sleep outdoors again. I did it for one night and felt like a right cruel so-and-so. It didn’t help when she kept making miserable sounding little cheeps every time she saw me. Hens!
Inara decided that morning began at half past 7 today. She was up on her high perch (the one P thought was too high for Madam’s dainty legs, hah!) and giving it beak enough to wake up the whole of Chancery. No one has complained yet, thank goodness! Maybe it’s just me, being a late to bed and late to rise kind of person. Noisy girl!
No egg today. She laid yesterday and the day before, so she’ll lay tomorrow and friday. Though I’ve learned not to take Little Madam’s schedule for granted. There’s still no sign of anything from Shelley, so I think she must be really very young. I know it’s daft, being British and all and being constitutionally unable to just go to Tony and ask him how old she is. P and I keep telling each other that we’ll go and see him and ask if we can buy another bantam from him. It was very generous of him to just give us Shelley, but she’s a little bit lonely all on her own. We’ve thought about buying another one from somewhere if we can just find out where. Given that the new house we had to buy for her was £90 and another bantam will probably be £12-15, that was an expensive free hen!
There were some fun and games going on with the nextdoor neighbours this morning. No, I don’t mean the nice chap who lives to the right of us, but the sheep and lambs in the field to the left of our house! I don’t know what started it, but around 5 or 6 sheep and their lambs started having a mad five minutes in the bit of the field between our garden and the derelict house. (Which has been empty for more than 40 years and is very slowly falling down.) The sheep were bouncing around and running up and down the slope, followed by the lambs. Two of the sheep were being very affectionate to each other, rubbing cheeks and trying to mount each other! The other sheep further over in the field were watching them with very disapproving expressions on their faces. I could tell they were scandalised and tutt-tutting over it. They’ll be gossiping about that one for days!
…and I’ve decided that I will have a blog after all. I had half-heartedly decided to quit blogging when I let my previous blog domain, soup-dragon.org, lapse and I cancelled the hosting. But after thinking about it, well, what the heck! No one reads my waffles anyway, so it’s not going to bother anyone.
I’m sticking with this domain, seren.nu, as I rather love .nu domains. It’s hosted by 2wdhost and the domain was bought from Namecheap. Who I am not happy with, as I didn’t manage to win one single domain in the Christmas competition. I got five last year, and three in the Easter version, but none this time. Most of the questions seems to revolve around some obscure Christmas movie that was only shown in the US. But oh hey, what the heck. I’ve got enough domains anyway. 😉
Talking of Christmas, we had an odd sort of day. P thought it would be a good idea to let the Golden Girls, as he calls them (our lohmann-brown hens, of which we have 5) have an hour outside of their run, in the garden. Which was a very good idea and they enjoyed themselves. Until they got to the bottom garden and came beak-to-beak with Inara, our black rock hen. (She’s allowed free access of the garden, as she’s 5 years old and the last of our old flock.) Everything would have fine, if Miss Inara had not decided to treat them as she did her late sisters. One of the Golden Girls picked up a bug, so Inara causally sauntered over and tried to take said bug from said hen’s beak. It was probably Florrie, as she’s the smallest. Florrie was not best pleased. Well you wouldn’t be, would you. She squarked at Inara and that was the signal for lots of clucking, flourishnig of wings and a general melee.
We rounded up the Girls, which was a fun half hour. Have you ever chased five hens round a garden? Then we tucked them into their run, and Inara into hers, with their Christmas present: boxes of live mealworms. They love the dried variety, but when our local PetsAtHome started selling live insects for reptiles, we bought some for our hens. They were very happy!
I’m still not happy with my blog’s layout. (This refers to the old soup-dragon blog.) It’s nice, and fits the whole stone thing, but, meh. Which reminds me, I never said why stone-field. A long, long time ago (cue flashback sfx) I started writing a novel called “The Stone Field”. It was all about the reincarnation of the Goddess Rhiannon’s son, Pryderi. There were horses, standing stones, an evil old woman who was trying to use Pryderi to her own ends, and our brave heroine who was trying to stop her. Oh, and a mysterious man who may or may not have been the real Pryderi; the other one being an evil spirit who was impersonating him. Sounds okay, doesn’t it? Thing is, I am the world’s worst procrastinator. I am great at coming up with really good plots, but crap at actually finishing what I start. I should have a medal, I’m that good at procrastinating.
Anyway, that’s the why of that. It’s a cold, grey day in Chancery and mizerly. (That’s not miserly as in Scrooge, that’s mizely as in drizzly.) I’ve fed the hens; one egg. I promised them some dried mealworms for tea as they just adore them. They’re meant for wild birds, and I probably should be getting live mealworms. But I just, y’know, couldn’t bring myself to do that. They love the dried ones though. It’s like crack for hens! We have the cats munchie-trained, so that they’ll come running if I shake the box of dried kibble. And now the hens are mealworm trained. If they’re outside and I want them back in the run, I just shake the mealworm box and they come racing across the grass! I love the way that hens run. They look like they have their arms behind their backs and have this funny bob and weave run.
Oh great, the air force are on practice runs overhead again. They fly really low and make a heck of a din. Funny thing though, the sheep just take no notice whatsoever. They don’t get freaked and the lambs have learned not to notice either. Freaks me out when they come racing just a few feet overhead, but not the animals. I don’t know what it does to the red kites though. Sometimes they come over so low I can practically read the name labels on the pilots’ uniforms. Okay, slight exaggeration. Heh! If I’m outside, I wave to them though.
Well, I need a cup of coffee and I have to sort the washing out. So bore da and have a good day.
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