Bringing order

With the worst of the winter theoretically ahead of us, I have been ordering wild animal food to get us and our visitors through the hard times ahead.

We have flaked maize, peanuts and chicken pellets for the badgers: mixed grains and pellets for the pheasants – which is also eaten by  some birds especially the yellowhammers who only seem interested in the mixed grains: feeder seed and peanuts for the seed eating birds: dried mealworms especially for the wrens and robins: fat and seed balls: fat and insect pellets for the ground- feeding non-seed eating birds: and mealworm crumble with added fats for anyone we may have missed out on, which is scattered along the tops of the stone walls and amongst plant stems and roots for the shy visitors.

Thus we have a lot of feed to store and sacks and plastic tubs were piling up in the porch and making the outhouse difficult to negotiate.  A couple of hours’ work this morning and we have it sorted into old feed tubs from the ponies, labelled and shelved.

Shelf of apples above:

At the same time we had a sort out of the outhouse which has helped make things more logical and easier to find.

Now we can get into the chest freezer without first lifting off piles of dog food and trays of stored apples!

The hay loft is stacked with hay, and the spare bay in the barn has tins of horse feed and tubs of garlic powder.

The freezers are full of cooked pears and apples, blackberries, soup, turkey in gravy,  leg meat for curries, red cabbage cooked with juniper berries, apples and onions, as well as some bread, butter, cheese and fish, and some veg,  etc.  The pantry shelves are groaning with tinned goods, home made jam, chutneys and sweetcorn relish (a wonderful American recipe) so we are ready for whatever the weather throws at us, I hope.

Although it rarely happens nowadays, I find it difficult to forget the days as a child when not only was our cottage snowed in and we had to jump down from the first floor to dig out to the front door, but the whole village was cut off for over three days.  Some days after walking across the fields with hot bran mashes for the horse we had to sit with our wellies in the stove oven to melt the snow inside our boots so that we could pull them off.  Oh, the chilblains!

Our first winter in this cottage our lane ended up with twelve foot snowdrifts partly caused by snowploughs trying to get through and merely pushing the snow to each side of the lane, causing more problems, as they never got through anyway.  Last winter the worst problem were the icy layers within the snow which often made walking impossible and driving out of the question.  Our lane was never cleared or gritted.

This year we have probably over-compensated but we begin with a warm feeling of preparedness as we look over our stores.

But  –  pride comes before a fall!  No pun intended.

————————

River of Stones – today’s pebble: “Tiny puffa jacket on antennae-fragile ‘pins’: no teenager in ‘heels’ but – just a wintry Robin”.

Read Full Post »

Well, the Gecko has landed!

A younger member of the family having grown somewhat disenchanted with said gecko and having fallen in love with a Giant Hamster instead, the gecko has arrived chez nous for the foreseeable future.

S/he is a leopard gecko, fully grown and, despite an odd swelling in its tail, an attractive creature.  Husband has christened it Leonard: hardly original but certainly onomatopoeic.

So Leonard (to become Lottie if found to be female) is now safely ensconced on a heating pad, in an artificial cave, in a glass-fronted fit-for-purpose vivarium, in a corner of my study.

A steep learning curve awaits: for instance, a special container containing damp vermiculite to aid skin shedding is necessary.  Close inspection of the one he arrived with explained why his box smelt – he was also using his shedding compartment as a loo!!

Feeding live food has always been a step too far for me, but Leonard will not eat anything unless it moves!  Mealworms are suggested but even they move too fast for Leonard.  Either he has trouble focussing or is going through a particularly comatose phase but when a meal worm is placed in front of him, it takes many seconds, if not actual minutes, before it catches his attention.

Meanwhile, the mealworm is bent on self preservation and humps its way over the sand in the opposite direction, at a rate of knots.  Occasionally one will decide that direct confrontation is the best form of defence and ‘eyeballs’ Leonard.  This is too much for our Lennie who, once over his disbelief, backs away into his cave.  A marauding mealworm is clearly not to be trifled with.

Incidentally, marauding is the only correct term to describe the typical mealworm’s behaviour.  They’re thugs.

I need to breed them, apparently, to avoid the expense of buying a new box each week: this necessitates providing lettuce and carrot to give them adequate moisture plus a dish of special mealworm food.  Pick up a piece of lettuce 20 mins. after putting it in their box and it will look like a green squid with lots of rampant mealworms hanging on for dear life.  No separating them from a good source of food.

Their dish of food heaves with muscular mealworms shouldering each other aside to claim pole position.  I’ve never yearned to own a reptile and I’m not entirely sure that I like the world to which I have been introduced by Leonard’s arrival, but what to do?

Mother of child was worried that hidden away in said child’s bedroom the gecko would be forgotten in the daily frenzy of a busy household and die of neglect – so Leonard is here to stay.  And he is very sweet: the way his little red tongue cleans round his chops after a tasty morsel and his cute toes.

I can feel that a cage makeover is coming on too: pictures of tastefully decorated boxes with logs, plants and rocks are becoming appealing.

Home decoration gecko style.

Read Full Post »