Long light evenings

 We love these long, light summery evenings...

Anna has a permanent grass cutting job...

and we get to catch up on a bit of long overdue garden maintenance....

We only have one pair of safety goggles so the swimming goggles are pressed into service as we never turn down a helper...

This tree doesn't need watering, the new wild rose cuttings do, but it's preferable to watering his brother which happened moments earlier!

Play goes on way past 9pm but with no school to get up for we don't need to worry about the time.

 The new chicks have a short outing from the brooder...

and a sunset draws the evening to a close...

A bit of baking...

Industrious children, busy baking...

but a five year old left a little too long has great fun...

with a very tempting bag of  flour...

 He's not too impressed when his sister tries to mop him up though!

 The chicks we hatched a while ago belonged to friends and have now gone back to them. Beth had also ordered a dozen Orpington eggs, both chocolate and lavender, which arrived from the UK a few weeks ago and have been in the incubator. Every few days the eggs are candled ( a bright torch shone through them in a dark room so you can see what is going on inside the egg ), so you can monitor progress. It is important that any eggs not developing correctly are removed from the incubator as they can go bad and explode thus risking infecting the remaining eggs. Unfortunately at day 8 we noticed blood rings developing on three of the eggs which is indicative of embryo death and by day 14, eight of the twelve eggs needed to be removed as they obviously weren't viable.
Hatching these eggs is Beth's project so she made the final decision about at which point to remove the eggs from the incubator. As the eggs were fertile and had had developing embryos she decided she wanted to bury them in the garden under a tree.














 Beth bought a tree and she and Caitlin dug a hole...

and the eggs were buried...

She also wanted to write a little note to bury with the eggs and asked the others to do the same.

Another tree in the garden, more memories.

 Every couple of weeks or so we get to mind a wonderful little three year old girl who has downs syndrome. She is full of fun and the guys love helping to care for her. Orla and Tiarnan especially enjoy getting a chance to be 'big sister' or 'big brother' as it is a role they don't usually get to take on.....

Chicks 2

Another day, another miracle...

More exciting than eating dinner...