"Blimey, where've you bin??"

Well, that was quite a gap - I'm not sure where the time went!!!

I must admit I didn't realise until I made a concerted effort to write some new posts that blogger.com and IE explorer weren't talking to each other any more. I thought the laptop was on the blink. So I've now installed google Chrome so's I can access me own blog!!!

Anyway I'm back now, so a quick update, to start before I get some meatier posts together.

Almost a year has gone by since my last post, and a few things have happened since then.

We lost one of our chickens a couple of weeks ago - I just went into the coop and there she was just lying dead on the floor under the roosting bars - we hope she went peacefully in her sleep. One out apparently means four in according to the chicken arithmetic around here, so we now have an additional 4 girlies added to the, well, flock I guess you could say. They are just settling in and a few feathers are flying to be honest at the moment as the pecking order gets established. We also have one hen in a broody state, oh, and a female cat who appears to be having some kind of menopause (no pun intended) so there are a huge number of hormones flying around the home at the moment. Thank gawd for Real Ale I say...

Garden wise its harvest time now at least on a modest scale, as the beans continue to come in and a couple of compost potatoes have fruited. (Compost potatoes are those you accidentally sow when you spread your home-made compost on the garden in the spring. We also have compost tomatoes, raspberries and even the odd melon plant try and grow in the past. This year I'm going to leave the compost a full year before I spread it, the village I live in isn't quite ready to embrace vegetables in the front garden.)

There's a definite Autumnal feel to the air now, and the rain has returned after a fairly dry August so thoughts are turning to Winter round here. My first batch of logs are ordered and should be here soon, better clear out the log stores - it's surprising how junk seems to wash up in them like flotsam and jetsam. There's a tree branch up the side of the house that I can turn into kindling as well so that's a job for the next few days. We had our first Sunday roast for ages today and I nearly made a crumble to go with it but we had some meringues to eat up, so an Eton Mess type thing was thrown together, an attempt to hold on to summer just a little bit longer.

That's all for now, just a short reboot for the moment. Speak again soon.