CHOCOLATE LIFE AND JAZZ!: June 2011

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ducks and chickens

These flowers are in my son's garden..l just love the two colours together.

These gorgeous ducklings belong to a friend of ours. They have the most amazing duckpond and loads of ducks and many of them have young! I was in my element.....so cute.

Going off for their first swim, they were only 24hr old....isn't Nature wonderful.

These ducks are very pretty but unfortunetly they hadn't shed any feathers for me to pick up.

So many ducks of all sorts of sizes and colours , all making so much noise.

A little local battle going on.

This mum was really protecting her chicks and if anyone came near, she pushed them all back into the shed. They were really tiny and were only 4 hours old...so fluffy.

The little fuffy yellow chicks going for their first swim.

I thought all the chicks were yellow then l realised l saw a black and yellow one. It is great to be different!

Wonderful white ducks with yellow beaks, just the sort you see in Children's story books

The mother duck was very carefully moving her young further into the bushes as some of the older ducks were harrassing her young.

The area of the pond and enclosure are huge....you could loose the ducks in here!

Inside this cage and water pond are two different breeds of ducklings. One mum died and the other mum took them over. Isn't Nature wonderful?

Home from home.

Not stretching his wings but chasing off another male duck.

Tony closing the electric fence round the enclosure....first time he got a shock...nasty!

Our friends also have chickens.....they are all different, lay lots of eggs and are gorgeous. Here they are.

Monday, June 20, 2011

The Rutland County Show. If you don't like animals...look away now!

If you do not like cattle, horses or sheep look away now! You have been warned!

We spent a great day at The Rutland County Show with my son Andrew and his wife Gemma, plus Alfie of course. Although the sun was not shining and it was a bit cold, fun was had by all.

There was Show Jumping for young and old and as you can see from the next image..some of them looked so cute!

Batman in disguised!

There was a lot of money around and there was also......

....... the other end of the scale too...great to see anyone can have a horse and show or "jump" it!!

Hush Puppies anyone?

My goodness, this Standard Poodle is BIG! When l was expecting my first child in1975, my doctor had a dog just like this one. It used to sit at the base of her desk in the surgery and it smelt to high heaven!!! She also used to sit him beside her in a Morris Minor and he looked so funny. Neither would be allowed these days..Health and Safety and all that! Ha!. Sometimes l miss the old days.

This Beagle looked as if he had black make-up around his eyes. Looked rather sweet actually.

A country gent at the show!

The Royal Artillery Motor Bike Display Team in action. There were a lot of little boys making their mothers very worried by saying things like.."I want to do that mummy." and "When l grow up, l am going to be a motor-bike soldier!".