Animals are such a tonic!

I've been feeling under the weather with a flare of my fibromyalgia / cfs symptoms, which fortunately is a relatively rare occurrence these days. I try to do everything I can to shut it out & reduce it's affects on my life as much as possible, but it's at times when I feel unwell that I especially appreciate having firstly my very caring family & secondly my lovely animals around me.

The dogs were very confused because normal routines went out of the window. Because my blog has been filled with duckling & hen stories you wouldn't have guessed yet that I'm a massive dog lover, or should that be a massive lover of dogs? I may be heavier than I'd like to be, but not massive yet! We have four dogs; Polo the Westie, Maggie the border terrier, Meggie the lurcher & Mabel the Jack Russell / Yorkshire Terrier cross. They are all very special & I promise I will introduce you to them soon! They all sat outside the bedroom door while I was in bed & were besides themselves with excitement when I finally emerged. They were then glued to my side in case I disappeared again, nudging at me & wanting to be as close as possible to me. I do love them so! When I feel recovered I will treat them to long walkies & lots of extra pats & cuddles to make up for being a rubbish mummy these last couple of days.

Later I spent a quiet hour out in the garden with Chalk & Cheese the ducklets. They are about 8 / 9 weeks old now & far too big to be called ducklings any more. Here are some up to date pics:

'Chalk'

'Cheese'

They are so grown up now that it's time to start thinking about taking them up to our little bit of field & introducing them to the hens, Khaki Campbell ducks & geese. I want to do it while they are still small enough not to be a threat to Pop, our gander, but big enough to pretty much take care of themselves & free range with the other birds. They are really quite good at foraging in the garden now (with the odd treat of mealworms, lettuce or grated carrot) & only eat a bowl of their growers pellets in the evening before bed time. In fact they have become a bit too good at free-ranging! At first the worst they did to my raised beds was squish a few onion & shallot plants. But now all that remains of my baby leeks & beetroot plants is one small dug up beetroot & bare earth! However, sat watching them in the pleasant evening sunshine was such perfect, peaceful bliss that I really didn't care one bit. Cheese was especially funny listening to & watching the wild birds in the garden whilst chilling out in the pool, his crest feathers rising & falling inquisitively. Chalk was busy preening herself. She's still more feathered than Cheese & her beak is starting to develop it's red colouring.

Another thing that put a smile on my face was receiving my first parcel from Primrose Hill Studios. I have never opened such a beautifully wrapped package before! My little covered notebook & gingham lavender heart were made by a lady who clearly puts a lot of love into her craft work. Have a peak at http://www.primrosehillinteriors.com/.

And yet another big thing to be very happy about is that eldest son has passed his first year exams at Uni, with a first in Artificial Intelligence!!! I'm so excited & proud of him! Middle son has finished his GCSE's now, but he has quite a long wait for his results - fingers crossed that he's done as well as he deserves to after working hard for them.

So clearly no reason at all for feeling sorry for myself here! My life is full of so very much to feel happy about & I'm a very lucky lady. Onwards & upwards as they say.