On my holidays!

There isn't much left to do.

The dog is in the kennel. She LOVES it there and may not wish to come home afterward

Except pack the car - 5 minutes

Make the sandwiches - +20 minutes

Clean the kitchen - 1 hour

Find the holiday label file and print off labels for post cards - (time to do item depends on whether or not it was lost in the last computer crash) approx 10 minutes

Mustn't forget camera, passports and travel documents, money and the first aid kit.

I think that's about it. I don't know if I'll be able to blog from where I'll be. I have made a policy decision to NOT take the laptop. If there is a convenient internet cafe, then I'll post. If not . . . you will just have to imagine what me and my family are getting up to!

I pride myself in my ability to pack light. There really is NO need for large suitcases unless you're going away for The Grand Tour.This photo was taken five minutes ago by George. I am holding my suitcase for the two and a half weeks we will be away. Swimming suits, t-shirts and shorts don't really take up much room. I am taking one pair of shoes, the sandals I'll be wearing. C'est tout!

I'm just like a big kid. I'm so excited I don't know how I'll get to sleep tonight!

If I fail to get to sleep, there is always a spot of ironing that needs to be done.

See you later!

Iowa Floods

This is Highway 1, south of Mount Vernon last week. I used to live just up the road from where this photo was taken. Where I lived is just out of shot in the upper right corner of that photo. This means that our old house is fine but our former neighbors are ruined.

This is one of the rivers in Iowa that flooded, the Cedar River. The farm shown is the Pitlik farm. There were a bunch of cottages on the other side of the river from the farm in an area called Ivanhoe. Those cottages are gone.

The Iowa River in Iowa City, the Cedar River in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, the Des Moines River in Des Moines all caused a lot of trouble for people this year.

As much as I love living in Scotland, I do miss my home state of Iowa. I miss my family and my friends. I miss the landscape and the people.

When bad things like these floods happen, I wish that I was there to help. I don't know if I'd actually like to see the flood damage. I don't know if I would want to see my beloved, peaceful state when it is not at it's best. Iowa in the summer is Iowa at its best. I don't want the people I care about over there to think that I'm glad I'm not there anymore, because that isn't true. You can be happy to be living in one place AND miss another place at the same time. I know because it happens to me all the time. As somebody once wrote "It is a curse to love two countries."

I see those rivers all angry and in flood and I can only think of the good memories I have of those rivers. The rivers I know are the rivers that I have swam in and paddled a canoe on. I had the worst sunburn of my life on a Iowa river. My friend Deb and I decided to float down the Wapsipinicon on giant tractor tire inner tubes one fine summer day. We parked my car at a small country store on the banks of the "Wapsi" and then drove her car to a spot well up stream. We plopped our backsides into the oversized rubber tubes and floated down the river all afternoon. We just splashed each other, talked about everybody we knew and squealed when we thought that fish had tried to nibble us. I didn't even THINK about sunscreen. When we reached the bank where we had to get out, I could already see quite plainly where my swimming suit was and the white outline of the knot where I had tied the car keys on to prevent losing them. I knew I was going to be in for a rough night. I have never gone near a river without sunscreen again.

I've had so many picnics and been camping on the banks of these rivers that have caused the damage this month. I feel betrayed. These rivers are supposed to provide idylic summer memories not trauma!

Down the road and down stream from where the first photo was taken is a place called Sutliff. There aren't even enough houses there for it to be called a village. It used to be a ferry point until some bright spark put a bridge there. The bridge was still in use up until my senior year in high school, 1981. Knuckleheaded boys with their first cars would show off by trying to get over the bridge at speed. causing the wooden planks to leap about. It was probably due to people I knew that the bridge was finally blocked off to traffic and you could only get across on foot. There is still a small general store in Sutliff. If you're going to have a day canoeing on the Cedar River, the Sutliff General Store is a wonderful spot to start from. Well it used to be anyway.

This is a photo I have borrowed from my friend Tom.It was taken after the Sutliff Bridge was closed to vehicles.

Here is the bridge getting washed away. These photos were taken from the front porch of the general store I mentioned earlier. It broke my heart to see parts of my former life getting washed down the river this way.

My Iowa friends have written about the flooding in their blogs.

Joe

Tom

They've got more photos and Tom wrote a beautiful piece about the Sutliff bridge.

This is the second major flood that Iowa has suffered in 15 years. Friends' business have been washed away but thankfully nobody I know of has lost a house. Clawing back a living will be tough enough. Hang in there everybody! I pray that it doesn't happen again during my lifetime!

Splashy Puddletime Fun

Later on this week, the ducklings are off to live in their new home. They are going back to the people I got the duck eggs from originally. They will go there with their foster mother until they've grown enough feathers to not need her warmth anymore and then the hen will come back here.

I wonder if the ducks that live over there will recognise their biological offspring. Probably not.

Yesterday the ducklings were having an absolute blast playing in the puddles in our drive. The mother hen was trying her hardest to get the ducklings to scratch around in the grass as she was doing, but they were having none of it. The ducklings were all about the puddles yesterday. I tried to get a good photo of the ducklings in the small puddles, but if I got too close it would scare everybody out of the water.

Well That Didn't Last Long!

Not long after yesterday's blog entry was sent out into the interweb, it started to rain. I had to dash out and pull all the laundry off the line. It started raining harder and the wind picked up. By the time Gordon and Louise arrived (with cake!) it was chucking it down and very unpleasant. I think it was cosmic retribution for me bragging about the lovely summer morning we were having.

We all had such a nice chat with those two. (Happy Birthday Louise!) We went outside for a bit so that they could admire the little bundles of fluff. It's amazing how quickly they grow in just three days!

Now it is Sunday afternoon and I don't think the rain has stopped since it started yesterday. It's cold too. We lit a fire in the fireplace last night to take the chill out of the air. As yesterday was the first day of summer I was loathe to turn the furnace back on. In addition to that, the cost of heating oil is so high! We thought that during the summer the cost of heating oil would go down as it has done in the past. We were going to take advantage of that and get the tank filled up but the price keeps going UP!

I've had it with worries. I am now going to focus on the week ahead. We are preparing to set off on our summer family holiday. We will be using a UK based holiday company that we've used many many times before, Matthews Holidays.

Our first holiday in France was years ago when all three boys were still at home and young enough to have no say in whether or not they came on the family holiday. I was still a stay at home mother and our household budget was Tight. I found a last minute, off peak bargain off teletext with this company.

We went to Brittany for two weeks in early September and stayed in one of their static caravans. I must say that even though it was a bargain we all had a really good time. The weather in that part of France in September is dry, sunny and not too hot. Most of the tourists have gone back to their schools and work desks by then and the crowds of summer are just a dimming memory. We had a really good time and it didn't cripple our finances. We kept going back there for years.

In the past couple of years we've found that we can go a bit further, spending the same amount of money. One year I compared the prices for holidays in Greece and it turned out that it would actually be less expensive to fly to the Greek islands. So we went to the lovely island of Skiathos for a couple of years.

As much as I loved our holidays in Skiathos and the holidays to Egypt, I found I missed going to France. This year we're going back. This time however we're are going to go further south than we've ever been before. We're headed to the Mediterranean coast not far from the Spanish border. I'm really excited. The Man of the Place and I have been researching the dive laws in France and getting all the documentation we might need to dive in this corner of Europe. In addition to bringing along our qualifications, we need to have a current medical certificate signed by a doctor. We also may or may not need some passport style photographs. We'll just get some done at the local supermarket photo booth. Aerial photo of Torreilles Plage. Photo of the beach with the foot hills of the Pyrenees in the background.

This is where we will be for two weeks.

In addition to all this we are also taking neighbour boy Gordon with us. Gordon and George are eight weeks apart in age and have very different personalities. Despite or because of this, they've always been very good friends. We're quite fond of Gordon and know that he'll be good company for all of us during this holiday and I think he'll have a good time.In my excitement I bought a sunhat when I booked the holiday. This will protect me from the harsh Mediterranean sun. It is a bit garish, but where else can you wear a hat like this if not in the South of France when one is on ones holidays! It may have the added bonus of embarrassing my family.

First Day of Summer

The Cuteness Continues!

As an introduction to summer you really would be hard pressed to find a lovelier morning than the one we are experiencing in South West Scotland. It is all very pastoral here at Whitelees (the name of our house) with clothes drying on the line, plants in front of the greenhouse to be planted out and a mother hen with her little charges walking around in the dewy grass.

If regular readers will recall, earlier in the spring we had a problem with Jackdaws trying to make nests in our chimneys. The birds were put off that idea by the fabulous Man of the Place and the Jackdaws were forced to make their nests in trees! Nature can be so cruel. There is one successful nest in the beech tree in the corner of the place. The little ones are getting ready to leave the nest any time now. They make quite a racket at the moment as you can hear in the video clip.

I'm off to do something domestic like scrub the kitchen floor. When I do this, the kitchen door will be open and I might get a vist from the mother hen and her little adopted ducklings.

Duckling Rescue!!!

Update on the number of ducklings we have here at Whitelees Cottage:

This evening, I phoned up my friend Antony, husband of Helen. Helen who is away on business in Canada this week and Antony are the source of the fertile duck eggs. They have an egg incubator and hatched out some additional duck eggs. They had put eggs into the incubator at the same time my hen started sitting on the duck eggs over here. This well timed hatch was successful with five ducklings coming out of their shells at the same time mine did over here. I had phoned this evening to see what the duckling status was with them on the other side of the village.

I'm glad I phoned, Antony had a lot on his plate! In addition to their two small boys (ages 7 and 1) they have two new kittens, a lot of adult poultry and a wonderful rescue greyhound. In normal circumstances Antony can handle all of these things in Helen's absence with quite a bit of grace and ability. Things go along very smoothly, the house keeps on running. Tonight however the heat lamp that was set up for the new ducklings stopped working. We think the big bulb went.

I said I'd be right over. I drove the short distance to Antony and Helen's house and collected the rapidly cooling ducklings. The ickle baby ducks were put in a small cardboard box and transported very quickly back to our place. After a very quick pause to get a photo of the box-o-ducks, I put them one by one underneath my hen.There are now EIGHT day old ducklings here at Whitelees. My mother hen has accepted these new ducklings and they have accepted her.

Three Little Ducklings!

Well, here they are in all their wobbly webfooted glory! I present The Ducklings!

There are two that are so newly hatched that they are still a little damp looking. They are still very weak and wobbly in the little video clip there. One duckling hatched yesterday, so this one is the photogenic duckling. The struggle to get out of their shells was a mighty one but they all got out in the end.(newly hatched damp duckling on the left and older sibling is on the right)

With hens sitting on duck eggs, one is supposed to damped the shells with a light spray of water near the end. This is to simulate the damp underfeathers a mother duck will have when returning to the nest after her daily trip to feed, drink and poo. Hens won't have damp feathers you see as they are a bit further off the ground than a duck. In any case, you supposed to damped the shells so that the membranes aren't so brutal for the little hatchlings. I forgot and only remembered this evening. What I did instead was to help the little guys along by cracking the shells here and there and partially removing the shells for them. I think it is important that the ducklings still have a bit of a struggle to get out of these shells. I saw a rare crane being hatched out on TV once. The crane egg started to hatch and the little guy had pipped but then struggled to get out the rest of the way. The people caring for this rare crane egg caved in and did all the work for the hatchling by opening the egg up for it. The result was that the newly hatched crane had deformed legs. My ducklings had been trying to get out of the shells for two days and worried that they'd die before they finished the job, I helped a bit. I didn't want my ducklings to have deformed legs so I let them struggle a bit as well.After the weekend, these ducklings and their foster mother are going to my friend Helen's place to live. Once the ducklings no longer need their mother, I'll get the hen back. I believe that the breed of these ducklings are Khaki Campbell. I've let them be in a safe, dry area with some nice food and clean water, ensuring that the babies are tucked safely under the mother hen. I'll check on them regularly, but I think they'll be fine now.

The Ducklings Are Hatching!

Today is the big day and right on time, the ducklings are hatching!

One of my hens has been sitting on six duck egg for the last 28 days. Today the eggs are hatching out. One duckling is already out. Two more eggs have pipped. This means that little tiny holes have appeared on the surface of the shell where the little guys inside have broken through. Three eggs appeared to be infertile. I checked the non-pipping eggs and they showed no signs of life at all. I double checked by chipping a little hole in the shells and (phew!) sure enough, there was nothing in there but rotting egg.

I dislike disturbing the mother when the eggs are hatching out. Disturbing the hen at this point in the proceedings can very easily cause chick or duckling deaths.

I'll have photos just as soon as the ducklings are safely out of their shells.