More eggs?

After an appalling night's sleep (appalling for numerous reasons, which included my mind refusing to switch off, excessive heat, a cat lying on my legs (clearly oblivious to the excessive heat, or else trying to punish me), strong winds, thunder, lightning and very heavy, very noisy rain), this morning was a bit of a slow one for me. Nevertheless, I managed a short burst on the turbo trainer and was at my desk working by 9am. Come mid-morning, though, Stuart was chomping at the bit to go out into town to run some important errands that required both of us to be there.

First stop was the bank to pay a bill from the engineer (or was it the geologist?) who came to look at our house when we were investigating the possibility of an extension. Hmpf, we'd thought all of those bills were all done and dusted. Anyway, after that, we headed into Montecatini to the mattress shop we visited almost exactly a year ago when we needed to replace the mattress in the apartment. We'd noticed that they were having a sale on, and decided it was high time we replaced our own mattress, after months of both of us waking up with painful backs. We therefore went straight in and ordered a new mattress which will be ready to collect in a couple of weeks.

It was then back into town to give Reggie a run along the river. It was nearing lunch time by now, so the river bank was blissfully quiet and Reggie was able to bound along freely without fear of meeting people, dogs or scary bicycles. He had a good splash in the river as well - he seems to be getting braver about going in the water these days, he loves a good paddle and this time even got in up to his shoulders.

Our final stop before going home was at Amanda's - Stuart went in to offer her some of our surplus courgettes to sell in her shop. At 2kg, she gave us €3 for them - not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's good to know we can do something useful with our surplus crops!

Finally, we made it home for lunch, after which it was back to work. I headed back to the office for the rest of the afternoon, while Stuart toiled on the veg terraces, putting down more ground cover and planting the aubergines, peppers and tomatoes that Donatella was kind enough to donate to us when we saw her yesterday.

The banks of the veg terraces are around 3/4 covered now. Not very pretty, but when we have lavenders and all sorts of colourful plants planted in the banks they will look better!

We almost have a full-sized cucumber!

Aubergines & peppers.

Borage.

As the time neared 6pm, it was time for us both to pack our work away for the day. Stuart went to make a quick check on the geese - over the last few weeks we have been a little less stringent about putting them inside every night. To be fair, this started out as an oversight, but after it had happened a few times and they seemed fine, we have started to leave them to their own devices. Whether this decision will come back to haunt us at some point I'm not sure, but so far their perimeter fence has not been breached (although Reggie has given it a good chew in places). The geese have left us with a bit of a conundrum recently though: we had assumed that Mrs Goose had stopped laying eggs some way back at the start of May, and indeed we had stopped even checking for eggs. Mr Goose's behaviour has calmed down enormously, and he is a shadow of his former 'come-anywhere-near-me-and-I'll-give-you-a-bite-to-remember' self. In fact, he has returned to being a mild-mannered, slightly timid animal - so much so that it's even safe to venture into their enclosure with bare legs and without a stick to fend him off. We had noticed that Mrs Goose was sometimes still sitting on the nest though - but didn't think much of it.

A couple of weeks ago, Stuart went in to change the bedding in their house and discovered that there was an egg in the nest - so we left it there to wait and see what happened. Over the last several days, we have noticed that Mrs Goose is no longer coming out of the house at all - Mr Goose can be seen wandering around the enclosure, quietly honking to himself, but without his sidekick. After asking for some advice from the 'Backyard Chickens' internet forum, it was suggested that the female goose had become broody - if a female becomes broody and sits on an unfertilised egg, it can eventually lead to death as she literally won't move (for food, water etc.) until the egg has hatched... which it clearly won't do if it's not fertilised. The advice was to try and get her off the nest, remove the egg, change the bedding and hopefully she would 'get over it'. So Stuart went up there this evening to see if he could shoo her away from the nest. On opening the back door to the house, she was duly startled into getting up - whereupon he saw not one egg, but six or seven! So, it's back to Backyard Chickens for more advice from the experts (or at least from people who are more expert at it than us)! Watch this space!