The Beginning of January, 2003.
Wednesday 1st

No photos, just loads of people sitting and lying about the place in a stupor as we all coped with not having enough sleep the day/night before.  Except for Daniel, of course, who had a normal night's sleep after leaving us all well before midnight on New Year's Eve.

Thursday 2nd

Jude, Roger and Stella arrived to stay for a couple of days.  (Oh, and Phoebe, dog - exit Cattin for several worrying days.)

Jude with Stella in her backpack carrier
Saturday 4th

We don't go in for baby pictures much on this site (if they don't have black hair, feathers or wool, of course), but this is a sight not often seen...

Ruth feeding Stella

Stella was weaned from breast-feeding a couple of months ago, so now has a milk-formula as well as various solid foods.  This baby didn't 'bunt' the bottle as much as the lambs and Crispin did!

Wednesday 8th

We have been having so much rain during the last few days.  We don't expect it in the middle of summer and we don't need it and we're absolutely sick of it!

So we had some more rain - much, much more.

Gisela in the flooded river

I tried encouraging Gisela to create a better action shot by going further in!  (Then I had a moment of panic when I thought she might take me seriously.)

Friday 10th

There are all sorts of strange things in our garden...

A chrysalis hotel complex... a veritable bunch of chrysalises
strange pea-fowl named Stephan ... a very strange bird on the lawn.

Gisela took the ducklings for a swim.  We put the mother hen on the board across the top of the bath so she wouldn't panic about where her babies were and they seemed calmer with her there.

ducklings in the bath

Getting the babies out again was a bit of a problem - they're not very happy about human contact, since we've been leaving their upbringing to the hen.

trying to catch the ducklings in the bath