Piglets

3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days, the gestation period for pigs, and Lucy gave birth to a healthy litter of 6 piglets, this is the first picture, the other two followed a few minutes later.

More pics over at my pet pig blog - Little Pet Pigs - if you like piglets as much as we do you might want to follow Little Pet Pigs as there will be lots and lots of piglet photographs to follow.

Friday Finds

I thought I'd share this beautiful vintage book with you as a Friday Finds post, Friday Finds is a bookish meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Every Friday you can share a book that you've

heard about / discovered with other book lovers. I thought it a lovely idea which is why I'm joining in this week. I also thought it would be a super idea for us to develop into a sort of vintage Friday Finds but I digress.

What do you think of The Dukes Own by Col. Groves, it has a beautiful cover doesn't it?

A rather splendid frontispiece,

and lovely illustations marking the beginning and end of each chapter.

All in all a rather wonderful book that was awarded to Harold Williams for attendance of the Primitive Methodist Sunday School.

I wonder who Harold Williams was and what he did in his lifetime? I'm assuming he is no longer with us as I believe that this book was published in 1887. At least that is when the book was first published, the authour Colonel Groves wrote lots of regimental histories and adventure stories and was once librarian of the Priaulx Library, Guernsey so I've been able to find out a bit about him.

I love books like this, ones that have been kept for years and years, though sadly I have to admit that I am unlikely to read this one I think it's probably more of a "Boys Own" type adventure.

Wordle

Been playing with Wordle

Just entered my blogs URL and this is what it came up with.

I'm thinking it will be interesting to do this from time to time to see what comes up.

The Royal Wedding and I

Truth be told I missed the Royal Wedding and I'm grateful to all of you who posted about it, it would seem that I missed out on a very lovely Royal occasion.

So what was I doing as the nation settled itself in front of the telly (or indeed the Mall)?

The clue is in the picture below.


No not reading, gardening and not just gardening in my own garden but gardening for someone else. I now officially have a little gardening job on a Friday morning. As if I didn't have enough to do already with horses and pigs etc...

And you know what? It was fun. Really easy as well, these people have raised beds full of compost and all I had to do was plant a few bedding plants and water them in. Now thats what I call relaxing gardening.

Happy Easter

Golly has it really been 2 weeks since I last posted? Time goes so fast doesn't it? But then it has been an incredibly busy two weeks. You see we decided that it was time to move the horses to our own yard and that involved getting electric fencing up and running which took ages as I was the only one working on it due to Madeline having bitten through Edward's finger...

Anyway you can read all about the move and how the horses have settled in, if you're interested that is, on Edward's blog My Equestrian World. I'm going to sign off for the weekend now with all good wishes for a lovely, happy Easter to you all.

Weekend Flowers For You

Pretty Spring flowers from my garden to wish you all a wonderful weekend,

whatever your plans are I hope you get the chance to enjoy some of the glorious weather we've been forecast.

Lucy Loveheart

I just discovered that one of my favourite artists, Lucy Clibbon, has a blog It's not a personal blog as such but one attached to her website to keep folk updated as to what she has been up to.

The website, Lucy Loveheart, is full of her wonderful creations, make a cup of tea before you visit because if you're anything like me you'll get lost in her magical world for ages.

All images Lucy Clibbon

A Disney Miss Marple? Surely not

It took me quite a while to get used to Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple

after the inimitable Joan Hickson (Christie's own choice) but get used to her I did and I now think she makes a splendid Marple.

Of course there have been lots of Marple's over the years including our own

Dame Margaret Rutherford

"the maddest thing on screen ever, like a petticoat tornado"

But Jennifer Garner Miss Marple? Surely not.

A Disney Miss Marple? Surely not.

As Agatha Christie herself said (of Rutherford's Marple) “Why don’t they just invent a new character? Then they can have their cheap fun and leave me and my creations alone.”

The Nicest Gift

A bunch of daffodils

no extravagant gestures required !

Elizabeth Taylor 1932 - 2011

Strange I hadn't thought about her in years, but upon hearing of her death childhood memories of Elizabeth Taylor came rushing back.

People used to say that my Mother looked like Elizabeth, she certainly had the dark hair and blue eyes, though I believe Elizabeth's eyes were described as violet.

I remember that the on off love affair with Richard Burton was much discussed in the girl's cloakroom at school, school girls gossiping, usually repeating what their parents had said.

And the diamonds, oh yes we girls talked about the diamonds quite a lot really.

And the films, the old ones were often shown on a Sunday afternoon. Films like Elephant Walk, Giant, National Velvet, Little Women, Father of the Bride, Cleopatra and Ivanhoe gave us plenty to talk about on a Monday morning.

Most of my friends were allowed to watch the Lassie films, I however was banned as my family could,'t cope with the sobs!

But of course some Taylor films were considered entirely unsuitable for such young minds and films like Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were shown after our bedtimes.

I still love the National Velvet film it's one of my favourite old movies, I think I'd like to watch it now...

Catkins

Corkscrew hazel

Didn't we have glorious weather yesterday? Well we did here, bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Hope that some of it reached your part of the world. And the moon, did you see the full moon last night? It was just enormous, apparently we haven't had a full moon this close to earth since 1992.

Willow

The garden is really coming to life now, I don't think I've ever seen so many catkins on our corkscrew hazel as there are this year. The catkins on our willow aren't quite so impressive but still lovely.

I love catkins, a real sign of Spring.

Wish we had a pussy willow.....

The Farm Shop

Weekends wouldn't be the same without a visit to our local farm shop for fresh seasonal vegetables. Everything is locally grown, there is a wonderful selection of different apple

varieties all of which are actually grown in the orchard behind the shop.

The eggs are free range, delicious and one quite often finds double yolkers. Jams and chutneys are homemade by local ladies from produce grown in the orchard. The plum jam is devine and I'm totally addicted to the chilli jelly, so much so that I persauded the nice people who run the shop to get me the recipe.

There is even a section devoted to the birds with a wide variety of resonably priced wild bird seeds.

All so much nicer than the supermarket especially as my shopping is carried to the car.

An arranged marriage

If you've visited my Little Pet Pigs blog you'll know that we have a pet Kune Kune pig called Hugo. For sometime now we've been hoping to find Hugo a wife but although there are a lot of Kune Kune pigs for sale it wasn't an easy task.

We saw turkeys,

Alpacas with attitude,

little climbing goats

and rams with ginormous horns before we found the perfect girl (gilt) for our boy.

Here she is.

Want to know if it was love at first sight?

You can find out here

Madelines birthday and can I ask a favour please?

This weekend Madeline reached the age of 9, she had lots of birthday carrots and apples which of course she shared with the other horses (but don't tell her that!)
Now I have a very special favour to ask of you all, my youngest son has started his own blog and I wondered if you would possibly spare a moment to take a look? Leave a comment? Maybe even follow?
Its at

http://myequestrianworld.blogspot.com

Thankyou ever so much.

Spring Flowers and Vintage Books

 So now we're into Spring and we'll soon be seeing these gorgeous Spring flowers for real not just in the wonderful illustrations by B. E. Nicholson found in The Illustrated Book Of Garden Flowers published

 in 1979 by Peerage Books, London.

But I'm thinking that we'll still have to wrap up warm and snuggly like the young lady above from the 1920's

Lucky Girl's Budget published by Blackie & Son Ltd.

Though hopefully we'll pass on the snow!

Pretty Vintage Fabrics

 Thought I'd show you my latest haul of vintage fabric scraps,

 they are all lovely, well washed and faded cottons,

most likely saved from summer dresses by someone with a make do and mend frame of mind.

 

 They will need washing and ironing

then I'll decide what to do with them.

Snowdrops

Reminder to self: must plant some sonwdrops "in the green" this year

I've been away too long!

I really have been a dreadful blogger but I thought I'd just give you a little glimpse of just one of the things that has been occupying my time - miniature pigs. They have their own blog, which really will be updated more frequently (my son is helping) you'll find it at

http://littlepetpigs.blogspot.com/