One summer evening

The wheat has been harvested from the meadow behind the garden and the trees are heavy with apples. So last night I took Amedee duck and Jeanne goose outside to enjoy a lazy end of summer evening...

(stretch!)

("Hurry up Jeanne, my legs are going...")

Next door's hen

A few months back some chickens appeared next door. I love chickens and had high hopes that, given time, they might start to wander into our garden... and they have.

One chicken in particular is very brave and has made herself right at home.


Here she is knocking at Cottontails door:


Sometimes she even comes in and sunbathes on the carpet.





And Felicie hen is very pleased to have a new friend...



I am hoping that given time she might become yet another useful member of the Cottontails team. Perhaps she could start by writing a review of our handmade wooden hen house and little felt hens?




But in the meantime she seems content just to dig holes everywhere. Particularly in the Cottontails Kitchen Garden. Hmmm. Naughty hen.

The marvelous Maileg mice...

I am constantly amazed by the ingenuity my Maileg mice...

Last week they were reading the daily paper...



...when something caught their attention.



Next thing I knew they were busy tearing and folding...



...and before I could say 'cheese' they had made themselves a new set of furniture



Amazing!

(Factual note: the mouse furniture is actually made of lovely printed fabric and is available at Cottontails here - but the story was nice eh!)

Nini goes to the seaside

Not many people know this but mice love the sea.

So guess who sneaked into my overnight bag when we went down to Lyme Regis for a couple of days?

Yes, Nini mouse came along too....

The Stowaway

View from the B&B - Nini spots the sea!

A nice comfy bed

Playing on the beach

A spot of window shopping

Nini's favourite shop

A bit scary for a little mouse...

Even mice like to reflect on life while gazing out to sea...

Lyme Regis is a very pretty seaside town with two lovely beaches (sandy and pebble) and lots of little shops. We even found a shop selling Nini's cousins!

And our B & B was very comfy and quiet although unfortunately Nini was unable to join us for breakfast - for some reason Mike seemed curiously short tempered whenever I suggested it.

But all in all we had a lovely time and Nini is now flicking through brochures for the South of France for 2012 - she understands the weather and the cheese is very good over there.

Catching up in the garden...

I'm a bit behind in the Cottontails garden this year so I thought I'd better enlist some help. And who better than Apolline the mole - with those big digging paws she doesn't even need to use a shovel!




Even with Apolline's help the Cottontails garden is on the verge of becoming a bit of a jungle at the moment so I am too ashamed to capture it on camera. But here are a couple of pics from earlier in the summer, when it all looked pretty neat.





So, why am I so behind? Well there is some Big News afoot at Cottontails - we are soon to be on the move to a small farm!

As it is we have already taken over taking care of the land and veggie gardens, so instead of one small patch to maintain, I find myself with rather more...

For example, the strawberry patch:


And the, erm, wilderness patch:


And believe me there is much more. I am starting to feel quite alarmed at the prospect of harvest and am going to need a whole team of Apollines I think.

We won't be moving in for a few months so the whole thing is going to happen pretty gradually, but I will start posting about the farm over the coming weeks to introduce you to Cottontails new home to be.