A sunny day in which the pea hen departs to her new home

This will be the last glimpse of the pea hen sitting on our pergola. Things were getting too complicated for comfort here at Macbiehill and we had to find a solution. Our neighbour remembered that a nearby fish farm has a peacock, so he phoned them up and they were over the moon to have the opportunity to acquire a pea hen. John lured the pea hen into our potting shed using a huge quantity of bird seed and once she ventured inside we closed the door on her. The fish farm people arrived with a large van and one of the men seemed to be very experienced in how to carry a pea hen (under your arm with a hand around the neck, apparently!). So off she went to her new house, her new mate and also to a happy ending, as we all sincerely hope (well all, apart from Troi, who so fancied this tasty snack!)

As you can see we had to keep Troi on a lead as I strongly suspect she would be top quick for the pea hen. She is certainly much too quick for me to react and these birds are very large. It takes them some considerable time to get airborne, so it seemed wiser not to chance it. But you can see how Troi is straining on the leash to get at this unknown and large visitor. She was literally quivering in her excitement and we also couldn't let her roam free in the garden like we usually do. All in all it wasn't fair on her so I'm really happy we managed to find such a good solution.

Of course on this wonderful day filled with sunshine I also could not resist taking some more rose pictures. Above is the fence at the side of our old cottage which is covered in a mix of Rambling Rector (this rambler has white flowers) and Paul's Himalyan Musk, which is also a rambler but with pinkish blooms. So beautiful against that glorious blue sky!

These are 3 roses on one stem of the Masquerade rose. As you can see these roses start off being yellow, and then slowly proceed to turn pink. This is a modern rose, one of the few we have in the garden, but with these attributes as well as that wonderful name, it's no wonder I felt we had to have it.

That's it for today. Somehow life seems to be too full for the blog at the moment. I have lots of projects finished but then something else happens, like the pea hen saga, that takes priority in uploading to this blog. But I promise there will be a quilt coming in the next few days. It's finished and I've checked that it's okay to show it off to the world. It's an A3 sized quilt for the new Scottish Suitcase Collection. Watch this space!