Holly Cottage

When I let the hens out in the morning they march purposefully past Holly Cottage towards the front garden where the pickings for breakfast may be more plentiful.

Holly Cottage used to be the ducks' house until Drummond tired of replacing the ducks each time the mink or the fox killed them. Anne then cleaned it up and converted it into a tiny Wendy-house for her first granddaughter, Holly. It's really only big enough for a small child and an assortment of wee toys.

In fact, the wooden hut that you can see behind Holly Cottage, which used to be the hen-house, is bigger and has also been made into a lovely Wendy-house, where Anne's subsequent grandchildren, still at the pre-school stage, play happily in their mini world. With its bright red door it would make a more colourful blip, but I wanted to get the hens in today's blip.

When I first house-sat for these friends, they had geese, ducks and hens. The first time I went to shut them all up for the night, the geese and the ducks had retreated into their appropriate houses, but the bantams were up in a tree and no matter how I tried to coax or shoo them down, they refused to budge. I was sure the fox would have killed them all by morning! Needless to say, they were all still alive and kicking, so I was less concerned when the same thing happened the next night. By the end of the week I was quite blasé about them... but not amused when Drummond laughed about my antics when he got home. He'd "forgotten" to tell me that they roost in trees!