waking up late

It was 8am when I opened my eyes this morning. My alarm clock had given up and shut itself off after I ignored the 6am music and subsequent reminders afforded me by the snooze button. I started the coffee before heading outside into the morning sunshine.

The ducks were not pleased. They had hovered around the coop last night until I let them in (apparently the continuing snow was an affront to their dignity) and now were trapped inside. They are still unwilling to "stick their necks out" so to speak to open the hinged rubber door themselves. In fact only Alice and Sonja had ventured outside, so the coop was a noisy place.

I had one more bag of stray/hay mix left so I spread it over the snow and poured a bucket of hot water into the "pond". Leaves of cabbage were also tossed into the yard, as well as a handful of scratch into the coop.

With the price of straw and hay going up (along with everything else) I am less generous with it than I have been in the past.

The quail are much more stoic. They are much more comfortable in their new hutch and do not try to escape when I open the doors these days. I swapped the frozen water bottles for new ones, gave them food and some cabbage leaves and they were happily scrambling over each other to get at it all.

In less than 30 min I was back inside, having my first cup of coffee before going out again to shovel the front and brush off the cars. We only really got enough snow to be a hassle.