A Duck's Diary from the Jinney Ring Craft Centre

Just some of the stuff that I see here!



Sunday 14 June 2015

Watch the Birdies!

Now we all know that Stuart Fletcher from Top Glass is a bit of a golfer - have often heard it said that 'he is on a course' when he is not in the glass blowing unit...but now he has taken his enthusiasm to a new level he has his own 'Birdie Tree' out the front of the Jinney Ring. (Have to say that chances of this many 'birdies' are somewhat slim from what we 'duckies' hear!!)

'Birdie' Tree - changing the season.

Talking of trees - we also had a lovely gift endowed for our new Memory Tree - Steve Allen, who is part of first family to put up their memory leaves, is a photographer and very kindly made us a proper sign - this is now up next to the tree, thank you Steve it has smartened up the garden beautifully. Steve is an equestrian photographer and you can really tell he loves horses when you look at his pictures - we have told Wally and Jonah, the horses in the field next to us that they need to lose some weight and tidy themselves up before they could look this good - Wally just rolled in the mud again!

Thanks Steve
Out on the pond the new ducklings were released out of their pen for their first swim on Monday - since then they have been getting more confident every day and yesterday a whole group of them got out of the netted area onto the big pond - fortunately all but one realized that they needed to go back in to be fed.  The remaining duckling was out til 10 o'clock but finally worked out how to get in again so all was well.
First week out and about.
 We have also notices that Mick has spoiled our dining experience in the garden this week - he has put some green fencing over the willow hedge - darn shame it was so tasty for us!

That is about it for this week - weather yesterday was 'good for ducks' but not people but was better today so hopefully summer is around the corner!

Sunday 7 June 2015

Singing the 'Blues' for the 7th year!

Last weekend was the seventh Blues Festival held in our gardens, a bit of a change this year as we normally see this going on in August, so it was a surprise to see all the preparations going on in May, and this year even more marquee space for the Beer tent and the BBQ/food area - it all seem to work really well though and we saw lots of familiar faces back here - some of them camping and in motor homes in the gardens.

A festival 'old friend - setting the trend for festival fashion'

The music for the day was great - for us ducks to get into a concert like this free of charge was an added bonus!  The stage was all under cover and the tempo gradually increased as the day went on, a terrific mix of sounds and a wonderful team of artists, we loved them all!
 
The Steve Ajao Giants 

Dave Migden and the Twisted roots

Sending everyone home on a high - The Official Recievers
The festival also featured a lot of real ale and these went down a treat - there was not much left for Sunday and the barrels were pretty much empty at the end of the day ...I think this fella had not paced himself enough....

Lots of dogs came along to the festival and none of them chased us!
All the Jinney Ring staff were a bit whacked out at the end of Sunday but they were clearly worried about the weather forecast as on  Monday morning early the main stage tent was taken down very quickly and the other tents were seriously tied down - but not tied down enough as it turned out. Tuesday saw some incredible gusts of wind in the garden - they were blowing us around - look what they did to the bar tent.....

Upps !
 It looked like a complete mangled mess at this point, but happily with the talented team in the gardens it it now ready for the next (Folk) festival and more or less back to normal!