'Hello George.'

After a night of torrential rain today has been windy and quite sunny (and warm) too. I chatted to someone at the zoo who is staying in a caravan in the holiday park behind us and she said that she thought her caravan was going to be blown right over last night.

My idea of putting a dumpy bag over the garden gate worked a treat and first thing this morning I gave it a second coat of 'proper' varnish which has dried nicely in the wind.

 

At the zoo the first thing I did was to plant more mint along the boundary fence. I like having mint in our front garden but now is the time to take out all the mint apart from the 'mint bed'.

Above - the new fence around the mountain goats' enclosure is almost done so hopefully no more wandering. At the moment the gaots are confined to the paddock area (the bit with the trees) so that work can continue. Before I left I spent some time giving one of the goats a scratch on his head and neck. I never remember their names and usually call them 'the stinky boys' as they can be a bit smelly at times but I noticed their ear togs are numbered 1 and 2 so maybe I'll call them Goat 1 and Goat 2 ala Dr Zeus.

I spent most of the time weeding the gravel by the ferrets, one of whom came out to say hello, and other odd bits in that area. The recent rain has caused so many seeds to germinate that I couldn't pull up each one but had to be satisfied with turning the stones over.

George the cockatoo was in a very chatty mood today. I spent some time interacting with him before I left and there were lots of 'Hello George', 'Goodbye' and 'What are you doing?' some of which sounded very much like S, another volunteer who talks to him a lot.

One lady asked how old Mr Pea the peacock is as she had fond memories of seeing a peacock on a visit 19 years ago. None of us knew how old Mr Pea is as he was here before the current owners bought the zoo. I've just had a look and apparently peacocks can live up to 50 years in captivity so he could quite well have been the one she remembers.

I haven't done much since getting home apart from preparing my supper (Peter is off on a curry night with the rowing club) and getting ready for Pilates which starts up again after the summer. Despite my best intentions I have not managed to do a daily exercise session using one of Rachel's FB reels so I guess it's going to be hard work tonight.