Day of Rest??? and "Welcome, Ricky!"

Happy Sunday to all! After a fun morning at church (VBS Roundup) it was home, bringing one of Claire's friends for the afternoon. BLT's for lunch, then a "simple" fence moving session which ended up taking a couple of hours. It had to be done today, however, because of the rain we've had; the ground is soft and it was relatively easy to push in the "step" electric fence posts. Our "bound-for-the-freezer" trio (Elizabeth, Souvlaki and Stew) had absolutely no pasture munchies left, and they had become very demanding ... the instant their hay was gone they would start hollering for more. The noise was getting old :).

Spent some time early this morning studying fleece colour genetics in sheep ... I tried to deduce the genotype of our four ewes and our probably herd sire this fall, in an effort to figure out what colour lambs we could expect in spring. Found an online photo of Kivu's sire; she is a DEAD RINGER for him, in particular in the area of fleece.

And here is our latest house addition ... in the spring, when Claire's elderly hamster was dying of cancer, the girls discussed what the next pet might be. Both girls agreed that they missed our budgies, and that they would share one. My family has always had budgies, and family folklore is chalk full of tales of bright birds who could recite addresses and phone numbers. I, too, had a budgie when I was unmarried (Jacob), then again when the children were young in NJ (Benny). When we left NJ friends kept Benny and his castle; when Benny was gone, they shipped it up to us in Canada. It arrived in approximately 100 pieces, and became landfill :(. So the girls spent part of our March trip to Burlington and Guelph strategizing the purchase of another bird cage. While in Burlington, the girls and I accompanied Mom to Myrt's house for coffee (another lifelong tradition!) and Myrt and Pat blessed them with a beautiful bird cage and stand. We brought it back with us, and it has been in storage, waiting for a future tenant.

Fast forward to yesterday and a trip to the grand opening of a new pet store in Belleville. They had lovely fancy budgies on for $10.00 (yikes) and they had arrived less than 24 hours before (essential for pet bird imprinting). So the girls brought home their much planned budgie quite spontaneously yesterday afternoon. With no further ado, meet Ricky! (Or Rikki, if he ends up with a brown cere :) ...)



Ricky will be living predominantly in Claire's bedroom, and Mom, this photo is for you to share with Myrt so she can see that the girls have put the cage to good use :).