White Phase

We already said, a few posts ago, that 99% of the fallow deer in Challock Forest are the very dark colouration known as "black phase", Well here is the other end of the spectrum, a "white phase" doe. Also, just emerging from the bushes behind Mum, a fawn nearly as pale. You can see that this doe is not albino - double click the image to make it expand to full screen, and you'll see she has dark eyes.

Oddly, the Challock population does not seem to have any of the in-between , normal text-book fallow deer, Bambi coloured pale brown with cute white spots. It's believed that the black phase ones are a Dutch population, imported when the Royal hunting forest was set up, and the white ones are from a few escaped white bucks which had been kept in the walled Eastwell Estate nearby.

My other pic today is (Thank You Scott-the-Bees) a jar of Kentish honey. Bit of a blend apparently, and not entirely 100% from Dad's allotments, but close enough, and gives Mum and Dad a real buzz, if you'll allow the bee-centric pun. We were up at the allotments today picking borlotti beans, and met up with Scott and our own bee-keeper-in-training, Pete. They are building the fencing that will go around the new bee-plot, and tell me that our colonies will be back "home" imminently, hopefully before the first frost.

Deefski

Remission

We take our evening walk along the path to the north of the allotments and back through them. It's about an hour these days at Meggie speed, and just about at her limit. She gets home OK but shortly afterwards, is lame, favouring her front left foot. Dad bathes her in salty water and nibbles very gently around with the scissors, but can find no sign of grass darts or other injury.

At the allotments, Scott-the-bees has relented and decided to bring back the bees, but as long as he can site them slightly differently, in a disused, brambly bit more off the main pathway and out of the sight of the herberts who kicked over the hives last time. Practically speaking, you can't just move a hive 30 feet to the side. The rules of thumb say move hives either less than three feet, or more than 3 miles.

Bees have a strong homing instinct and build up a good visual map of their patch as they fly to and from from the hive, and their territory can be 3 miles or so in radius. So if you move them less than 3 miles, they will come across bits of the "map" they recognise and fly back to the old location, milling around uselessly confused till they either swarm and are carried off, or they just fade away and die. 3 feet, they can cope with because as they fly back in to land at the old site, they spot the new location.

So moving a hive 30' has to be accomplished by moving them 3 miles out, then keeping them there about a week, while they forget the old map, then moving them back to 30' from the start point, where-upon they fly about as if they never knew the old map anyway. Also, of course, individual bees don't live very long, and you'll get a good % turn-over, so many bees now foraging are young and never knew the old map anyway. Clever stuff. So we currently have no bees, while they're on their holidays at Scott's house.

Meanwhile, good news from the Diamond camp, as the single word "Remission" is flying about in texts and emails. We can not be sure (nobody can) what this means in terms of final outcomes for the poor patient, but it has a much nicer ring than "Complete renal failure" and "hospice" which were the story a few weekends ago. Hang in there, Diamond.

Rumour has it she's well enough to be allowed out at the weekend, and is dreaming up foods she's going to have that she'd not been allowed (fish fingers, Diamond? ... are you sure? She says it's like soul food, the food of your childhood, like Campbell's Cream of Tomato Soup, or Salad Cream. Mind you, it's Mum she's sending out to buy the fish fingers because she knows Mum will head for Marks and Sparks - she doesn't want any "chav fish fingers!").

There is also talk of a possible trip to her beloved Poros Island (Greece). That would be quite a "home-coming" to see. Diamond has been going to the same place in Poros since she went with her Mum as a teenager, she knows everone, and quite a few of the guys who are now cafe owners, she bounced on her knee in nappies when their Dads owned the cafe. They have been kept in touch and up to date on Diamond's progress, of course, and the Jungle Drums are thundering. Half the village will fall on her neck as she arrives.

Happy Days
Deefer

Scott the Bees

Another bees pic for you, this one of the couple who came to deliver, and now return to tend to, the allotments hive. That's Scott on the left, and his wife, Jed (we think???) on the right.

They've been down here, too, with an eye to installing a hive in our garden which you can see from the middle pic, is at its most floristic and bee-attractive phase just now. Now, he might have been winding me up, but he said he was worried that we dogs might have problems with the bees - it's the fur thing, he said, making the bees think we were bears. Bears and bees, he said, don't mix, and anything that sets off bear insticts in bees is a BAD THING. He made me promise to not even think about being a bear while close to the bees.

Finally, a pic of the SB Cambria as she is now, in May 2009. This from the starboard bow looking aft, showing progress on the new deck beams and showing the access walkway that the boys now use as a public viewing gallery. Dad met Janie's mum and Dad here before they tootled off down to the barge in their 2CVs, both with their roofs rolled back in the sunshine.

They brought Janie (brindled greyhound, you'll recall) into the garden where we made her welcome (and laughed at her when she briefly fell into the pond before spronging out again on those long legs of hers. Shook herself "at" people, of course, but being a short haired greyhound, the spraying effect was nothing like you'd get from a good wet labrador or a westie.

Hope your weekend is going as well as ours.

Deefer