It feels a lot like Christmas....

The Jinney Ring Food and Craft Fayre on the 23/24 the of November was held in the gardens this year as it had grown in size.  This year we had sausages cooked in the garden, honey from a neighbour, jams and chutneys and some incredible meat pies, wines and fudge all added into the craft stalls - what a great flavour!  The gardens were really busy that weekend and there were things for the kids to do to  including watching the chain saw sculptor and riding on the teacup roundabout.  The weather was lovely too so we ducks had plenty of visitors and lots of corn - thank you all!

The Centre Christmas lights went of for the fayre weekend and will be on until the new year now - from 3pm to 7pm it looks really festive, especially in the front courtyard.

But the best is still to come - Santa has a new magical grotto this year and it looks great.
Elf Holly and the reindeer like it too!

Santa is in his grotto on Saturdays and Sundays between now and Christmas from 2pm to 4pm.  Children are emerging with lolly pops and a gift but we don't know what is in or what their secret wishes are.....

Next week we have an evening party in the restaurant and late night shopping too - Friday 13th is not necessarily unlucky in December - lots of Christmas presents could be in store!  The Christmas Feast night in the restaurant will be really cosy, already the log fire going everyday and a has a Christmas tree next to it and there are decorations throughout.

 "T'is the season to be Holly -- quack quack!"

Hot and Spicy!

The Moroccan Night on Friday was very colourful - lots of sparkly lights and candles as well as bright coloured organza.  The restaurant looked quite different when it was all dressed up.

The evening started with a pomegranate welcome drink and then moved through a host of authentic moroccan dishes before Tahira the Belly Dancer came on.

Tahira has been here before and she is one of our favourite entertainers - such a nice lady and she speaks English so well!  (It turns out she is from droitwich and she Teaches Belly Dancing for a living!)

There are lots more visitors here at the moment and all of the craft units are working very hard to stock up for Christmas sales,  we can feel the excitement growing....Next week the marquees go up for our Food and Craft Fayre (23/24th November).  Santa's grotto is also underway, opposite the plant stall, so we have him to look forward to as well -- hope he comes out into the gardens too.

2 Weddings and Funeral....

The beginning of October saw two weddings and funeral party here.  The first weekend was the wedding of Lauren and Dan - we had got to know them and their lovely daughter Adelaine quite well as they came to visit us ducks a lot during the planning of their big day.

The bridal 'vans'- all dressed up!

'Bearly' a minute to themselves - Lauren and Dan with one of this years sculptures

 

A 'staggeringly' pretty Bridesmaid! 

The weather was lovely for the wedding party and held for Sunday too when we were privileged to celebrate the life of one of our Hanbury neighbours Isobel, with a buffet lunch party in the garden.  The family were determined that she should be remembered in memorial in the way that she had lived her life, with a cheerful and happiness so they brought along lots of pictures and memorabilia and lots of her friends came and shared stories.  It was a lovely day and a great send off.

The wedding party of Emma and Michael was wet, really wet so we only saw them through the window of the restaurant.  The weather did not put the party off though - the restaurant was all dressed up and looked cosy and warm an everyone danced the night away until the early hours.  We caught a brief glimpse of the Bride and Groom as they had some photos taken under the eaves of the building - they looked gorgeous.

After this last wedding of the year we had a bit of a breather - mostly becuase it rained for 2 weeks.  There was a bit of a rush in the middle of the week as they Centre staff took down the marquee sides once they heard the storm warning forecast - we were preparing for the worst ourselves but as it turned out it was not too bad at all on the pond.

There is probably no such thing as a quite time at the Jinney Ring, half term has just finished and despite the rain we have seen a lot of children and adults alike and it looks like Christmas shopping has started!

On the ponds the 6 'late' ducklings that hatched a few weeks ago have been growing steadily in the pen and this weekend decided to brave it into the bigger pond - they certainly chose a noisy and windy weekend to 'breakout', we all watched the local fireworks from the ponds yesterday, we stayed in our safe zone!

Diamond are for ever...

Sunday the 1st September was a very special day for Alec and Vera - they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary in the gardens here with lovely luncheon in our garden marquee.  They had invited lots of friends to celebrate with them - some of whom had been at their wedding 60 years ago.

Starting off with some Pimms and finishing with Prosecco for a toast the whole event was extremely civilised and lots of laughter ensued.

After this we were back to another wedding on the 7th September - Lynn celebrated getting married on the same day as here 50th birthday.  They opted for a really chilled out party with very little formality.

Lynn and Dave with a couple of 'guests' from this years sculpture trail.

Lyn underwent a knee operation a couple of weeks before the big day - but still managed a dance.  We hope to see them both again very soon, a lovely couple.

The sculpture trail is now being put away and people are collecting the pieces that they have bought, it will be odd to have the gardens to ourselves again.  We are tremendously lucky here though - how many ducks get to live with art like this for a month each year?

Also finishing this week was the QuackArt competition (named in our honour of course!).  There were about 60 pieces of art entered into the competition and the judges found it hard to shortlist.  The shortlisted items were then exhibited for our visitors to vote for their favourite by class so there were 6 classes. (254 people voted in this).  Our judges (Photographer Martin Strivens, Jinney Ring Artist Michael Salt and Charity representative Jane Roberts from Worcester Snoezelen then had the task of choosing an overall winner.

"There''s two kids watching me" by Sue Wilson was the overall winner.

We hope to see Sue getting her trophy presented here very soon and will get a picture for the diary.

All of the entry fees for this competition are going to the Worcester Snoezelen charity and we are all very grateful to entrants, visitors and judges for their support for this exhibition.

Weddings galore and ....more ducks with a difference

Matt and Alex have been regular visitors to the gardens and feed us, so we were a bit delighted to see at how well they "scrubbed up"  for their wedding on August 17th .  The weather was not brilliant but they spent a little time with us before going inside for their weeding breakfast and dancing.  They are very much "Northern soul" fans sot he music was really chilled out as we swam along with their dancing.

The following week a huge marquee went up in the gardens pretty much at the same time a lots of sculpture arrived.  The annual sculpture trail is something we look forward to all year - it gives us a chance to live with art for about a month.  This year it is even more exciting as a lot of it is on the water so we get to sleep with it as well....

We are however a little unhappy about the number of additional ducks that are getting attention - for example this big boys are considerably bigger than us and do draw the eye!  (Fortunately they are not eating our corn!)

It turned out that the marquee was being put up for Karl and Kate's wedding which was a really luxurious affair.  The family all pitched in on the Friday and decorated the marquee - the chosen colour was blue - for Birmingham City it turned out  (Bride's choice!).  They put some lovely lanterns up and the whole thing looked wonderful. 

There was not much football going on on the 24th but the children did play croquet - however I think we have most of the balls in the pond now!  The party was fantastic from start to finish and the Bride and Groom were lovely, both to look at and in nature, we hope to see them lots in the future.

Karl and Kate - our fiends for life!

For the two days after the wedding there was a wedding fayre in the marquee so we saw lots more people, particularly as it was also bank holiday weekend., my goodness we were 'quackered' at the end of the period...but there is more to come yet.

Such a busy summer....

You can probably tell that I have been busy as I have been very slack in writing this diary of late, there has been so much to do, so many visitors to meet and so much corn to enjoy... it seems to be over now (the rain has started and the gardens have been much quieter this week with the return to school of many of our playmates).

Here is a bit of a record of what has been going on since I last wrote....

The Norbury Theatre were here performing The Merry Wives of Windsor at the end of July.  Fortunately the Jinney Ring has a garden marquee because it did rain during the performance on Saturday night - not just a little bit but a lot.  The actors did really well raising their voices above the sound of the rain and the visitors were even better going down the garden in all that wet after they had been warm and wet fed in the restaurant!  Everyone seemed to have a great time and the play was a huge hit for both the Saturday evening and the Sunday matinee.

A real farce!

 Next up we a corporate sports day and BBQ in the gardens - watching them do three legged races, egg and spoon races in our fields after enjoying a lovely BBQ did make us quack!

The now familiar sights and sounds of the Blues and Beer tents going up for the 5th festival in the gardens caused us to loose some sleep but we did enjoy the bands very much.  This year it was a weekend festival with the big bands on Saturday and a couple of excellent local bands on Sunday as well as the winners of the W-Factor competition.  Lots of beer, plenty of people and also a lot of dogs (all very well behaved though).  The weather was unusually kind and it stayed dry so everyone seemed pretty happy and all the beer was drunk.

 

Boperator

Stomp and Holler!

Robert Hokum

Too Tired!

Between bands

BBQ - Big Ron cooking the chicken!

Sunday - W-Factor winners on stage

This is going to be far to long a catch up so am stopping here and will catch up again tomorrow!

So much to tell....such a lot of animals too!

It has been a couple of weeks since I have had a chance to catch my breath and think about everything that has happened and is still to happen...what a whirl!  Here is some of it...

Hagley Primary incubated ducklings

Out in the garden we have has some new duckling introduced - they were incubated by Hagley Primary school.  what we find is that the earlier eggs are incubated from here the higher the hatch rate, so they were delighted that they got 4 lovely little ducklings - 3 white (or yellow at this point) and 1 mixed (might have some appleyard in it).  The Children named the ducklings Aggi, Goldfinger, Sunny and Andy (after Andy Murray!).  They kept them for a week or so but as they were getting ready for holidays they soon came here to be looked after.  Unfortunately Sunny (laying down in picture) had something not quite right in his chest and he did not develop properly, we gave him the best life we could but he died in his sleep one night.  The others are all really well and are always hungry.  The children have made them really tame too!

 We had a brilliant turn out in the gardens for a lot of very different animals on 21st July - the fund raiser for the Cinnamon trust was a great day - here are a couple of photos - there are a lot more on our Facebook Album .

We had Ferrets, Alpacas, lots of dogs who went in for the novelty dog show, tried the agility course and some even ran the scurry. There were guide dogs, cat protection, birds of prey (we kept out of their way!) and lots more.  It was great fun and the day raised over £2,000 for the charity (which aims to keep people with their pets for as long as possible by supporting them when they are ill or incapacitated).

Also 2 weeks ago we had a really beautiful country wedding party in the garden.  We have known Jenna dna Ross for a while now and were delighted that they shared their special day with us.  They had a small wedding party of close friends and family to their picnic style meal in the garden marquee next to the bottom pond.  Jenna had done a lot of work making the whole thing look lovely and very 'country'.  She also made a Piñata for the children which contained sweets.

A play area for the children with Piñata

Beautifully decorated with bunting all home made!

The whole thing was beautiful including the weather, the bride and groom looked wonderful too.  After the afternoon party they moved into the restaurant for an evening party with more friends arriving.

Jenna and Ross arrive

I am finishing with another bird story - this time pigeons!  On the night of the wedding we had a racing pigeon drop in - he/she looked exhausted and hungry so we gave it some of our corn.  We could not quite see the tag properly but we think it is going to Italy.  It stayed for over a week before moving on - we are not convinced it will win the race with this length of stop over but who knows!  A day after it left we had another one stop over for 2 days too - we think we have got onto a new website - 'Pigestops' -- we are already on one called Britstops which is for humans with motor homes (they are great visitors!) 

Pige 1

Sneaking a peek...and 110 years

A hectic and fun weekend in the garden again this week - the weather is certainly making live more entertaining for us with lots and lots of visitors as well as some parties too.

This weekend we had a 60th party in the restaurant with neighbour Sue coming to celebrate with us in style. Sue chose a traditional English salad/picnic menu including a welcome drink of Cider punch.  The party was in the conservatory so we could see the proceeding including some great dancing later on - the music was great and everyone in the party mood!

In the garden marquee there was another party going on celebrating Bobbi's 50th birthday - so we celebrated 110 years all in one night - not bad.  The marquee party also enjoyed the English menu - it worked so well on a very warm night!  As the daylight ended so the candles were lit and the whole ambiance was pretty chilled out quite special.  We had a peek in but someone spotted us too

Sneaking a peek!

Enjoying the warm evening in the marquee

 
Sunday, the fun continued with another party in the gardens, this time to celebrate a very young life - this was a christening party for Jacob.  The Christening had been at Hanbury church so we heard the bells ring for him before they came down for food and fun.

While the staff were working in the gardens we managed to catch up with the news a bit, here are a couple tidbits:

Gina - one of the Chefs reporting seeing some of my colleagues holidaying in Zante - swimming in the sea would you believe it...they did not need to go so far for the good weather this year.

Mallards - Just about to play volley ball in Zante?

Caroline - has just been skydiving - we white ducks don't fly, so we can't image what possessed her - but she has raised money for charity so she is not completely mad... Bravo!

I'd be quacking too at this point!

Caroline - normally in a green shirt at JR

Sam - who supervises in the restaurant and runs a lot of the events front of house has just come back to work after two weeks off when she cracked her ribs -- she was not skydiving - just slipped in the shower - she clearly needs feet like mine!

More fame.... and more friends!

This week we had yet more TV cameras in the Centre and we ducks got filmed yet again - the fame is quite going to our heads now!  This time it was the BBC with a team from "Escape to the Country" .  A couple were being shown some properties in Worcestershire and the Jinney Ring was being filmed as a place to visit and get involved in craft activities.  There was some filming in the restaurant with the regular painting group 'The Art Circle' and also quite a lot with in the woodwork craft unit where they make the Jigsaw trees.  Great fun, and at least we ducks were not expected to re-shoot our scenes, unlike the humans - after all we professionals are word perfect - quack, quack!!

The lovely weather has brought lots of extra visitors to the garden and also we have some new friends in the field....

Wally

Foal

The new additions are firstly Wally - a beautiful bay chap who has not stopped eating since he got here - he could not believe his luck when he saw our grass!  The Foal is only a year old and is equally partial to his grass.  When they first arrived they charged around the field with the resident herd of cows following on behind - we wondered what all the fuss was about but it was sheer exuberance!

The horses are here for the summer and it is good to see them.

Birds of a different feather!

It is positively 'raucous' in the garden at the moment with the, now young adult, ducklings demanding food of everyone that comes into the garden - they have no manners at all and seem to think humans are just here to feed them!  The worrying thing is that there are more little ones coming through, some 'teenagers' on the water pen and now some new ducklings in the pen (above).  The ones above are 'interlopers' as they are new breeds, 3 'magpie' ducks (as their name suggests these will be black and white when fully grown) and 3 Cayuga ducks which will be blackish green.   There are two white ones keeping them company too and one of these seems to have a crest, which is great!  Four of these ducklings where incubated and hatched by the reception class at Hanbury School - they do a very good job and the children do love them so.

Sadly the little duckling with the bad feet (in the last entry) did not make it, he was doing well but fell over backwards in the night and could not right himself so got too cold, we were very sad about this but hopefully we have learnt a thing or too about fixing feet.

The Centre and garden have been pretty busy this week, lots of new visitors too.  Today there was a chocolate party going on, and in the week the Pottery had a Raku firing evening for their class, this is done in outside in a big dustbin, all pretty exciting!

One bit of very sad news though, we heard that Mary, one of the regular amateur artists from the Thursday Art Circle has just passed away - we will miss her very much.  

The Art Circle are going to be on TV soon - we have the team from Escape from the Country filming here on Tuesday and they have been asked to be in the background.  I expect we will see them out in the gardens too - especially my crested friend who is so photogenic!

A bit of a catchup - some happy some sad!

We have been a bit lax on the quacking front in the last couple of weeks, so this is by way of a catch up of what has been going on....

Firstly Joanne and Phil - a lovely small wedding in our own garden marquee.  This lovely couple have been visiting us regularly in the gardens for sometime now so we feel that they are family now.  They decided to make sure that their wedding day would be intimate and memorable, they had only close friends and family to the wedding and decided that the gardens here were worth the weather risk -- and it paid off.  The day was super with sunshine all day.  They arrived to the sounds of the live string trio playing in their own private area and small marquee.  It was all idyllic!

Phil and Joanne - On the Swing seat next to the Jinney Ring itself

 Food was served in the marquee form their own menu and the cake was especially made to their specifications.

JR Garden Marquee was just right for a small wedding.

BMW wedding car - had been in the paint shop!

Next up we had the first of two, now well established, pudding nights - this was very well attended and looking through the window everyone looked very happy indeed with the menu - unfortunately none for us!

News of the pond is a bit mixed --- We have another couple of broods of ducklings in the pen, one lot are now out on the pond with the newest ones still under the light to keep them warm.  Of the newest ones there are some speciality breeds, including a Magpie duck and a Cayuga.  We also hear that there are more to join them next week as Hanbury School have hatched some successfully too.  One little duck out of this hatch is a bit disabled and has been hatched with curled toes - (s)he has not made it to the garden yet as they are trying to straighten the toes so that he can walk (he is wearing cardboard shoes at the moment, not sure if it will work yet though!).  

The really sad news is that the big Pekin duck (Jim) has died this weekend - he has not been right since the fox attacked him a few weeks ago - it had already made away with his mate, so he was also lonely, we think. We think we have some of his offspring in the new batches of ducklings so he has left a legacy, but we are all very sad!

We also witnessed something else amiss this week - the Craft Centre sit on mower was stolen right from under our noses in the middle of the night, sadly we could not raise the alarm to get the humans to stop it.  The mower was wheeled up the field alongside the gardens and taken through the footpath gate - disgraceful behaviour, if we could have pecked their eyes out I would have done!  These are people who are not welcome to the gardens ever.  

In the field we have another 6 cows, they seem younger and are being shown the ropes by the others, this is well worth watching.  Talking of worth watching - The Jinney Ring, featuring yours truly and my duck colleagues were on TV again last week C4 "Compare Your Life" http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od/catchup/date/2013/06/13/ -- it is never dull here!

Wedding, Pippins and Weather

Summer is always such a great time here in the gardens, we see so much going on and love the activity.

In the last couple of weeks it has been particularly busy with a big wedding on Bank Holiday Sunday and then a charity day on the Monday.

Rachel and Shane and their families have been visiting us a for while now and planning their marquee wedding.  In the two weeks leading up to the big day we were getting a bit concerned about the weather but crossing our webbed feet seemed to have worked and the day was gorgeous (but walking was hard!).

Shane, Rachel and Rachel's parent caught in between formal shots - Mum is never off guard though!

The bridal party arrived at about 4pm in two fantastic cars A Rolls Royce Phantom and Jaguar, (they had been married in their local church in Dudley).    Local Flutists - "Champagne Flutes" played beautifully outside in the gardens during their welcome drinks and canapes.There was also a chap drawing cartoon pictures of the guests - everyone seemed to like them too. They moved inside for dinner at about 6 o clock.  The sun was going down and was shinning into the marquee which was opened up so we could see the proceedings nicely - all very civilized with some lovely speeches at the end. Cake cutting and dancing followed

Champagne Flutes

It was a lovely day and better still they did not forget us - all of the bridesmaids had duck food for favours - so we got our wedding breakfast too!

Not quite as good as wedding cake but still appreciated!

The following day we had a lot more visitors - the local nursery Pippins (one of the JR charities for 2013) ran a fun day called "Laugh with Pippins" .  Magic Russ came along and did a great show for the kids, there were pony rides, bouncy castle and all sorts of garden games.  In the evening the laughing continued to comic Mick Martin, however this was not as well attended as the organizers had hoped.  

Half term followed and the rain came - by the time we saw the children that week they were a bit stir crazy and needed to run about --- we stayed on the water, until they brought out the corn!