ups and downs at the moment

ups: apricots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, patisson downs: peas and the grapewine after a big storm. It took Alan a full morning to piece them together again; the red ones will be ok I think and quite a lot of the greens, too. It looked gorgeous, with unbelievable number of the fruit before... also one of those floppy goslings still refuses to use both legs and they seem to be growing very slowly. The runner ducklings - so far so good, lively lot. We are keeping the male goat population in, namely Hannibal and Curry, they are a nuisance, insisting investigating the wrong side of whatever fence they encounter. The girls are good as ever, and we are getting 3liters of milk per day. Hyppo's MOT is coming up, which is time for anxiety, but Zoltán (who'd passed his relevant English exam and got his degree at last) is being a big help, checking it out, putting things right - we had to buy parts for tons of money. The test itself is booked for Friday 10pm - keep your fingers crossed. We had Hani for 3 days ourselves, Jutka went home on Thursday.It wasn't easy... she is very clever and funny but rather single minded about her food habits and her entertainment. She loved playing cards and picked up the new ones in no time. She enjoyed the ducklings/goslings/Gus/cattoo and milking (which she can do well) but they seem to had lost their novelty by Saturday... Anyhow, we were not total failures, as she declared that she had a good time and would return again in the future. Tomorrow will be the main apricot day, we plan to pick lots 6am with Erzsi, who insists on helping with it, so we -can- do a bigger batch than I usually do. I did my first yesterday, picked about 10kg in ten minutes - there are so many, I am worried about the branches breaking under the weight. Other news: I am a fully fledged pensioner now in Hungary, too, I even got the travel concession. Cheaper trips to Budapest! We missed The Good Wife episode today, but no worry, we can watch it tomorrow...