Mama last summer when she was svelte like!

Here is Mama last year.  Such a difference from the overly burdened shaggy calm sleepy sheep we are Not Looking Directly At in the hope that she will have a few lambs while we are Not Looking.

Will she ever get her figure back?  Well, a good start would be actually giving birth to all those lambs Mama. Not that we are watching mind you! Not that we are on the edge of our seats waiting. Not that we are up all hours of the night checking you in a nightie and gumboots with a dog holding the torch and cats sliding along the fences in the dark! No not that!

Yesterday was terribly windy. There are three stages of wind out here. 1. Windy (almost every day for most of spring.) 2. Pretty windy, (hats fly off, bent forward as you walk, can hear nothing but wind almost every afternoon windy)  and then the worst Too Windy to Garden.

Otherwise known as Bendy Tree Day. I hate that kind of wind.  It heaves and tears at you all day. It blows your brain straight out of your head. Leaving you tired and strained and not quite together, but you don’t know why because your brain has been blown right out of your head.

Did I tell you that the massively pruned pear tree is coming out. It had piles of flowers at the same time as the new pear trees which was a relief. Mia!  No!

Mia I said NO. 

Oh Mia, you naughty sheep! 

Here is the first lettuce crop, we are already eating the baby leaves.

Good morning. Last night, the moment the Too Windy to Garden wind dropped, the thunder and lightening began. Out here on the plains sometimes the thunder rolls for ages, with lightening in the midst of it. They come together. The sound smashed  and the lights flashed for almost thirty minutes.  Nothing like the gentle little thunder and lightening storms in NZ. And then it rained, a fat tropical downpour! Bliss. You know already that I love the rain.

I had to get up and close the windows when it rained. I hate closing the windows. It feels like I have had my ears stopped up with wool when I close the windows. I like to hear what is going on in the night.  But once the rain had stopped, I opened them all again and went back to sleep listening to the drops pattering off the roof and plopping into the rain buckets.

The frogs have already taken up residence again in the frog garden, did I tell you?  They are not singing yet but I can hear them plopping back into the water as I pass.  That garden is not planted yet so no photos!

Good morning. I received a delivery from a very nice delivery man yesterday who would not get out of his van because he thought TonTon, who had barked at him, would eat him. The man gave me the new electric fence wire by feeding the box out through the partially open drivers window.  TonTon sat on the verandah like he had been told and smiled meanly at him.

The new fence is a high mesh fence, good for sheep and pigs too, and we are hoping that it will keep Daisy in. Last year as you remember she just raced around the field until she had enough speed up and then jumped the electric fence like a steeplechase racehorse streaking the wrong way, out of the track.   She tucked her legs in and rose up and over the fence and landed in the grass on the other side, look Ma No Hands!! Then she would amble back into the barn through my garden. She did this again and again.  I told her I was going to sell her to the circus!  This fence will be fuller and hopefully more intimidating, plus she is 7 months pregnant!

So I shall put this fence up in Pats paddock, so we can graze that good grass more efficiently and then attach it to my solar powered electricity maker and see what happens.  There will be some banging and heaving and maybe a little swearing but the day looks fine and clear and I want to get the job finished before the wind comes up. So off to work I go.

Have a great day.

celi