Bad day/Good day

Yesterday was not the best day. I fed all the animals in the morning, mum and I went out for about an hour and when we came home the young ducklings - the 2 I kept -  were nowhere to be seen. They are 4 weeks old and really pretty large and were out free ranging with their mum. She was here but there was nothing to be seen of the ducklings, not even a feather. Most people reckon it was a hawk and I suppose that's probably all it could have been, but I have never seen a hawk over the house part of the farm and would it have got 2 at the same time? Anyway I fear they are gone and it's really sad.

Then the next disaster. Joseph, our ancient donkey is now blind in one eye and when I was leaving to pick mum up from the hairdresser I noticed that he was standing on the wrong side of the electric fence leaning on it, getting a shock every second. He would have been like this for at least an hour and I don't know what even made me look backwards when I was leaving. I ran to his paddock hoping to lead him out, but when I touched him I got a shock from his bridle. I ran as fast as I could back to the woolshed and turned off the electric fence then ran back to him. He was just standing there, sweating. Then he laid down. I patted him and gave him some water. Zoomed to get mum then came straight back to him. He was still just lying down on top of the, now not electric, wire. This could not have been very comfy so I thought Ah stuff it, I'm cutting this wire than at least he'll be comfy. So I cut the fence and he stood up. Still looking very dazed. We checked on him lots but he was sort of the same for the evening. This morning we got up thinking we'll have to phone the vet, however he has perked up and seems back to normal ( normal is a very, very old donkey) We are having a think over the weekend about what we're going to do, but it's a quality of life thing, really isn't it. I fear we are going to be making a very hard decision soon.

So all in all yesterday could have been better.

Today dawned clear and hot. It's the day of the A&P show which I love. We got there for about 9am and wandered around. I love the 'petting tent' I'm sure it's really for children, but its filled with baby animals of all sorts. It's lovely.

 By the time we left the grass in the front of this photo was filled with cars, we've never seen it so busy, and wasn't the weather good to us.

My favorite were the baby alpacas. Too much cuteness.

We spent the morning there then came back home, checked on the dogs and Jojo then went out for lunch to somewhere rather special. Kauri Cliffs. We thought it would be a lovely surprise for mum. It was an amazing lunch.

It's a stunning place.

We had a tasting menu which was totally lovely.

Lloyd and mum had rather a lot of wine :)

We had such a good time, which made up for yesterday a bit.

 this is all that was left of the salad!

Home again now. Sun is still shining, Lloyd has had to go for a lie down and mum is collapsed on a bean bag outside reading a good book.

I think I'll join her.

Pizza Oven

  Has landed!

Possibly not the best day to choose to set up a pizza oven, it's gale force winds, odd bit of hail, rain, basically bleh weather so all the more reason to say "Thank you, Nick for coming over and helping"

Lloyd bribed us with eggs benedict so after a wee feast we set to work - well when I say we, I mean they. I opened gates, unwrapped some bricks and told them when the slabs were level, basically all the lazy stuff.

It didn't take long and now we have a pizza oven! I think we may put some planters round it to make it look pretty.

Remember this Our New Deck ? Well it's taken a few months but finally we saved up enough for the table and chairs! They arrived today and I LOVE them    ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

And the sun is still shining!!

Time for the 'Afters'

Remember THIS  and THIS and THIS and THIS ! Well the grass has pretty much all grown in ~ after twice daily waterings from me! Pesky drought :) ( you can see how lush it is compared to the grass in the background)

I must admit it has exceeded all our expectations. It's made this whole area like an extension to the house.

My only miniscule irritation is with myself and it's that I didn't take any absolute 'before' photographs. I think it was because I hated it so, so, so much before that I just couldn't bear to look at it, or something!

Anyway I took these this afternoon, here it is...finished.

The Palms are in! The sofa arrived!

Palmco came today to deliver the palms and plant them and also do the landscaping round it all. They were brilliant and made the most spectacular job of it all

It's hard to get decent photos as it covers quite an area, but in real life it looks just like a tropical garden!

It is beyond what we even imagined it could look like!!

The three palms together in one of the photos were here already, hidden in the middle of the bananas, completely covered! We had them diggered up and replanted round the deck.
Where the earth is I've spread grass seed and we had the sprinkler on it tonight. Hopefully it'll grow and in a couple of weeks we'll at least see some green.

And....sofa! HUGE!

 for a bit of scale... it's wee lloyd

Deck

The deck was finished last Friday. Matt and Elliot did a fantastic job. We are so pleased with it. It looks huge. Lloyd calls it 'The Ballroom' 

We took the blow up bed out a couple of nights ago and lay there in the dark ( well it was a full moon so it was actually quite light) and watched shooting stars for about an hour. It was lovely.

Today the river stones arrived - these are to landscape round the spa. There are also 2 ponytail palms to go in these beds as well. Our huge palms are being delivered next Tuesday and they are also planting them. While the digger is here we're going to get 4 other palms we have, hidden away in the bananas, moved to round the deck. After that we'll know exactly how much we need to level off/up and re-grass. We're in a bit of a quandary over this as we have no idea how to keep the dogs off it if we re seed, so we're thinking about buying turf if it's not too large an area. We'll cross that bridge in a week or so. I'll also try to get some better photos.

 As I'm typing this I can hear the rain outside, it is absolutely torrential - the heaviest rain we've had since October! I can almost hear the trees and the garden sigh with relief. It's a rather lovely sound actually.

The rocks are in position...

Next up ~ the deck!

Our lovely builder is coming next Friday to measure up with a view to starting the following week when his job at the local prison (!) ends.

Now, ignore the rather poor/hilarious photo joining. This is what we have so far - somehow when planning all this I had completely blanked that it would make a right mess! All round the bed is now soil, and very dusty soil at that. As we have no rain we won't reseed it till..whenever! It would be silly to try before the deck is in place anyway, so we're just going to have to live with the brown. Lloyd suggested painting it green...not such a daft idea to me!

Right in the pic there are faint pink/purple lines, this is the shape of the deck, which is squiff as I took the photo squiff! (if you click the pic it goes big and is clearer.)

Outside these lines will be the replanted grass and a couple of palms. A few plants were removed from the bed as well to let the new nice stuff grow. I still have some clearing and tidying to do.

There won't be any more to show for a few weeks now :( However I don't  mind, as my mum is arriving tomorrow so the world is good!

It's been a very busy day today.

Finally something happened that I've been wanting to do for 4 years! Work started on the area round the native bed. It was a raised bed surrounded by wood. The wood was all rotting so it was beginning to collapse. We also wanted to remove all the gravel and build a deck so that we have an outside sitting area. The deck will be smaller than the gravelled area so we'll then re-grass what's left and plant more palm trees. We were supposed to be getting this started weeks ago, but for various reasons it only got started today, but how brilliant!

 Stu came round and removed all the old rotting wood, then cleared the gravel. After that he went to get the rocks and once he got back he began to place them all round the raised bed.

 

 

 

 

ok, using a bit of imagination, in front of the rocks will be some ground plants, then coming up to the plants will be a sort of rectangular deck. This will have a round table on one side and the spa on the other. Surrounding the front and edges of the deck will be river stones - with me? Then the rest will be grass with palm trees. It's got to look worse before it'll look better!

The next job of the day was to make some brownies LOVELY RECIPE HERE I'm not a natural in the kitchen, I find everything a right guddle, make a terrible mess and basically splatter the ingredients all over my laptop ( which I use for the recipe!)

I like mixing though!

Then, finally I got round to braiding the garlic. It's been drying nicely out on the table. I've not braided it before, I had an attempt last week but thought - this is hard! However, it seemed easier today so I just got it done.

looking sillyily ( is that a word) pleased with it!

Here it is in all it's lovely glory.

...and Lloyd has been doing this!

We're having people round for dinner so he made coleslaw, tomato salad and potato salad - everything is from the garden ( except the pine nuts) ...we're also having home made burgers.