A wonderful weekend

The title of this update does sum it up; it's been a really awesome weekend where we've deliberately not planned anything and just enjoyed it all. I've sat down relatively late on Sunday as I forgot about doing this and we've just finished a game so I'll rush through this as fast as possible because I'm ready for bed already.

Sometimes a camera phone just captures a moment

Hazy mountains into the distance

Sassy enjoying the morning

Beautiful voice on this little one

Louise is shivering here

A distant cuckoo

Yesterday dawned absolutely bright and clear, though a little nippy, and I encouraged A to join me on the balcony with our morning brews. It was a stunning start, a tiny amount of haze around but the sun was strong and the birds were singing and it made you happy to be alive and in that moment. Sassy declined to come outside but was hopping around a lot in her enclosure while Thelma had her ball and Louise was cold so she jumped up for a cuddle. There are so many birds around at the moment singing their hearts out. The cuckoos are back in force as well and we saw a few swifts, though I wasn't able to get a photograph.

Two year old collection point ready for emptying

Digging it out

Rich soil

Raised bed full

A huge grub, one of many

The tail of a hiding lizard

Rambo relaxing in the sun

I did some modeling, making up some bases for a tutorial that I'm going to do; I'll probably share that when it's done in case anyone is interested, and then it was time for chores and part of that, today, was digging out 2 year matured Humanure Collection Point so we can swap and leave the one from last year to mature. This should have been done ages ago but never mind. It was a good hefty piece of work and I split it up into two batches as the digging hurt my back a bit after being sat behind a desk so much, but it was very satisfying and now we have a full raised bed that can settle for another year and we'll plant something maybe for winter crops. The grubs in the humanure are huge and the chickens were desperate to get in to find them. While I was shifting some bricks I found a lizard hidden inside; it was too dark to take a picture right down inside but his tail was hanging out. A was inside running and doing exercises while I was doing this.

Enjoying the heat

A different view of the house 

A wolf scarer, not a crow scarer, actually

Puppies enjoying the walk

Dung beetles - fascinating and wonderful creatures

We took lots of pictures between us

Louise climbs back up at the overlook

An amazing tree lined gorge

A stream at the bottom of the gorge

Absolutely stunning flowers

After a lovely lunch, sat in the baking sun on the patio, we went for a walk around the village and to go down over a field that we've looked at many times but never explored. What a superb idea that was. We walked all round and back through the village and found a stunning gorge with a look out spot where I will certainly be returning in the summer with a book and a beer, there were so many birds it was amazing sat there just listening and I could have stayed longer than I did. We also found a few houses with some abandoned gardens with glorious flowers in them, and all in all it was just a brilliant explore and brings home once again how we must live this year and get out and do these kind of things.

The chickens had been digging

Yellow poppy (the first of many I think)

The Tortoise Garden is starting to go back to green

An amazing show of colour

These really are stunning

A tortoise that was hiding in the long grass

About to eat our wonderful dinner

When we got back from our walk we found the chickens in the raised bed that contained the humanure; they scattered before I could capture them in the deed but the mess they left was clear to see. A was very excited to notice that one of her yellow poppies has come up in the flower bed (that is now hopelessly overgrown) while I was a bit sad to see the Tortoise Garden is beginning to die down after such a glorious show. Round the corner, though, at A's garden next to the drive way the bulbs are in absolutely amazing gorgeous full bloom; what a stunning thing. The rest of the day was spent painting minis and lazing in the swinging chair (A was in the hanging chair) and enjoying the pure peace and quiet and tranquility of the location. We also had a visitor as the puppies found a rather large tortoise in the long grass. Dinner was a superb steak, shared between us, with potato salad and other salad on the side and we sat on the balcony and soaked up the bird song and beauty once more.

Saturday really was a day for Living It.

A very foggy start to the day today

There are hills out there somewhere

A panorama from the swinging chair

Mid game, and looking good

Puppies wanting some burger for themselves

We woke this morning to heavy fog and it took some time to clear. A was off shopping first thing and I had my chores to do including emptying the humanure buckets into the newly emptied collection point. I got an extra wheelbarrow load out before I did this and so we also filled another raised bed to the top. It's been a much more lazy day today than yesterday, I've spend almost all of it painting or chilling in the sun (which did burn through eventually and during the main part of the day) and we also had a builder come over to look at the balcony and he's going to give us a quote. This evening we played a game, breaking in the middle for dinner of home made burgers that we were planning on BBQing but the clouds came in and the wind got up so we ate inside instead. The puppies were hoping for a fire to be lit but there was no chance of that.

So tomorrow we're back at it with the men back and also a few chores to run during the day; back to another update tomorrow so you can look forward to that.

Thanks for reading.