A Better Day All Round...

After several days of rain, rain and more rain today we woke to clear blue skies and bright sunshine and threw open the windows and doors (well we have to get rid of the condensation somehow!!).  What a difference the sunshine makes - we created our new 2012 todo list and decided to take advantage of the sunshine to make a start on the list.

We decided to make the wood store for the prospective wood-burning stove which meant I had some plants to move and then I had to put on my Part Four hat and be John's lackey which is always a joy as I have the attention span of a mentally deficient goldfish and am never where I am supposed to be which drives John nuts!!

Minnie was checking out the area where the wood store was to go and looks like she is auditioning for the 2012 Olympics as a gymnast on the balance beam!  On the right is where it all went pear shaped and her Olga Korbut impersonation went tits-up!  All those perfect 10s went out of the window and she skulked off pretending nothing had happened!

Chivers, on the other hand, became very superior showing just exactly how a cat should balance!  This was before they both got totally engrossed in my gardening.  They just love to help with the weeding and today the trowel was just beyond their wildest dreams and they had to get their noses right into whatever I was doing!

As I moved the plants about John began with the building of the wood store using some pallets he had rescued from the builders - he must have been in a very good mood today because we managed to work together without any bickering at all and he even said if I carried on like that I could expect to be promoted to an AB 1 or 2 or something!

I know it doesn't look much but we managed to got this far today and now have a waterproof area for the wood which we already have and hopefully wood in the future.  We moved the old orange and green plastic box and in the bottom found this baby tarantula which was probably hibernating or at least having a snooze!  It was only a baby but as John says his Dad was probably a big old bugger!  John gently hooked it up in the trowel and then not so gently lobbed it into the field as far away from us as possible!!

Talking of the field we had a visit from the goats again today - and how close do they come? - well today they came right up to our boundary but the goatherd was very careful to make sure that they were kept under control - one of the goats has got her I've just seen the camera face on!

It will be a real shame when they no longer have the freedom to wander in the field next door and if I was building on that land I would want to know just how badly the water sits there after heavy rain - maybe it will be a little while yet before we no longer get visits from the herd.

It was lovely to escape into the shower and get cleaned off, even lovelier that today all of the hot water was provided by the solar panels.  I am resigned to the fact that my beautiful nails that were my pride and joy are very firmly a thing of the past.  I love gardening and there is so much to do and I know that is what gardening gloves are for but I am a hands-on person more Barbara Good than Margot Leadbetter and John is definitely more Tom than Jerry - he is so practical and that is such a bonus - give him some DIY or a project and he is a happy man.

Showers were followed by a trip into Polis with a late lunch at Yaya's sitting outside in the late afternoon sunshine, then the DIY shops (all three of them) and then Paps for food.  It has been a really lovely day in all respects!