The Russian Garden

Geoff's hot house this year has produced an abundance of food! Strawberries, tomatoes, (more basil then we can poke a stick at!) cucumbers galore, a honey dew melon or two, capsicums, radishes, grapes! (Yes, we have a pinot grape vine in there too!) and probably more that l just can't think of at the moment!

Our first corn  is about to hit the dinner plates tonight!! Ours is a bit late this year as we got hit by frost in January!!

The garden itself is awash with Sunflowers this year which look beautiful. The bees love them.

Some recycled roof capping (flattened by the car!) has made some great new terraced beds. Easy to fill when you have such an abundance of horse poo to get rid of every day!

Geoff surveying his domain!!

Well worth all the effort indeed!

 

My Throne!!!

Check out my new chair!!! Spotted yesterday at one of my favourite second hand shops in town. Definitely couldn't resist it!

So transaction done and three hours later it was home delivered by the lovely John (shop owner) on his way home.

It's just gorgeous l love it!!

Not really settled in place yet and possibly the whole room will have to shift around to suit it but it's in and looks fantastic!

From the inside or outside!!!

 

Painting Wagons!

Another busy weekend. Trying to finish off some long forgotten jobs saw me spending my entire two days off with the gypsy wagon aiming to get it to a stage where it can get ticked off that great big long list!
It took me a long long time and by the end of the two full  days it really didn't look much different from when l started and l reckon l STILL have another two days to go on it! (sigh!!! ) No wonder l kept putting it off! So what took me so long??? Well l made new yellow shutters for the window at the front to match (sort of ) the one at the side....... Cut, fitted, painted .................tick!!!

Remade the back door. My brother had made the lovely original stable door a few years ago but some of the timber had rotted and fallen out over time Keeping the original frame work l just put some new timber on the doors AND painted (tick!) AND hardware......AND my first token gypsy stencil!!

Made a frame for the small window on the side so it looks like 4 small panes instead of one big one AND framed it up on the inside too......TICK!

l had to call in the big guns to do the lattice up the top as that was way too complicated for me!!

But Geoff made it look easy (sort of! and up she went. Done and painted........

Rafters started to get painted red..............until l ran out of red paint!! All very busy!!!

Stencils started on the shutters......Roof painted one coat of green until l finally ran out of green paint too!

And a last LAST minute decision to chop the top half of the stable door right down the middle to have two halves of a half door! Not painted and not finished..........but there's always next weekend!!!

But it's slowly coming together!!

 

 

 

 

 

The Back Porch

We have revamped our back porch a little bit. It looks much prettier now and l am very pleased with it! A few hanging baskets, painted the pickets green  and it looks great!

Of course it isn't FINISHED!!! The posts are only temporary to give us the feel of what it would be like to have them there. The proper ones will be a bit better quality than these without nails sticking out of them!!

But it gives us an idea and we love it!

The Clown

No one can pull faces like this little fellow...............

Or smile...........like a little angel......like butter wouldn't melt.........

Or purse their lips.

Or do an Alpaca impersonation..........

Or roll their eyes.............and start to look slightly evil....

Or roll for that matter!!!!!

Always the clown indeed!

Cow Shed........Finished.......

The cow shed is done!! We THINK they like it!!!  We found the cows in there when we headed up to finish it off.

It will come more into effect when it's cold ,wet and windy as opposed to now when it's just plain hot!!! We have certainly created some sun relief for them though and they seem to like the other side of the shed at the moment in the early mornings. It throws some much needed shade for them up there. Here it is before palings..........

And after! With roof painted too so its nots so reflective.

In the morning, this  area is in shade which they didn't have before.

Finishing off the last of the palings to hide the pallets...

Very snug!! This picture is without the painted roof though.

Lilli......chuffed as usual to be there................

Farm dog........not!!!

Once the new palings grey off in the weather it will settle in nicely to the hillside.

Christening it..........

Ticked off the To Do List..........Well done us!!

 

Courtyard Part Three!

Next stage of the courtyard getting ready!! Not much to show really. We placed sheets of MDF along the bottom to try to determine what it will all look like closed in and at what height and size  to put the windows. It's important to me that the goats can still peer through if they want to!!

We have had these old wrought iron gates for a while. l always thought they would be too small but once in place l think they will be just perfect! They will continue the theme of the other two windows along the front fence too.

We still see the view AND the goats can still see us!  Perfect!

 

New Editions

A few baby chooks this week. Here is the lovely gentle Senny with her little one. She is such a gorgeous quiet girl this hen. She spent her first few days of life under a heat lamp in front of the fire before she was returned to her Mum outside. Maybe this is directly related to why she is so kind and trusting of us when we handle her and her wee babies. But as bad luck would have it she has been broody twice this Summer and both times only produced one baby. She molly coddles her one charge within an inch of its life to the point where her previous baby (who is now a fledgling rooster ) STILL wants to climb in with her at night and snuggle under her wing even though he is nearly the same size as she is!

Then........on the totally opposite side of the spectrum we have Bridget. This hen is one of the meanest most neurotic, bad arse mothers of all time! She loves her babies when they are cute ,small and fluffy.........beware if you go ANYWHERE near her...........l have the scars to prove it! BUT once they hit the teenage years.....she dumps them! Heads back to the hen house and rejects her poor little babies without a backward glance! It will be interesting to see if she does the same with this lot! Her last batch of four  babies are still little lost souls that l have to go and manually pick up and carefully place on a roost every night as no one has ever told them how to do it !!!

But good or bad....kind, or downright mean......... .they never fail to be just the cutest things!!!