Ein ail oen ni!

Spent a good part of a day running extension leads all over the kitchen. Most rooms in this house only have one socket each. In the kitchen we are lucky enough to have three, but as you can see in this photo, two of them are helpfully on the other wall opposite the counter tops -- doh! So we had the cooker, washing machine, toaster, kettle, and coffee grinder all plugged into a single outlet, which melted the other day... We've now divided the load up a bit, so hopefully nothing should melt now...

The concrete floor in the shed has gone down and the last wall has gone on, so it is starting to look a bit more like a shed now:

And the post woman arrived the other morning bearing a load of tomato plants that another one of her customers was trying to get rid of as she had too many -- so we have now given them a good home...

AND, the reward for those of you who have read all the way to the bottom of the post is the translation of the title -- our second lamb! Yes, that's right folks -- it was born just before 10:30 this morning. No photos yet but there will be some up by the end of the day. If you need something to visualise in the meantime, it looks remarkably like the first lamb... No idea as to gender yet, but it is up on its feet and seems healthy.

Er Côf Am Special K

Special K died yesterday morning. She was a stray originally -- I found her near an ATM machine in Long Island City one night back in 1996 and she moved all the way to the UK with me. Those of you who have met her know that she was the most loving wonderful snuggly special cat ever, and she can never be replaced. I love you sweetie!

Llawer o hen newyddion...

Firstly -- another mystery plant... Can anybody ID this one for me?

Life is starting to get hectic now. The scaffolding was delivered yesterday. Now we just have to put it up. We are looking for somebody with a JCB to do some ground works for us -- does anybody in the area have a recommendation of a good JCB operator?

Sunrise one day last week:

I know this just looks like yet another egg, but this egg, laid last Wednesday, was the 9th egg of the day (found for me by Georginia) -- and it was the first time we've had 9 eggs in a single day this year -- which means that all the hens are laying...

Now the duck eggs: We've only had two so far, and then she seems to have stopped, but Bridget says that she won't lay continuously like the hens so, so I'm not worried. They are much richer than the hen eggs and more gelatinous if that makes any sense. In this measuring cup, the two on the sides are the duck eggs, and the top and bottom are the hen eggs -- see how much more clearly defined the duck eggs seem?

The ram lamb celebrated his two week birthday last Thursday -- he has grown an incredible amount in a very short period of time!

This morning it was bright and clear up top, but lots of mist and fog hanging lower down in the valley...

Assorted eggs:

Newyddion Hwyad Cyffrous

The most exciting news of the day is -- I came back from town to find that little Del has laid her first egg! Da iawn Del! I am so proud of her...

In other news, I had an exciting parcel in the post this morning. Cyndy from Riverrim sent me some wool to learn to spin with and also some lovely stitch markers that she made -- I almost wish it would rain now so I could start playing with it!

Flowers are blooming everywhere -- we have a rainbow of primroses:

We have started harvesting the rhubarb -- it is delicious!

The rosemary is flowering:

The gooseberry is about to:

As is the magnolia:


The clematis:


The blackcurrant:


The blackthorn -- which I hate when I have to touch because it is so horrible, but I love it in the spring when it has lovely flowers:

The blueberry is also starting to flower, so hopefully we will have a slightly bigger crop this year than we did last year:

And some broad beans which I thought I planted far too late have also come up -- whether they will produce beans is another question, but we will see...

Greg had a four-day weekend over the Easter Bank Holiday so we took advantage of the lovely weather to work on the shed. We built the middle partition wall:

The gable ends:

And the A-frames for the roof:

The little ram lamb is growing rapidly and becoming more adventurous daily. (He's the one in the back, behind last year's ewe lamb.) Still no new lambs yet, but watch this space...

Ein oen ni...

For your viewing enjoyment, this is the lamb in action...

Bachgen bach yw e!

We caught the little one yesterday morning and I am pleased to report that he is a boy! AND, as best as we can tell, it looks like he has the correct markings to be a registered Balwen, so he gets to keep his willy! :)




I'll leave you with a picture of NO animals -- this was yesterday's sunrise. I actually take pictures like this quite often, but usually my camera can't seem to record anything like what I'm actually seeing! This time though, it's pretty close...