A slightly more restful day....

We needed to go to a coffee morning in the nearby village of Mydffai to support a local charity so  Bella let us have the morning off. We took the boys to the Cilycwm playground on the way back.

Joseph getting ready to go out...

Then we went out to have a bonfire of all the wood from the treehouse tree.

And everybody had marshmallows.

A treat for birdwatchers.......

The "lesser-spotted sitting-down Bella" bird. 

When she wasn't sitting down we stacked more wood in the stable...

Fed the next-door horse.....

amused the children...

And made great progress with renewing the tree house. 

Now with new handrails, new ladder and a fireman's pole!

GM sheep spotted in Llandovery!

Who said sheep were stupid? This is the best way to keep your head cool when the sun shines.

Bella and Noah have been working hard again.

And so has Joseph.

But nobody is happy when the tractor has to go to bed.

Bella has been working really hard...

Here is Bella mending the tractor....

And then she mended the wheelbarrow. And then she removed all the old handrail from the tree house..

And then she mowed the grass all around.

All I did was help Noah saw the branches off the top of the tree house.

The plan is to allow the branches to shoot new growth which can be woven into a living canopy. It looks bad now but the small willow house looked bad a few years ago too.

Now the work begins.

After a weekend away in RosieMay on the west coast we are back and raring to go. The sun is shing and the ground is drying out. And Bella is here for the week with Noah and Joseph so many hands will make light work of the mowing - especially if it is done with the tractor!

Happy days are here again.

Yesterday was wet again so not a lot happened..... Borè coffi in the morning ( coffee morning in the chapel in the village ) and planning our next trip away in the afternoon. 

Today was a bright sunny day and spring has arrived. 

The task today was getting RosieMay ready for her first trip this year. Watering and cleaning and fixing a leak. 

And another thing.....

What has been taking up quite a lot of time recently has been finalising the Farms and Field names book. It has now gone to the publisher and should be printed by the end of the month. This is likely to be the cover.....

Out of the habit.

One of the problems with so much rain and no work means that I have lost the habit of blogging every day. 

But the weather is improving and the snowdrops are growing...

Some jobs are getting done...

Path behind the summerhouse...

And now with added grass....

The grass came from the area around the manure heap which is now being spread around.

The summerhouse flowerbed is ready for planting..

And the summerhouse now has a fine set of slabs...

No work today......

We went to the Three Horshoes in Groesfford to meet some friends for lunch. Wonderful lamb followed by 'mother would love them' puddings. 

Catch up

Still not a lot happening. The weather is improving but still wet underfoot.

A certain amount of woodwork - this is the wood for 2016

This is the wood for 2015!

The broom seedlings have taken well but the wind had flattened them - staked now

This is not the book I have been working on but Dafydd (Penfedw) was so taken by the photographs I have done for the Farms and Filed names book he asked if he could make a photobook of a selection of them to leave in his holiday cottage for the visitors.  The title is 'There's no place like home.'

More clearing up round the summerhouse.

A full day's work!

A good day as far as the weather goes, but the ground is still muddy. 

The summerhouse now has guttering. 

And then I started tackling the wilderness behind!

The concrete outline is the old pig wallow. It will become a flowerbed in due course. 

Somebody is making mountains out of molehills......

And it isn't me!

A brief window of opportunity....

It didn't rain at first this morning so I was able to excavate behind the summerhouse where the spoil from the ditch had been piled up. 

But it didn't last. This is the view of the rain from the bench in the summerhouse porch....

Today it didn't rain, very much.

To celebrate a dry day I got out and did some work on the summerhouse. The door is now on, the handrails are on and half the roof has been painted.

Today's images have been provided by our guest photographer, aka Kate.