Almost overnight the blossom is bursting on the trees, the birds are building their nests and we haven’t had the heating on in the house for a few nights. The sun is rising earlier and the magpies wake us up before the sun does. Our veranda is almost too hot to sit on in the middle of the day and there is a bottle of rose languishing in the fridge just waiting for Happy Hour. I LOVE Spring. It holds such promise for the next few months but isn’t so hot that you have to walk before 9am or after 3pm. The garden wakes up and thoughts turn to outdoor seating and eating and the hammock swings temptingly in the breeze. In a few more weeks we will be moaning about the heat, the flies and the fact that the grass needs weekly mowing but for now it is a time full of endless possibility and anticipation of happy sunny times ahead.

Luckily it was a beautiful day this week when I arranged to meet a couple of girlfriends for lunch in Wollongong. We figured that was about half way between them in Sydney and me in The Meadow and not too far to travel for any of us. I had never visited the Gong before and was pleasantly surprised. This was North Beach and a great little lunch spot, Diggies, provided us with a perfect place to catch up on all our news and while away a couple of hours.

Diggies Cafe – North Beach Wollongong

Gotta love a girls lunch…….

Hardly a soul in sight……

Back at The Ranch I am pushing forward on the long list of things to do in the garden before it goes berserk again. I have luckily found Will, a local lad, who is helping me with all the hard yakka. He is passionate about nature and is very thorough and helpful. He is concentrating at the moment on our front boundary which needed a lot of help. The agapanthas were inundated with weeds and grass and he is slowly but surely restoring the border to something I am happy with. Then we have the rose border, the plum trees and the pear tree to contend with plus all the summer veggies can now be planted – home grown tomatoes here we come!!!

Will doing what he does best……

 Love his work…….

The chooks are also happy when Will is here because he feeds them all the greenery he is weeding out, as they say “one man’s trash is another ‘chook’s’ treasure”!! With the warmer days and the bonus greens they are all happily laying an egg each per day. They are so funny, queuing up to lay in the same nesting box even though there are four identical ones for them to use!

Bailey has a boyfriend. He is a Maremma which is an Italian sheepdog. They are known as livestock guardian dogs  who famously live/ sleep/stay in the paddock with the sheep/chickens/cows and protect them. They are absolutely gorgeous dogs and we always feel a bit sorry for this magnificent animal who seems so friendly and affectionate yet whose fate dictates he lives alone in the paddock. Bailey adores him and I think the love is mutual. They squeeze themselves as much as is possible under the fence to smooch each other and run up and down the fence border, tails wagging 100 miles an hour, declaring their love for each other. I feel like a real party pooper when I have to call her to my side and put the lead on her to continue our walk down the lane….

Puppy Love………

This coming week I have to go to Sydney for a couple of days. I have a Specialist appointment and luckily managed to combine it with my regular bookclub meeting. I missed the last one so it will be lovely to see all the girls again. I am also rather excited at the prospect of doing some shopping. There just isn’t the range and choice down here that we have up in Sydney and I am hoping to have a very decisive and productive 3 hours whizzing around the shops whilst I’m in the City.

As Wayne is away in New Zealand this week I have booked Bailey into a local kennel for the night. We met Charmaine from Petcharm Lodge a couple of weeks ago and her setup for the dogs is FABULOUS! More like a 5 star hotel for our 4 legged friends as you can see by these pictures. Nothing less than chandeliers and plasma TV for the favoured pooches and she makes all her own bone broth for them for dinner too. We feel blessed to have found her and she is only 5 minutes from our house too! She even caters for doggy day care and will look after them from 9-5 if you have something to do out of town. The dogs are split up into groups according to their personality and size and spend some quality time in the exercise yards together before retiring to their twin share rooms with doggy duvets…..

Super styling for our fur babies….

(She may never want to come home………..)