A basket case

Today I am a bit of a basket case... in fact, everyone in the house is! 

You see, shearing at The Farm starts this week. So why are we already basket cases? Well, there's a lot to be done in preparation for shearing. And it seems that shearing is a bit like studying, or going away on holiday; no matter how early you start getting ready you will always, always have a panic at the end to get the bits done!

We spent the weekend at the farm helping with this last minute preparation. Consequently, we're tired, sore and bruised! But really, it was a lot of fun too :-) Nudge, nudge - I have some lovely shed pics for you!

Mr Motorbike took his own motorbike out there, he enjoyed burring about on it and the small people REALLY enjoyed riding pillion (or on the bike behind Mr Motorbike). I got to take plenty of photos, in the magic late afternoon light. And I had my very first lesson of being behind the wheel and taking the farm ute up and down some very interesting hills...

Anyways! Enough of that now, I'm yet to download the photos so we'll have them later in the week. And here we are on a lovely Monday morning!!!

It's just glorious here today, the sun is shining brightly (warmly even!) and spring is definitely in the air. I've tidied up the courtyard and set up another thrift store find - the basket. I think I got it when I got this green skirt. The basket was just too good to leave in the shop, and I knew I had this growing 'collection' of interesting bits of wood at home that needed to be corralled! So here she is. She's of the weighty kind, you know the cane I mean? The sort that has been around for a while and just has weight when you lift it. Hopefully it will be weighty enough to hold out against the weather out here. I wouldn't mind her getting a silvery sheen from weathering (she'd be a bit like me then!) but I will give her a whitewash coat of paint like Sarah often does with her cane at abeachcottage.

Check out this very pretty shadow would you? :-)

Oh, and here's another bit of cane to show you. This one is of my own creation...

You probably don't remember me talking about making wreaths from willow at the farm... I just looked and it was waaay back in May that I talked about the willow! Like a lot of other things around here it took me a long time to get into gear. So long in fact that Mr Motorbike threatened to mulch the wisteria prunings that I had carefully 'dumped' in a convenient corner of the yard for using later. He EVEN questioned what I was going to do with them ;-) I didn't have an answer, I didn't know! But I did deal with those prunings quite promptly then, here is the result:

The wisteria prunings actually made 3 of these wreaths~! I've got them deposited about the courtyard in the hope that the question doesn't now return, "What are you going to do with THEM?". Haha. 

Thought some of you might be interested in a few other shots in the courtyard. It's getting quite nice out there again now, a bit of green appearing and plenty of terracotta and white going on. Even a few flowers!

There was even a fairy (scroll down) in the courtyard! A gumbooted fairy! We quite love gumboots in this house, the small people climbed this in gumboots! You might also remember them featuring last week here.  Well, the fairy in the courtyard was on another thrift store find, oh I love going 'a-hunting' thrift-store-style! This aged rocking horse was $5, can you believe it?! And the littlest one nearly always has to sneak in a quick rock before we get in the car. Good cost/rock I say! I love too that he looks old. But, same as the basket, I think he might need a whitewash and a sealant. It's nice to be old and full of character, just as long as it doesn't cause you to fall apart hey?! 

Speaking of falling apart, I'm off to have a cuppa before I become a worse basket case! A cuppa is my favourite remedy... What's yours? I hope you have an easy remedy for yourself, especially for Mondays. Catch you tomorrow.