Spring.

Well it's all beautiful here in the Dales. It's been fantastic weather and we've been working hard in the garden.

It's pretty overgrown at the moment but really nice. The river is very low at the moment, but very busy.

We have several duckling famillies which are really rather sweet. Just hoping that Blackie (cat) doesn't show too much interest. He has caught a couple of baby rats (or they've died in the house in suspicious circumstances) and there was the mystery smell (obv blamed on Moleskin - that cat shits all over the house etc etc) that turned out to be a very dead mouse under the sofa. And talking of shitting all over the house Blackie spends most of his days outside asleep by the compost bin? Only comes in to use the litter tray. behaviour which Neil says is TOTALLY UNNACEPTABLE. And talking again of awful toileting behaviour Dennis... had a night away in a pub so Neil could go and see Man City beat West Ham. I did my wifely duty by driving him to and from the football ground and backing the car into a bollard, (fairly large dent). But Dennis, oh dear, nice weather, people eating outside, lets just say 7 bags, 2 bottles of water, some moved diners and very thorough hand washing later.

So we have some vegetable patches.

Have planted about half of the second one, nothing yet just flocks of smug looking birds flying off everytime I go and check things out.  But my propogators well that's a different matter.

Have a very efficient plan so I know whats where but think Neil's moved them all around "for a laugh". So maybe this summer we'll get some vegetables else birds dropping out of the sky due to obesity.

And Den is very excited about the new neighbours.

He really doesn't know what to do - just woof's in a stupid fashion. Blackie is quite friendly with them (there's 3) and touches noses etc, but Moleskin, lets face it who knows what goes on in her furry little head anyway.

Now to inside. Oh the horror of the kitchen. We put up the partition so the residents can get to the dining room without seeing us. None of that open kitchen shit here. And I've been plasterboarding, Neil's been dry lining and look at it.

Nice new cooker by the way. But...

Now that does look like a Mr Trebus Life of Grime / serial killer's kitchen, in fact it does, it looks like the pictures of Bin laden's "luxury" hideaway faithfully reproduced with great excitment in the Sun. You can see noone respects my rule about no power tools on the work surfaces, and as for trying to teach Neil to "clean up as he goes" when he's cooking, how?  I mean I do clean it up every night before cooking tea but still.

And power tools, look at that

Now that's a mans screwdriver for you, looks like a cross between Thunderbird 5 and the Liberator, it's magnetic, has a light on it and goes faster than the speed of sound. But curiously only weighs about 100g, unlike the shonky old piece of shite I get.

Weighs about 4kg and has the wrong battery which falls out on your feet all the time - v. painful.