One giant step for mankind - well me anyway

Today has been another "tick" in the To Do list for me because I drove myself to a restaurant for lunch with the girls from the sewing group. I know you will probably laugh by my saying that, but my girls know how big a deal that is. I don't drive at all in the UK anymore and I have only driven over here with my hubby beside me, so with backup. He is so good to me because whenever I want to go anywhere he always takes me and picks me up, but I have to do it sometime and today was the day. It was fine, I drove for about 20 minutes and didn't actually see another car on the road until I got to the village where the restaurant was, so although I was saying to myself, stay on the right, I didn't need to. Anyway, over here, they all drive in the middle!!! We had a lovely lunch and I got back feeling very pleased with myself. As it says in the heading of this post - One giant step for me.

When I got back home I decided to get some baskets out that we had found in the barn, (they look as though the previous owners used to take their chickens to market in them), and have a go at putting some preservative on them because I think they may look quite nice with some plants in. I bought some pansies from the market on Monday, would you believe 12 pansies for €5 which is about £3.50, and he threw an extra one in for good measure. I took a photo of the before and after and I have 3 of these and we know there are more in the roof of another barn. I hope they look OK, and we found this bit of machinery which looks like a turntable for an old carriage, so I was going to put the baskets on there when they are all planted up. I will take a photo of that when it happens, see what you think. We have found all sorts of things so it will be good to put them to good use. We still have the big detached barn to sort through yet so it will be interesting to see what is in there. We tried to do it last summer but came across a bees nest in an old mattress so had to stop. We called a couple of bee keepers to see if they were interested in collecting the bees, but no luck and we didn't like to kill them, so they had a lovely home for the summer. Thinking about it, we need to get rid of that mattress quickly or the little darlings will be back again.

We have spent a lot of time watching all the birds, they are so busy at the moment and we are now putting out 4 fat balls a day on average, and there are a couple of collared doves that are building in the palm tree quite close to the house so that will be interesting. Also the frogs are beginning to make a noise, not terribly loud yet, but they are on their way............