The grass is riz ....

And we really do have proper grass now, particularly around the fruit trees, rather than the swathes of nettles we had to negotiate before. Yes, of course, we will have clumps of the nasty stuff, but they are coming up in isolated clumps, and not covering large areas.

Sean likes to say "hello".

This is mainly due to one of the new sheep - Sean. He's one of nature's enthusiasts, always liable to come up behind us when we're working in the fields to see if there's anything interesting. And he eats nettles, when they're old, at least.

Last autumn, we'd regularly hear some munching in the undergrowth, wait a minute or two and he would come out backwards, covered in leaves after one of his one-sheep search and destroy missions on nettle patches. The other sheep, having previously been a bit sniffy about eating them suddenly got the taste. So we now have, as said above, much less to strim.

Having eight of them probably helps keep the grass down as well. Not to mention the fact that it's still a bit chilly. Just stops the vegetation going mad. Though it also means the fruit trees are a bit slow in starting as well.