New addition to the family

Martin checked waters 2 days ago and came across this little fella. He had wire wrapped around his leg and in the process of trying to get, had pulled the wire even tighter. Unfortunately his mother was nowhere to be found.

After some initial perseverance, Ned has taken really well to a bottle. Luckily we had a bag of denkavit in the coldroom and some calf teats in the fridge!

Ned's offside hind leg is very sore and swollen and he's reluctant to walk on it. We have been bathing it with salty water and applying Betadine and the vet is sending us some anti-inflammatory medication and penicillin to give him.The vet suggested we also massage his leg to help get the swelling down.

Charli and BJ have got used to having Ned around and no longer bark at him....instead they like to lick his face after he's been fed!

Garden Club

I recently took on the role of garden club co-ordinator and was soon in for a shock. I hadn't realized one of my responsibilities was to organize gardens to view when other garden clubs graced us with a visit!

This last weekend saw the Longreach Garden Club visit us....and I must say I had a wonderful weekend. The most stressful part of their visit was finding gardens for them to view, but some very helpful people helped out there, and an after dinner guest speaker. A local lady recently put together a put called Gardens of the Beaten Track in Western Queensland and so I asked her to tell about the dramas of her book....I was being presumptuous in thinking that it wasn't all a smooth process!

 So on Saturday afternoon, after a lovely lunch at Daisy Cottage, we headed off to visit 3 lovely gardens, all lush, green and beautiful but oh so very different. A number of our own garden club members joined us and helped make our visitors feel welcome. Here is a snapshot of some....

As you can see, the gardens were stunning, and if any of the gardeners were nervous about having others enjoy their garden, that was soon dispelled when they saw how relaxed and friendly everyone was. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

That evening we joined in a tour of the woolscour and a delicious campoven dinner. It's some years since Martin and I had toured the scour and Nathan never had, so it was an ideal opportunity. The evening turned cool, but we enjoyed our meal in the cookhouse, where it was cosy and warm. We had a meal of roast beef, mutton and pork with all the trimmings, damper and an array of scrumptious desserts...all the great old fashioned Aussie ones...YUMMMMMM!!

On Sunday morning I headed back in to town for the rest of their visit. We began with a visit to the retirement village. Some very keen gardeners live there and the village always looks really lovely. The chairman of the committee told the history of the village before we set of.  The ladies marveled at our wonderful facilities for the aged citizens of our community and took the opportunity to chat with the residents. Afterwards, we all enjoyed a lovely morning tea in the final garden. It was very relaxing and when it came for our visitors to leave, many new friendships had been forged. For me, it was also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with some lovely ladies I hadn't seen for a good few years.

Another garden group is visiting next month, but fortunately I don't have to plan anything for that one. Next April, yet another group is headed out way.

in the meantime...I can get back in to my own garden.......

Bright little Faces

These have been flowering in my garden...aren't they so pretty? Like little rays on sunshine aren't they.

I have had a bit of a battle to get them though...battles with a certain little bowerbird! For some reason he seemed to think I shouldn't enjoy them! The little terror would fly in, break off the bud and drop it on the ground and then fly off! Finally I had to put a net over them!

VISE

We currently have a wonderful and her husband, staying with us for 6 weeks. Robyn and Peter have come to us through the Volunteers for Isolated Students' Education organization. Robyn is a retired teacher and she'll be teaching Nathan for 6 weeks, giving me a chance to do other things. She's an absolute godsend! She just had a week of teaching the DE papers with out any interruptions from on-air lessons....they resume next week. Nathan also had a cluster this week, so Robyn was able to meet his teacher and other staff from our wonderful school.

I have spent this last week catching on bookwork and end of financial year paperwork. No doubt there will be more I need to do, but only small things.

We are currently doing cattle work and are planning on selling weaner steers in the sale in town on Thursday. Let's hope they sell well.....

Kids

Isn't is wonderful when you look at your kids or photos of them and your heart just bursts with pride?

Children make you want to start life over.  ~Muhammad Ali

Meeting Oliver

These beautiful photos were taken by the very talented Samantha Burnett. Ollie was only 9 days old and it was hoped that he'd sleep through the photo shoot...well as you can see, he had other ideas and wasn't missing out on seeing  what was going on. 

I love this photo of he and his mummy, Kath. It speaks volumes.

A few weeks ago we went down to Brisbane to meet the newest member of our family, baby Oliver. What a gorgeous little snuggle-bunny he is! It's so easy to fall in love with this beautiful little boy. He's so bright eyed and not keen to miss out on anything that happens. 

Nathan could hardly wait to give Ollie and nurse and a big cuddle. He still tells everyone he's an uncle, but refers to Ollie as his cousin and not his nephew!

  

Meeting Poppy.

 

 Ollie has a musical mobile in his cot and as you can see he loves watching it.

 In these photos Oliver is 3 weeks old. All that hair (yep, as you can see, there's plenty of it!) makes him look older.

Meet my little grandson

Oliver Flynn Kholo Sickmann-Lloyd arrived on Tuesday at 12.37pm and weighing 8lb. Isn't he just beautiful!?

He had a bit of a rough time and spent about 18hrs in a humidicrib and a few days on a drip with antibiotics and in a special care nursery, very hard for new parents. Now  he's  progressing well and I'm sure will not look back.

 And with his Mum and Dad.

We can hardly wait to see our littlest man and Nathan is really looking forward to meeting his nephew.