The Shortest Month?!

What you should know:

1. This is not how I thought my life would be. 
2. That's not always a bad thing. 

I used to really struggle through February. I couldn't believe the shortest month on paper took the longest to trudge through. In the city, February was dark, cold and antisocial. I went to work in the dark, came home in the dark and every day felt like it ended at 4pm. 

Now the start of February looks like this: 

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I am a stationery lover (that's completely different from someone who just lies there and thinks of Scotland. That's a stationary lover). I've just looked it up and apparently I'm a papyrophiliac. Sounds painful. 

I especially love new notebooks, diaries and calendars that haven't been written on yet. There's just so much possibility waiting to unfold. Now that I've found a calendar I love, I order the same one every autumn. And I am still in search of the perfect diary. You know some people go through life looking for the perfect lipstick? That's me with diaries and notebooks. It may be a lifelong quest. Can't wait... 

This could be the one.

Those of you who know Ivie will know that organisation isn't really his thing. He tends to rely on his charm and fluttery eyelashes to get around deadlines he's just missed or birthday cards that are a few days late. It also means that he doesn't have to buy his calendar and diary in October because he gets freebies with pictures of farm machinery on them. Needless to say, my diary doesn't include a space to record rainfall or adverts for 'impressive brassica weed control'.  

What I have realised, though, is that I no longer dread February (despite this month's picture of a tractor, which if you ask me, looks remarkably like last month's picture of a tractor. I know, no one asked me). The drudge has been replaced by anticipation. 

How the lambing shed will look in a week or two

Lambing at the Spittal is just around the corner, which means that Ivie spends a lot of time thinking about the logistics of it all like:

• moving hunners of straw bales out of the lambing shed to make room for the pens, which all still have to be put together.
• getting supplies in like colostrum and iodine.
• setting up equipment like the shepherdess for feeding the pets (and hoping it won't get any use).

It gives February a different flavour, even for me, who is next to useless during lambing except for baking, making soup and trying to say the right thing at the right time. At least I know that, "I hope you have LOADS of pets" is the wrong thing at any time... 

Maybe just the one?