Jaynee's P's visit, very sensibly bringing their bedroom with them. We take a break from the digging, and loll about in front of the fire telling tall tales. This also means that they are on hand for Jaynee's first concert with the BSO - last desk of the first violins, woo hoo!
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Now, its been at least a month since I discussed the veggie patch, so you'll be delighted to hear that Aldi's had a little greenhouse on special, so we get to play putting-up-yet-another-bloody-steel-framed-and-placcy-covered-thingy again. That may look like chook wire, but its actually bespoke kanga-proofing. Oh all right, I admit that some people may use it for restraining the free movement of chickens. Get a move on, veggies. The inanimate bits are growing faster than you are. |
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The Australia Day Golf Croquet Tournament is held at Cairnlea this month (yep, Australia Day is the 26th of January, but its too bloody hot then) so David and Jaynee gird their wossnames and enter, with brand new handicap cards. David does particularly well, and by the end of the first day his handicap has gone from 12 to 11, and by the second, to 10! We follow that up with a charity doubles match at Rich River, on the Murray River, a week later. David's joke about border controls whilst crossing the river into New South Wales did have Jaynee instinctively double-taking (those who know her well are familiar with not only the "Where's my keys, dammit?" routine but also the rarer but more frantic "Where's my bloody passport, for f****'s sake???!!!")
We're still clearing burnable stuff from the block - there's a lot of it, and its the top dam's turn. There's bugger all water in it, but a lot of dead reeds and timber; too much to fit in the barby, so we wait for a still day and set up a bonfire (with water supply on hand in case of wind change).
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Meet Brian the fruit bat. Its quite cold overnight, and our local wildlife sanctuary says that he's probably exhausted from looking for food and needs a warm place to kip, so he's chosen the wall at the back of David's worktable. We give him a bit of tucker and shelter whilst Jaynee constructs a bathouse to sit up under the verandah roof (note, "bathouse" not "bathhouse"). Also discovered firkling around under the back verandah are Eric and Edna the echidnae.
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We're actually getting a reasonable amount of rain, and our big tanks are overflowing again - we catch as much as we can in our 500 and 250 litre waterbutts (waterbutthole, waterbutthole, sorry, that just came over me sudden-like), but an ad on the telly prompts us to go for a slightly larger solution...
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Its a 1,000 gallon tank, which is pretty small compared to our existing 5,000 gallon tank (the one in the front) and the 10,000 gallon tank behind it, but damned if we're letting that water just trickle orf down the gully. You'll notice that just to add a spur to our efforts, its raining in these pictures. Makes it so much easier controlling the progress of an happily rolling object down a slope, does the rain. At least the neighbours are far enough away not to have been offended by the language required. |
