Cereal toys!

Reaching a significant birthday has had me thinking about the past and noticing the things I've kept from my childhood. There's a handlens I won at a school camp, the toy "Jimmy" dog I asked Santa for when I was four or five and then there's the bag of cereal toys. I kept them as I loved the designs and I remember pulling out the packet to open the bottom first to get at the toy, rather than waiting to eat the contents first. Just out of interest I 'googled' these toys and much to my amazement they are worth quite a bit for bits of plastic! Now I'm thinking they should be in separate bags rather than lumped all together, as they are collectables.

The Moment.

I was feeling tired, achy and walking Maggie was a chore this morning. On impulse I lay down on the road and looked up, through the gum branches and on at the blue sky. Amazingly I relaxed straight away. Maggie checked on my condition, licking me on my face and then sat down next to me. We were quiet and alone.

 

Recharged I continued our walk.

We need more moments, stopping to feel the sun on our faces, the breeze brushing across our skin and for clearing the mind. There's too much emphasis on moving faster, doing more and madly rushing around. It's time to slow down to appreciate life, what is around us and what we have. Animals live each day in the moment maybe we should more too!

Weather, changes!

After expecting the summer to be long and extra hot suddenly things changed. The monsoon trough pushed an x cyclone across central Western Australia and into South Australia from which great quantities of rain fell. Even when it reached us 140mm fell in 48 hours turning our once dry creeks into torrents. These raged into the dams which filled and over flowed something we've never seen happen in Febuary. The green seemed to happen overnight but it would have been over a few days that the yellow old grass vanished and the new green growth appeared.

We'd just started to hand feed the sheep as the hot weather had sapped the remaining proteins from the dry grasses and now there was new growth everywhere, mainly the clovers.

With the milder weather we tackled our new watering system in the vegetable garden again, this time finishing it. During all the hot weather we'd only been able to use the drippers on a couple of the beds having to hand water the other vegetables, now all the beds are covered. So we've been able to plant the next group of seedlings.



Summer heat.

I've heard it said this summer that 40 degrees Celsius is the new 37 degrees C and this season is living proof that's the case. We seem to be having heat wave after heat wave and each time the temperature races up over 40 degrees. Just this week Adelaide broke a 117 year record of the number of days over 40 degrees. Living in the hills the temperatures aren't quite so bad but since we first moved up here the nights were regularly cool but that's changed over the years. Now the airconditioner runs 24 hours straight until the weather cools. We provide water for our stock and the local wildlife. How the sheep cope is to fill up with water from the troughs early in the morning, then briefly graze and then retire under the shade of the gums. Due to the heat the gums are shedding their bark in great quantites.

It's been a battle to protect our vegetables. We have shade cloth over the plants and a new dripper system for watering. As for our fruit trees we tried to protect them from the parrots having not bothered in the past. We covered the trees with birdnetting on a support made from polypipe and star droppers, then watched the fruit start to grow. However we also found parrots caught in the netting some dead, others alive, which we then had to cut free. This was a difficult process with the birds struggling and trying to bight us.



After one too many deaths we gave up and removed the net and let the fruit fall
So the heat waves keep coming and we've started hand feeding the sheep. The latest forecast is for cooler temperatures and even some rain, we'll wait and see.