WATER WATER

yes, i'm still waiting for the watering system to be done, two days in a row brendan's hit buried pipes and has had to repair them, so since before the weekend the garden hasn't been watered - everything's SO dry!  distressing

but the artvault's xmas drinks were on at the brewery in the evening so i joined them all and had a fun night.  martin got a game going -   'exquisite corpse',  everyone had to draw a section of a person on a concertina folded piece of paper, result below

tiggy showing us all the
finished and decidedly
exquisite corpse

here it is

xmas crew













the drive home - a gorgeous balmy night after a pretty hot day

my little solar lights are looking festive around the verandah

COOLER SUNDAY

nice today, cooler.  i had a coffee at stefano's www.stefano.com.au in mildura with martin before heading home, everything's so dry, i can't wait to get this watering system in,  brendan's outside working on it as i write.
martin came out for a bbq tea,  a beautiful evening on the river bank and he spotted (and heard) a lot of different birds, took some photos with his incredibly huge lens, the bird shots he gets are just amazing.

Martin playing the ukulele gail gave me for my birthday,  i'm a one chord player at
the moment, hopefully when i get settled in i'll sit down and learn some more.
  just look at that chandelier!    :-)

GOOD WEEKEND

DINNER at julie and kev's was as good as ever,  a good old fashioned roast beef with stacks of vegies - always yummy.  great to see martin too, and to meet locals julian and deb.   the sunset was beautiful and thank god the cool change came and a breeze picked up.  i stayed the night, driving back to wentworth after a night out is a bit of a pain.

some of the trees here have the most spectacular trunks,
 like abstract art. taken with my mobile so not a good shot

BLOODY HOT TODAY

SATURDAY MORNING - it's going to be about 40 deg and the water in the garden's unavailable until brendan comes back and finishes what he's doing. some bucketing required i guess but i'm going to hide inside today, i've just nailed blankets on the windows that don't have new blinds yet and i'm not going outside till tonight. Martin arrives at the art vault today and there's dinner tonight at julies,   a cool change is due at 5, that sounds just about right to me.

BOO HOO

GOODBYE alan and meryl, i dropped them at the airport this morning and spent the day at home with brendan outside putting in the watering system. it's getting hot again, the evaporative cooling works a treat.

this pretty little paddle steamer  passed the house this morning, a farewell to alan and meryl as they got ready to leave.

there they go, off to melbourne then home to darwin on monday -  it's been a great week of work and play                        

                                                                  

crazy xmas trees - mr curly and a mirror mosaic,  more to
come as i decorate the house for the festive season

SUNSET - A beautiful last night on the river for alan and meryl,

water like glass, everything still, a pelican did a fly-by for us.

CORELLAS have arrived en masse,  huge flocks arrive every morning and gather across the river but last night they took up residence in my front yard - this very romantic little couple is so sweet - but they're noisy buggars :o)

WHOOPS!  pardon me

LAST DAY

Alan and meryl leave tomorrow, it's been great having them here

BRENDAN the water guy arrived today with his trusty trench digger - he's installing a watering program that will operate at night on an automatic timer.  that'll make like a bit easier, managing the acre and a half here.

FUNNY PHOTO  -  meryl in the main street of wentworth, there are two of these seats with a  large murray cod sculpture on the back

we did a bunnings run today, bought lots of bamboo blinds for the back verandah, and visited the native plant nursery.    another good dinner at the royal hotel, a fast game of 'blind scrabble' - playing without the scrabble board - and some of stefano's delicious imported prosecco to celebrate the decorating of the christmas tree.   only three weeks to go  till the family comes up at christmas.

alan in the delightfully name 'sheep shitter's room' at the royal, the walls and ceiling are decorated with hessian and the stencilled names of sheep stations around the area.  it's a nice room to be in, and if you want to be a little more polite, it's also called 'the hessian room'




the little friarbird - on the river bank in the evening

RIDE ON RIDE ON

THE WATER GUY didn't come today and we were all geared up for him, so that threw the day out. alan got to work on getting the ride on mower going, and i started raking up the 1 1/2 acres of gum

leaves that are blocking out  all the light from the grass.  an overwhelming job but lo and behold, when alan got the mower going and mowed the front lawn, all the leaves just disappeared into a thousand pieces  -  like magic. 

the front grass looks like a carpet now.

A JOB WELL DONE - and meryl
spent ages vacuuming and cleaning
the house while i raked - it looks
great.

we spent some time wandering
around town, and had huge
steaks here for tea, then scrabble

TOOSDAY

A BIG WALK, lunch at the trentham estate restaurant and an afternoon at home watching alan assemble my wonderful chandelier.

It's been a cool day, misty rain on the river this morning.




Meryl beside one of the huge old river red gums along the walk we took this morning, down along the river near the lagoon.









BELOW  Alan getting petrol in my new gerry can - he's going to play around with the ride on mower
tomorrow




   putting the chandelier together, it looks wonderful

JOBS DONE!!

ALAN and MERYL hopped right into it today and between the three of us we did a stack of reorganising the house and fixing things that were NQR.

so far ALAN has -
* discovered the evap cooling
* siliconed roof damage
* fixed elect box on solar system
* tightened bolts in garage walls
* cleaned leaves from gutters
* checked the sprinklers
* fixed sliding door-it glides now

Marvellous MERYL has - 

* vacuumed everything in sight

* cleaned out the sliding door

   track

* helped me rearrange some

   heavy furniture

*  cooked a great yabby dinner

*  helped me create lots of

   new space in the kitchen

A VERY 

PRODUCTIVE

DAY

we also found time to go down to lock 10 and watch a houseboat go through, it passed the house in the morning so we followed it down.  i met my neighbour, lockmaster norm. it's the first time i've gone to see the lock in action

meryl and i got stuck into this strange one legged bench in the kitchen, now i have

a  nice new space - gotta do something about that yucky yellow glass in the door behind meryl - maybe matchstick blind attached on each side would be easier on the eye.

jobs done - so time to get stuck into the yabbies meryl bought at the crown hotel - we had lunch there,  rabbit pie and yabbie chowder but that just whet our appetites so we bought a kilo for tea. meryl did the honours and it's good to see that she chose coordinating glasses and sandals

flexible

little filly!

the sunset was beautiful - the cooler weather

is such a relief after the heat wave - the

water looks just wonderful

DEC 2 MERYL'S BIRTHDAY

WONDERFUL cool breezes, mild days, it all seems unbelievable after the relentless hot weather and
uncomfortable nights we've been having.  but it's gorgeous.  i spent the whole morning installing more watering systems in small garden areas then we headed into mildura for lunch at stefano's brewery
www.mildurabrewery.com.au - lots of great beer, good food and comfy chairs looking straight out onto the street.

We had dinner at home and a birthday cake made of lamingtons (meryl's choice) strawberries and
sparklers.   but i didnt' get a photo of the cake cos the camera battery inconveniently died!  and the
sparklers burned down so fast the first one was finished while i was trying to light the third one - what's the world coming to??   sparklers ain't what they used to be

here's old stumpy - one of at least four stumpytails that are living here,  usually nestled somewhere deep in the garden but on really hot days they roam around outside the house,  lovely creatures

SATURDAY - visitors :0)

A GOOD DAY in the garden,   with the radio on, the good old garden trolley full of goodies and a few hours of trimming and just being in the garden.

the wonderful 'gard'n'grow' trolley jen and rob bought me, perfect
for carting things round here

my wonderful Searle's gardening gloves,  they never get lost in the garden
check out the website    http://www.searles.com.au

and what's a gardening day without a cascade light at the end of it

































alan and meryl arrived at 4 this afternoon for a week on the river.  great to see them.
we had dinner at the pub then went down to the darling river to watch school kids launching 300 candlelit lanterns on the river, a real family thing and great atmosphere