sliprail: Dear Drewy; A Sunday Afternoon in Queensland

Hi Drewy,

I've just packed up the Christmas presents for your host family; Meg will post the parcel tomorrow. She will also post an envelope of all the newspaper clippings of the Grade 12 kids at their formals. I can't believe it's been 12 months since you had your own formal - and delivered that epic speech on that last Wednesday!

I also can't believe that it's ten months since you left Australia! How the time has flown. Sort of. Sometimes. Well occasionally.

Now it's only 30 sleeps until you take off on the biggest adventure of your 18 years! If you thought going to Canada to live for a year was an adventure, imagine what your life is going to be like for the two weeks with the Students on Ice Expedition!

When people ask me when you'll be home I can now say - "oh, in about seven weeks" and wave my hands nonchalantly!!!! SEVEN WEEKS!!!! Arrrgghh!!!

Gibbo and Meg and I (and Poofy, Coco and Chloe) went for a walk today to pick a new Christmas tree. We're going with something a little different to the norm this year. I wanted to go for the minimalist, pared down look - I thought we could do a lot with part of this:

but Meg wanted something a little more Australian so she chose this:

I think we'll compromise and go with both.

There were some interesting plants along the way. When we were kids we called this the "swan plant" because the pods reminded us of swan bodies.

You can eat the flower of the cactus plants. Carefully, of course.

The Scotch Thistle plant, beautiful but nasty.

Gibbo has to pick prickles out of his socks. He'd been to cricket; they won.

Poofy had a little swim; several actually.

Chloe was ever vigilant.

The agapanthus are flowering; they're a wonderful plant and survive with a fair amount of neglect. Luckily.

Uncle Andrew came to visit. We sat around on the lawn and watched Meg bath Poofy and Coco.

Andrew loves Poofy; I wonder if Poofy remembers that Andrew used to own him.

No-one owns this critter; she owns us.

She wanted to brush up on her permaculture skills....

but soon got bored.

Not wanting to be left out, Peppie wandered across the yard to see what all the fuss was about!

She also wanted to check out the permaculture book. If only she could find the page that tells her how to open the gate into the permaculture garden she'd be happy......