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......

 although Meg pulling tipuana branches for her to eat also makes her happy.

 Poofy is always happy, especially when he's getting a pat.

 Everybody went for a little ride.

So Drewy, another scintillating Sunday at home. In eight Sundays you can do this too!!!!

Love and Miss You,

Momma

Today

Hello Again!

Grandad called in this morning on his way home, to get me to re-set the clock in his car. He installed a new battery and the clock loses power and goes back to 12.00. It took us a while to remember how to do it, so we wrote it in his book this time. I took him for a walk to see the new fence and the vege garden. We dug up and re-planted the artichokes ('cos he is the artichoke king). I gave him some more home grown potatoes, a piece of bacon and egg pie and 9 eggs while Gibbo dug him out some wagyu sausages and some Millie chops from the freezer. He was quite happy with his haul when he left.

Cricket has started again. Hooray. Today was Gibbo's first game - the younger members of the team were calling him The Warrior. It's going to be a long season. Again.

I started the Worm Farm Project this morning. I gathered the dead pumpkins that didn't store so well -

some newspapers -

some scraps -

some rakings from the chook pens -

and some horse manure.

So I threw in the scraps and some cardboard -

then the chook rakings and soaked newspapers -

and finally, the horse manure and muddy slush that was in the bottom of the garbage bin.

Now you know what I'd really like to see happen - it would be ideal if a large piece of carpet or cardboard fell out of the sky and landed just perfectly in that little rectangle. Then all I'd have to do is keep it wet and turn the compost each time I add some more "fuel". I'm going to see if the worms come (as there's already quite a few in the rest of the mandalas); if they don't I"ll go ahead with the plan to buy the compost worms. Until that carpet falls out of the sky I think I'll have to made do with hessian bags from the fruit shop.
 
Now it's getting dark. Gibbo is home from cricket; one wicket and 17 runs. They lost. I've cooked a y-bone casserole for dinner and we're watching the All Blacks play the French in the World Cup Final. At least G can't make me nervous like he did two weeks ago but I do wish he'd stop yelling at the tv. It makes Coco bark.
 
Love and Miss you both, very much.
 
Momma

Yesterday (and Friday Night)

Dear Meg and Drew,

Another weekend has gone which means another weekend closer to seeing you both! I can't believe that in six days you will be together; Drew will see/touch/hug/kiss/laugh with someone from his own family for the first time in 9 months and 2 days!! Meg will get to jump on him and meet the people who have been his family since March. He will be able to show her all the things he's told us about. They will go shopping together for Antarctica. They will have a wonderful time.

Gibbo had last week off in an attempt to re-charge his batteries a little, but he ended up working for two days. We went back to the doctor and she was pleased with his blood pressure readings; he has lost a couple of kgs.

Friday night we went to the R's to watch the bronze medal playoff for the World Cup. I very nearly fell asleep. Instead of pizzas we had fish and salad (and G and I snuck in a crab stick too).

I've had one of those weekends that I love....did a little bit of housework (vacuumed and mopped the living/kitchen area). I spent ages/hours over at The Garden. I just love pottering and tinkering over there. I went to town to shop and ran into D so went and had a coffee with her. I bought some magazines (trying to wean myself off the ipad a bit).

It's incredible how much the radishes and cabbages have grown in a couple of weeks. I saw a few baby grasshoppers today; that's all I need.

I bought one of the magazines because of the delicious looking bacon and egg pie on the cover. The recipe uses 12 eggs!! We've stopped incubating the Barnevelder eggs and, with the girls laying 7 a day, there's a severe oversupply. (I took 4 dozen to the office on Friday and gave them away). When I got home from shopping I made the pie...........

It was really good! We didn't have it for dinner - we had grilled barramundi and salad (yes, fish again). I had a little piece of it when I woke up on the couch at 2.20 this morning. Delicious. This would be a good pie to make every weekend to use up some eggs and for lunches. Here's the salad we had with dinner.

It looks like Poofy has had a reaction to being shaved; poor old man, he just can't win. He's itchy and scratchy; we bathed him in some hyper-allergenic oatmeal Dr Harry shampoo; it's helped a little. We might need to get some more of that steroid cream that we used when he had scrotum rash after being shaved for his neutering.

 Anyway, he's found a little comfort in the beanbag that was once Drew's (and Coco's).

Here's Coco, flat our after a day of helping. It's hard work being a helper.

 And - guess what this is??!! It's AN EGG. Isn't that exciting!! Ah - but guess what KIND of egg it is?? IT'S A DUCK EGG - YES, THE MADARIN DUCK IS LAYING. There's a slight problem with it though (obviously). It's got a dint in it! And it's shell is very thin..............but it's our first egg. I hope it's not our last.