Cloud watching

A balmy summer's evening. The rain has passed us by, but at least the air's a little cooler. We have been sitting outside in the shade, watching the clouds blow slowly past. The finches are squeaking. A willy wag tail is trying to keep them out of the peppercorn tree. A blue wren is hopping around trying to source a new nest (we had to mow the long grass - shame!). And the odd cricket is chirping. There's no rush to do anything, but look and listen.

A nest in the grass

Look what we found in the long grass today! We think it might belong to some blue wrens.

Chicken no.1 has been devouring Secret Seven and Famous Five books lately! So I'm thankful for things like birds nest sightings to give her a bit of fresh air again. Not that I can talk - our books for the school year (or two) have arrived, and I have had my nose stuck in children's books too!

Wet

Yesterday: rain, rain, rain all day. Chicken no.3 kept the bathroom taps running and flooded the bathroom and out into the hall (note to self: ring builder about why the water flowed away from the drain rather than into it). Chicken no.1 sat on the drain in the shower while it was running and flooded the other bathroom. So there's been plenty of water happening around here! Can I include children's streaming noses? And chicken no.3 toilet training? Yep, there's a whole lot of mopping going on in this house this weekend!

It's amazing how a nice dessert and chocolates at the end of the day wash so many worries away!

Of magnesium and caterpillars..

I've had a week free of back pain - oh, the bliss!! I can heartily recommend Magnesium and a good deep massage for anyone out there with muscle spasms! Now I just need to stop myself from doing something crazy like going out in the garden and ripping things up!

I have been looking over photos from the last year, in an effort to cull the ridiculous amount that I keep. I came across this one of a little caterpillar (to become a Saunder's Case moth) that we babysat last year. Fascinating little things. I won't tell you how many photos I took of it, because it's embarrassing! Wouldn't you like to be able to weave/felt a cozy little bag like that?

Ray of sunshine

It's a bit hard to know what to write, when there's such bad news from the raging bush fires in the south of the country. So I'll leave it with this picture I took of rays of sunshine streaming down from behind a cloud.

Pretty spider webs

Water drops on a spider web this morning. (One day I'm going to learn how to take nice photos - there's so much outside just begging to be photographed!)

And oh, so many tomatoes to pick. Unfortunately they're not getting picked, as my back is playing up at the moment. So any locals, feel free to come and pick some!!

Canberra & tomatoes

No pictures of Canberra. Had a lovely time with friends, and you know, you can google a picture of Parliament House if you want a Canberra picture! Had a blast at Questacon too.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Tonight Don is threatening a tomato rebellion. The (lovely) lady who watered our garden couldn't work out how to get in the veggie patch to pick tomatoes while we were away (if you could see the 'gate' you would understand that quite well), so this morning we got out of bed at the crack of dawn (ok, slight exaggeration) to pick tomatoes. Never seen so many in my life. We tossed about half of them (sealed in plastic bag) because of fruit fly, but we still have heaps left over. So we're cooking up plans to make roasted tomato sauce, but first we have to cut them all to see if there's any more fruit fly.... Don has made it through about one tenth of them (that's a generous estimate) and is getting a little sick of the sight of tomatoes....