What's Happening At Our Place - August 2006

Well, we had some good rain and as said last month, everything has come through nice and green.

There was no run off to speak of and dams remain very low.  So more rain is needed.  Don't you just hate farmers!  They are never satisfied.  They either want more rain, or less.  It never seems to be "just enough".

On the bright side, the mice plague has seemed to stop.  The cats haven't noticed I don't think.  They were getting very lazy and seemed to think we had adopted a new set of pets.  However, Dennis, the older outside cat made a big todo about catching one the other day in the feed shed.  Tarsha the house cat decided it was easier to claim any that had been caught in a trap and picked up the mouse, trap and all and let us know SHE had made a kill.  Neither Vic and myself are in favour of killing anything but during plague times, drastic measures are called for. 

You can't help feeling sorry for the little things.  They can't help it if their food source has run out with the drought.  Though why they didn't stay with the others in the feed shed is beyond me.  They had the best of both worlds.  Shelter and food.  The cats only went in when we were making up feeds and the rest of the time, they could eat all the horse food undisturbed!

We have a large erosion gully on the eastern side (it was there when we bought the place).  It has since stabilised and small pine trees are growing down the bottom of it.  We call it "the canyon".  No, not as spectacular as the Grand Canyon but good enough for out here.  Though I don't think anyone is going to pay to see it!

We minded our grandchildren who are 5,3 and 1 the other weekend and it is interesting the things they notice when walking in the bush. Took the children over to "the canyon".  They just loved it and had a great time exploring where the water had carved different shapes when it had run down the gully.   They were particularly impressed with the number of Santa's trees growing in the gully.  Not sure whether they think every tree will have presents under it!   They were also busy picking up pretty quartz rocks.  We brought them home so they could take them home to Mum & Dad.  They weren't as impressed with the rock collection as the children.

Although the nights are still cold, the days are quite nice.  It is a catch 22 situation.  It is nice to sit on the verandah in the sun and warm up but the days are such that you want to get into doing some serious weeding in the garden.  As long as the weeding is happening in the sun, then you have the best of both worlds.

Some of the old fences have been pulled down and Vic is busy burning off his piles of fence posts and fallen branches.  He often picks up a lot of branches and makes bonfires of them.  During the drought, we haven't had the opportunity to burn off in the winter, so now we are making the most of it before the season ends. 

Anyway, must go and do some work.  Until next time.