What's Happening at Our Place - June, 2006

Well since speaking to you last many things have happened.

The rain clouds that were gathering on the horizon seemed to decide that it was too dry here and went elsewhere, like Sydney.  Vic has a theory that if there are concrete buildings and roads, then that is where the rain seems to like to be.  We have no idea where the idea that trees encourage rain comes in.  We have our fair share of trees and there is a forest down the road and it seems not to make the slightest bit of difference.

With the continued dry, the field mice have sought refuge elsewhere.  After all there is nothing left in the fields for them to eat!  So, being resourceful creatures and having heard that we take in most strays, they have decided to converge on the house.  We do not agree with their decision!

We have two cats, one inside and one outside.  The outside cat, Dennis is now nearly 17 years old and he does try to catch them but neither agility or memory seems to be on his side.  He makes a great show of jumping on the bags of feed when we are making up the horses feed just to let us know, he is aware of the problem.  The inside cat Tarsha sits patiently at various points in the house and looks intent and catches the odd one.  However, by and large, they are completely over the "lets catch a mouse" thing.  So we have resorted to traps.  We have done better than the cats combined and we are hoping that the mouse plague will soon end.  Sulphur works well to eliminate rats and mice and we use that in the hay shed.  However, not the sort of floor covering one wants to have in the house.

Winter is now upon us and last night it was -2 degrees.  For you people in snow country, that most probably seems like a summer's day, but when our summer temperature is 40 degrees, we find that when it gets down to -5 degrees then for us that is cold.

However for us it is a time to get all those jobs done ready for spring.  With mares due to foal in spring, the new serving season to commence in September, yards need to be maintained and given a spruce up.

Maybe by next newsletter, we will have got some rain!