It was jolly chilly last night and I found it quite difficult to get to sleep with it. Trouble was that the dressing gown does not go down far enough, and I was too lazy to get up and get out the quilt to put on top of the doona. So I lay and shivered and got up and went back to bed and shivered (warm as toast on one side where the electric blanket was, but cold on the other side. Especially as the cat kept on getting up, climbing back in leaving drafty gaps and so forth.

So I had a bit of a sleepin this morning and consequently was not up and dressed till 8:30. It being minus 0.4 at that time, I was glad that there were still a few embers to get the fire going with, and one decent-sized bit of wood to keep it going for a bit longer. Then I off down the back and dug out all the Scotch Thistles I could lay my fork to. They came out easily with the soil so moist, so have been left sitting on their faces to dry out when and if the sun ever returns. Then I decided to do some mowing and so got the mower out and, after 15 minutes concluded I would never get it started again and so fiddled with the string on the line trimmer to feed it out of the holes, and decided it was time for morning tea and I had had enough of getting spat upon by the rain and meeting recalcitrant tools.

So I took a barrow of wood up to the house and cut it to length, fed the fire and set about organising to paint the bee-boxes. I have decided that once the paint is dry I will set them up in the back yard so that any fuss is dealt with before the bees arrive. A claim of increased bee activity and stinging before the bees arrive should make it clear that there is a certain element of hostility in the approach I feel.

I have also had an email from the native nursery regarding tubestock. Will need to work out what i can afford once i get the quotes in for the fences. The most attractive choices seem to be bursaria spinosa (a prickly pittosporum with flowers at Christmas) and callistemon pallidans, which is a leafy banksia with pale yellow flowers ... Will need to know a bit more about their habits, denseness (from the ground up) and spread before I commit to one or the other. Given the paling fence will be five foot, I can perhaps save some money by only planting along the cyclone wire fence - though that is 70 metres or there abouts.

I have also managed to contact contractors and line them up to come give written quotes over the weekend. I will print out a standard quote form for them so that she can have all the information in the same format and that will make the decision easier for her.

And the rest of the day was spent cleaning up in the bedroom, sorting clothes to get out some summer ones that fit, putting away anything that does not fit into the suitcase in the shipping container, and generally tidying things up a bit. And putting on a load of washing and so forth. So a fairly relaxed, but productive day all round. More cold weather tonight, but i am snug and warm at present.

I tried to get a photo of the one chicken that hatched, but mum keeps getting in the way. If you look really closely, it is just under mum on the right hand side, immediately below the equator line of the photo ...