Well, it's been a while. I finished up the contract with Heritage Tasmania at the end of October. Since then I have been busy scrabbling my world back under control. Amazing how things can start falling apart after 15 months of not being at home except on weekends! The yard remains fairly chaotic, though a good wide fire break has been mown in anticipation of Friday's forecast 35 degrees with high winds, and the front garden is starting to look like a cottage garden (well, a bit more so than it was before). The foxgloves have finished flowering and the pinks are past their best, but an aquilegia I planted a few weeks ago presented its first flower three days ago. Hopefully it will survive the gales that will accompany our extended heatwave. The fruit trees are looking a bit straighter than before - they had mostly fallen over in the face of winds and soggy root systems - now they are all staked once more and tied back with various old stockings (the good thing about working is that you have old stockings, not just a drawer full of ones that have no purpose but which are too good to cut up). The dog is missing spending his weeks in kennels - he had better company there than he has here apparently... And the cats are thrilled to have the run of the entire house instead of being confined to quarters. I let them out for a run in the mornings so they can eat grass, do some hunting and generally get some fresh air, but since they are now accustomed to being confined, they spend most of their time indoors. Much of my energy has been directed at re-organising the house. You will recall that I moved in shortly before starting work, so the post-move sorting was never done. This was compounded by 15 months of coming home, doing the washing and rushing out to spend time with friends or sort out various Hall-related crises. Then I moved the contents of the flat back into the house and well ... you can imagine... So now the bedroom looks like a real bedroom - the study is starting to look like a study and the kitchen has only food-related things in it. The fridge which died has been freecycled and the new fridge has been joined by the rather nice cabinet I bought three years ago at the Spring Fair, and the dining room is starting to be cleared so that I can use it as a workshop over winter, to make a woodbox, prepare the door for hanging on the study entrance, sort out that last window that remains packed with 'stuffing' to reduce the wind factor and so forth. That latter will be the priority methinks. Once that is done I will have double the natural light in there and so find it easier to do other work. The shed is in danger of falling over in the next high wind which would not be a problem (it is insured) if it were not for the half dozen 5 gallon drums on the roof, filled with goodness knows what, which would consequently fall into Miss Congeniality's yard, wrecking our hard-won fence. I need to save some pennies so I can engage someone for the day to help me sort that out as a priority (if it does not fall over in the interim). I would actually quite like to repair it and use it to store bee stuff and gardening stuff, but have yet to find a builder who agrees this is possible. Perhaps I should listen to them - but meanwhile I have asked a local farmer to have a look at it for me - if anyone can make do and mend, it would have to be a farmer. So - Happy New Year, and now I have my life back, hopefully I will be blogging more often - with pix!