Today was a nice balance of activities with the grass wrestled down this morning, the garden watered, the veges weeded and the place generally back to where it should be. I even stood and stared at my currant bush for ten minutes and contemplated moving it into a more congenial spot.

Then indoors to bake. We have a working bee at the Garden tomorrow as the nettles are taking over and it really is a mess. So I made some savoury muffins and then a humming bird mixture which I baked in muffin pans also. Iced with vanilla icing with Philly cheese. Smells good and looks pretty good also even if I do say so myself.

The dishwasher has, as a result, been working overtime dealing with baking utensils and the stainless steel containers I scored from my friend yesterday. They are now drying out so they can be used for pasta storage and other uses. One is now my tea cannister.

The signal has been rather erratic today so no idea why that is as it has been a fairly nice day. Still, no knowing what goes on in the mind of Telstra these days. Going to make myself some corn fritters with the leftover ingredients from the muffins and that will be dinner.

I wish I could say today started beautifully, but it actually started with Esther proudly depositing three quarters of a dead rat on the laundry floor when she came in from her run. I suspect this may be the cause for Smidgen's long disappearance the other day. Problem is now apparently sorted (ew).

The neighbour's two dogs also put in an appearance once more - wandered in and spent a few hours hanging around their house, but since this elicited no response, have apparently decided to take themselves off once more.

Called over once more to my friend who has just moved to relieve her of some of the stuff that was left by the previous owners and came home to a nice cosy house as it was so cold this morning I lit the fire and cut some wood. Now it is a bit too warm so will require the removal of various layers of bedding if I want to sleep tonight. You can't win this season.

Getting nothing done around the place at present. Constipated as there are a couple of things I should be doing which I am avoiding, but refusing to let myself do the things I would like to do until the avoided matters have been dealt with.

This morning started beautifully, though with a very mild frost. With 2 degrees forecast for tomorrow and it being a chilly 6 degrees at present there may be another frost which might put paid to all the growth so far. Hail is forecast for later today.

I popped into town to get a selection of root veges to go with my pot roast which is tonight's dinner and discovered that the vege shop has changed hands and is now being run by a friend who is also keen to buy fruit and veg from me as well as any muffins i might like to make (on commission so neither of us is locked into anything). Sounds good to me. I will be making muffins tomorrow but they will be for the working bee at the Garden on Sunday so will be going in the freezer instead.

Then to the little second hand shop (more of a permanent garage sale really) to get some saddle brackets to fasten the mini-greenhouse to the fence with. Also acquired two pots of pansies (the ones with faces on them, not the violas that seem to be taking over) which have been popped in the front garden. On the way home I spotted that my friend had moved into her new house so called in to see how she was settling in. Did the grand tour of house and garden and since the previous owner had left everything in the granny flat out the back did a bit of picking through - I should get some stainless steel canisters, a scrap bucket for the kitchen and various other stuff, as well as a nice Kitchen table (as opposed to my present one which has peeling linoleum in one corner and has that hollow square metal rodding for a frame. The new one is a home-made solid timber table painted in white gloss with a sunshine yellow laminex top to it. It will go nicely with my retro kitchen chairs. All I have to do is con her husband into helping me lift it into my place. I will take my current table to the tip tomorrow!! V Excited as it has two drawers in it as a proper country kitchen table should.

Pot roast slow-cooking in the oven right now with lots of root veges, homegrown garlic and thyme, bought bay leaf and a good splosh of red wine. Smelling rather good but still some way to go before serving. In half an hour I will remove the cooking veges and replace them with carrots, parsnip and potatoes to be cooked on for serving along with the mash I will also be making up.

Christmas Lunch today for the quilting group and a fine meal was had by all. We even had change left over. Pity the white wine was served at room temperature, but you can't have everything.

The dog next door (actually two of their three dogs) have not returned. Both are the most hated dogs in the neighbourhood so I suspect they will not be coming back. The remaining dog is a rather nice black dog who is missing the others but is at least quiet and does not bark at me when I go down to the garden.

My bean seeds are clearly giant-killers. They had not emerged yesterday but today have two leaves and are a good two inches high! Amazing stuff. At this rate they will outstrip the sunflowers which is not at all the plan!! Hope the sunflowers get a growth spurt from today's rain and humid warmth.

Since I got into my party finery after my shower this morning, and was mildly buzzed when I got home from lunch, not a bit of work has been done here today. Must resume activities tomorrow if the 12 degrees is not accompanied by winds.

Only a few mm in the rain today, but more is forecast over the next few days. It will soften the soil for weed removal along the hedge and allow me to spread the mulch down that line which will be good. Must also get the mower out once more as growth has been astonishingly rapid. Far too late in the season to be having to mow daily!!

Boy was it hot today - full sun, extreme radiation and a still day on top. After tending to the plants I retreated indoors but Smidgen failed to return from his morning run. Finally strolled in around 2 which was a huge relief because when he disappears like that I worry something awful might have happened. Extra worry today as the neighbour's killer dog is somewhere on the loose. It got off last night and has not been seen since. With any luck a farmer has shot it. They do not seem terribly concerned and have made only a half-hearted effort to find it so far.

Being indoors I planted up some basil seeds in the mini-hothouses and did two loads of washing. Both of them sheets. Since it was a still day they went outside to dry on the airers (which fall over if there is a breeze) and so smell lovely.

Took advantage of their absence to wash the floors and have a general tidy up as I will be baking a cake this evening for a friend's birthday.

The compost seems to be behaving itself so far though I am checking it regularly for temperature increases - perhaps being less moist timbers than the lot I had in Brisbane it will remain calm and not do anything untoward.

Checked along the hedgeline and realised I can start installing it fairly quickly as my earlier horehound removal exercise has left me with access right up to the stems of the hawthorn. I will be going out for Lunch tomorrow so will probably not start then as I will be wanting to be relaxed in the morning and will possibly be tiddly in the afternoon - not a condition conducive to work.

So it was a fairly unproductive day, but a relaxing one. Now all I need to do is bake this cake, eat my dinner and go to bed. How nice!

It was rather warm today with a bit of a wind which did not help. Despite sunscreen it was necessary to retreat indoors by around 11:00 am. Then I heard a strange noise outside which proved to be Aurora's contractors trimming back the neighbour's trees to avoid impact with the power lines. I asked nicely and so they trimmed back the overhang over the lane as well. Then their shredder man came along with his machine and a truck full to the brim with mulch. So I asked nicely again and he dropped off half his load to avoid having to go to the tip and come back to finish the job. So I now have this sitting in the lane waiting for me to do something with it.

So I came out of retirement and started shovelling it into the barrow and wheeling it up to the newly formed beds to provide a path. It is a mix of pine, macrocarpa (those big old trees next door - one is visible in the recreation ground too), gum, banksia and a few other odds and sods too presumably.

I will have to keep an eye on it as last time I had a heap like this (when I lived in Queensland) it got so hot it started smoking. So far it is behaving itself but I will check it again before bedtime.

While I was barrowing the stuff about, Tina and Ratt (some locals) called in with some raspberry plants for me to put into my next garden. Which then got me to thinking about stakes and wire to train them onto and from there onto issues of the boundary with the lane.

So I got the tape measure out and realised I have planted the hedge on the lane side of the boundary and my heap of lumber and my sand heap are also encroaching (not to mention the latest load of mulch). Then I got onto LIST and came to some alarming conclusions (which were in error) and so popped into Council to have a chat with the General Manager.

We discussed the issues the lane creates for me (ie not knowing where the boundary is, people wandering at will etc) and have agreed that the 4.8 meter lane really only needs to be 4 metres wide and even that is more than sufficient for pedestrian use but does allow access for Council vehicles should they need to go down there. Since the only vehicle that would need to go down there is their spraying truck and it has not been down there for quite a few years now (long before I got there), even this is not really necessary, but an extra 0.8 metres on my side will let me have vehicle access on to my property. So if you look at the photo the new boundary will be at the edge of the grass, instead of at the post that is leaning over. This would all be done informally to avoid legal fees on either side.

He has promised to discuss it with the President of the committee and email me back (I am VP of the committee concerned and the President was the chap I was working with on the bottom fence/gate the other day). So with any luck it can all be settled amicably and I can get stuck into building that new bed (in time to plant winter crops and any succession plantings I might need), and installing the clothesline and shifting the sand into one big heap and so forth.

The new paths look great with the mulch on them - not that they are complete at all, but you can see where I am going with them. I intend to carry this one down along the line of the plumbing. And of course it will also be spread around the edges of the beds. Anything left over will either go around the hedge as I weed it progressively or around the base of the fruit trees to help them survive summer (assuming we get summer this year). So a good day's work I hope.

I should point out that progress was also thwarted by the wind which discouraged me from untying the bundle of cardboard in case it went every where.

The fair turned out to be nowhere near the sort of affair that our charming local Councillor built it up to be. Basically it was the same four stalls that turn up every month, plus three more newcomers who must have wondered why they were there. So that's good and my paranoia about nosy locals was unwarranted.

My concern about disruption, however was not so far off the mark. Having spent no time there yesterday getting ready it was all go from 7:15 this morning with whipper snippers, generators and goodness knows what all going on up there. And at the bottom of the lane there was finally some action on replacing the bit of fence that used to close it off. So it now looks like this.

My job is to email council tonight and ask them to do the job properly with Koppers logs, a properly dug out ditch and a properly strained fence section (as well as a properly hung gate). The gate has a spring on it so it should swing closed if the kids do not open it too widely. Shadow considers it a vast improvement on having to clamber over the tangle of wire and orange safety mesh that was there before.


The other good thing about the market was the they had a plant stall  (and a donut stall, but the less said about that the better), so I was able to purchase a greengage plum, a black currant and a Cape Gooseberry (as well as a comfrey) for $16.00. They are all (bar the Comfrey) tucked into the new garden bed so it now looks like this.


The tiny plant on the left hand side foreground is sage. I thought it would look nice spilling over the stone work and so you can brush against it as you walk past.

So apart from some mowing I seem to have spent most of the day entertaining various visitors, taking another ute load of stuff to the tip and otherwise entertaining myself. Good night's sleep tonight in fresh sheets should make up for the early start this morning.