The 26 degrees followed by late thunderstorms failed to eventuate, though it was rather muggy and warm this morning while i was cleaning out the cottages. Fortunately a friend dropped by so we took a breather and gossipped for a bit before i finished them off.

The rain brought Smidgen in pretty punctually this morning which was a good thing - don't want him to get into the habit of staying out all day!

Light rain for much of the day, though nothing to brag about - around 8 mm in all, so it's a good thing I bought the water as that would have barely cleared the pump intake in the tank.

It's getting darker earlier these days which is nice - I do like early evenings. But still pretty bright and sunny in the mornings.

I called in to see another friend who has been away and did not escape again until after 3, so there was barely time to walk the dogs, cook dinner and now it is bedtime! The days fly away when you stop and chat!!

First day back in the community garden tomorrow and fortunately they have revised the forecast so the rain will fall overnight and we will be able to get stuck into the weeds that have accumulated while we took our break. I will pack the whipper snipper in the ute in the morning so I can clear the paths as the salt and vinegar spray had no effect whatsoever.  I will have to resort to roundup I suspect!
Shhhhh, don't tell anyone will you!

Took advantage of all that water and gave the garden a good soaking today - filled up the reservoirs of the asparagus bed and the gooseberry bed, as well as planting the bean seedlings with a good soaking to water them in.

This was after cleaning the bank and two of the cottages which, fortunately, got done before the real heat arrived. Currently sweltering with 26 degrees, down three from the day's maximum.

Smidgen decided it was cooler outside than in and spent the day in the shed down the back. He deigned to sit up so I could see where he was, but did not come in until about half an hour ago.

The dogs have not had a long walk as I am in a sunfrock and sandals and this does not strike me as snake-appropriate wear. Anything heavier and I would die of heatstroke during the walk. So we have wandered around the oval several times and retreated back indoors.

Apparently tomorrow is to be much the same, but with storms in the afternoon and a high chance of rain. Another good reason to get some water onto the garden - so a) the beds can benefit from the rain as they will not be water repellent and b) I will not have to watch all that water gushing out of the tank overflow and getting depressed. Only one cottage to clean so that will be OK.

I received an invitation today from Council to attend their Australia Day presentations - for a minute there I thought I had been awarded something. But no. Tony just wants to hand Eleanor and I our certificate of appreciation from the Keep Australia Beautiful people for our work in the Garden. Since it has been available for collection at the school for some weeks now and apparently neither of us has collected it, I can not say I am in a rush to get dollied up for a formal presentation......

The thing I forgot, when I did all that washing, was that I was low on water. Yesterday I was sitting having my breakfast when I heard a thin line of bubbles rattling along the pipe under the influence of the pump. Panic stations - and a conundrum. I usually buy 4000 litres from the man up the road who delivers it at his convenience and only charges me $50.00. But if I demanded he came the same day he would quite reasonably expect payment and I was not to have any money until today (the cleaning job deferred payment as they had the fortnight off over Christmas). And if I did get him to come and accept payment today there was the difficulty that them next door have set themselves up in the water carting business and so, would they be offended? And did I want to spend $135.00 to get water (they deliver 10,000 litres at a load)? And was there space for that much water (well, clearly there was since the pump was sucking air). The complexity of the situation froze me into immobility - it was something I had to sleep on.

So for the last twentyfour hours I have been functioning on cat washes and composting toilets (so glad I know how to do that!) and not doing anything at all that required dishes that would need to be washed.

So that put jam-making on hold also as sterilising the bottles, washing out the jam pan between batches, etc was clearly not an option.

This morning i finally called the neighbours (one the principle they would see the other man for sure, but he probably wouldn't spot them) and had a load delivered this afternoon. They got a bit carried away so it was overflowing from the back of the tank even after they left and I was carting water to thirsty trees and plants for some time before the excess drained away. I am planning a very long hot shower tomorrow morning - none of this skimpy two minute dash!

I did manage a batch of cherry jelly, which, despite me adding a couple of apples as it was cooking, still failed to set, so I bottled it in bottles instead of jars and am calling it cherry syrup. I am still using last years's failed jelly as an icecream topping (shows how rarely I eat icecream), so this lot will probably come in handy as gifts.

The apricots, meanwhile, have gone past the stage of being suitable for bottling so they will be converted into jam and stewed fruit and perhaps some fruit leather as an experiment.

It was a bit more temperate today, and pleasantly cool this morning, so I took advantage to let some cool air into the house (that's the problem with insulation - once the heat is in it stays there). Since I had no commitments I took advantage of the clearing showers (yes, we had a drop of rain last night, but not the heavy rain they promised), and did a few loads of washing as well as a couple of loads in the dishwasher. I had planned to jam and bottle today but realised I had no sugar so that was deferred until tomorrow.

I picked up some sugar on the tip run so I am ready to get stuck in when I get home from cleaning the bank.

In the cool of the morning I pulled out all my failed cabbage crop (this is the one i planted last autumn which sat there all winter, then put on growth and started hearting up before being slaughtered by the snail invasion). I had left them there to see if they would recover from the snail attack but instead they burst into flower. So they are now making the pigs down the road very happy, having been delivered by wheel barrow.

The water from the washing was duly distributed across various garden beds and several bags of sheep poo distributed on top of the damp soil. Tomorrow I will plant out the butter beans that I bought while in Hobart on Friday. They are rather leggy and one of them has sprouted  a flower but hopefully they will do OK given a good start tomorrow.

The rest of this week will be progressively hotter until Wednesday, then cooling slightly on Thursday before heading down to 15 on Friday - so confusing! I will have to call into the Community Garden to see how things survived the heat the other day, but I did check them before heading home and they seemed OK. Fingers crossed.

I hate hot weather. Thirty five degrees today with hot winds to make it even nastier. Smidgen took himself off for the day (presumably he found a cool spot and stayed there. The dogs decided long walks were for mugs and even Seb has been less than demanding all day.

I had two cottages to clean so went in and sorted them out. One I left the blinds closed as it would otherwise simply be an oven when the guest checks in. I left him a note explaining why I had done so in case he is not smart about that sort of thing (amazing the number of people who aren't).

My friend's mother died last night. I find it a little disconcerting to be notified of this by text message, but I guess these are the times we live in. I have asked her to let me know the arrangements so I can go to the funeral for her.

Meanwhile they are forecasting heavy rain tonight which is quite exciting if it happens. And the pump has worked a miracle on the hot water system, not a single banging pipe all day!

Today has been a day of fun and excitement which started with cleaning the Bank. The plan had been to go from there to Hobart, but I remembered that a) I had left my chilly bag at home, and b) it is stonefruit season, so I backtracked to collect the chilly bag (and take the dogs for another stroll) and headed down the Coal River Valley toward the orchards. Unfortunately none of them was ready for sales, but my favourite one nevertheless sold me 5 kg of apricots (not Moore Parks, these are called orange and red which aptly describes them). The are smaller than my preference but very tasty and now are rather ripe as they sat in the back seat of the ute all day as I went about my other errands.

First up was meeting my old class mate for coffee. She is the one whose mother I tried to visit in Hospital on Christmas Day but she had done a runner. Unfortunately it does not look good, so Lynne is staying on for a few weeks to see her out. She has talked me into going to the reunion/combined 60th birthday party (sigh) later this month as she assures me there will be more people there than the ones I was aware were going.

From there I went off to buy a pump for the hot water system as I doubt the pipes would have survived tomorrow's forecast heat. That set me back a fair whack, but it is the right size to fit the gap in the pipes where the other one has come out. And from there to various other destinations to get cat food and litter, some groceries (including provisions for surviving  a hot day) and a kilogram of cherries to go with the apricots.

The homeward journey was rather hot (glad it is not tomorrow yet!) so I stopped en route and had a bottle of coke (I know!), before continuing up the highway. Home, I unpacked the pump and discovered it did not have a cord - you have to supply your own. So I thought 'I can do this - just follow the instructions!' but when I opened it up the place where you attach the various wires did not look at all like anything I had seen before so I threw my hands in the air and phoned the husband of a friend. He suggested I come up in an hour so I sat and read for a bit, then realised I needed to remove the first pump. Was in the middle of doing that when I glanced out the window and saw three sheep happily grazing in the back yard. I would have left them there but they discovered the currant bushes, so they had to go. Which they did. Around the house, back down the other side and into the back yard once more!!  Chased them out onto the street and went back to what i was doing.

Finally got the wiring sorted and came back to discover they were still there, so I wandered up to the local farmer who assured me they were not his and had been reported wandering down the railway reserve from Stonor. So I left them to their own devices and started re-installing the pump. This was not as simple as it looked as the new washers meant it did not quite fit. But i worked it out eventually and turned on the isolation taps and water gushed everywhere. So I did it again and this time it worked. So I now have a pump happily purring away on a permanent basis (unfortunately the regulator also seems to have died, so I will have to get another one of those - and that will involve a plumber as it has sensors that go into various locations that remain a mystery to me. Sigh. But at least the pipes won't sound as if they are about to explode when the heat gets up tomorrow.

The disruptions came from an unexpected quarter last night. Them next door decided to have a New Years Eve spit roast in the one part of their five acres closest to my bedroom. Odd how some people's minds work, if indeed they work at all. Still it was all good fun and the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. It seems to have kept other more riotous revelers at home as well as there are no new painted figures adorning the streets and streetsigns, and no empty cans anywhere either. Quite remarkable actually.

So I got up at 7:30 having stayed up latish to make sure I was tired enough to sleep and let the cats our for their morning run. Smidgen discovered something enthralling in the long grass of the orchard so had to be persuaded home. He finally agreed to come and we were walking up the grass together having a chat when the neighbour's dog leapt through one of the many holes in their fence and chased him. Smidgen dodged through the other fence and was nowhere to be seen for some time. Eventually he started calling me and I walked up my side of the fence to provide him with company as he came up toward the house, dodged through the large gap under the 'rabbit-proof and therefore poultry proof' fence and came home for breakfast. What a fuss!

Then in to clean one of the cottages which showed signs of a private party and so home. This afternoon I have been whipper snippering in preparation for Saturday's heat wave (now predicting 34!) and got the grass down to an acceptable level so that anything that starts in the orchard will run out of fuel before it reaches the house, and am now quite weary. The whipper snipper is not really designed for this level of work so it requires frequent stops to untangle the cord and refuel.

Took the dogs for a short walk tonight (only up to the gate of the goat farm) as Shadow was once again falling behind considerably and besides, I had a curry in the oven. It has not reduced to the extent required though so it is back in there with the lid off in the hope it will do so. Beef Korma, so no chilis in it, just a nice combination of spices.