After fourteen degrees today we are expecting 7 tomorrow - no wonder people get flu at this time of year! I cut a barrow of smaller wood up today in anticipation but will need to cut some bigger bits tomorrow between snow showers. The galeforce winds that are bringing the cold change up from the Antarctic seem to be dropping a bit now, but we are still getting some very powerful gusts.

I tried to track down the mothers of the girls today as they both work in the same place, but it being a public holiday they were both at home. So I messaged them on FB and they got straight back to me. Talk about different parenting styles. One has instructed her daughter to block me (I hope she simply means 'unfriend' but who knows) while the other is perfectly happy to let her daughters remain on my list and communicate with them. Apparently they have only had FB for a few months and their mother is monitoring their use closely. Anyway, my conscience is now clear and both mothers seem pleased that I let them know.

My friend moved in up the road today, so I popped up at lunchtime with a thermos of hot water, tea bags, sugar and milk (as well as some spare mugs) so that she had the option of a cuppa. We sat and drank it while discussing the next step in the process. I will be rummaging around to see if I can find some old sheets as she does not want to put curtains up till she has painted the walls (and who can blame her). So I told her to make the bed before she does anything so she can collapse into it when she finds herself in need, checked she had firewood of the right size available to her, and left her to it. All the heavy lifting was already under control so it was really just a case of sorting through the boxes and working out what to put where - something that is best done solo, I find.

Apart from that I did very little other than a bit of cross-stitch. I will be reheating some pork Hung Shao for dinner (I ate both chops last night - how naughty is that!), and giving the chicken in the fridge a bit of a stir along to get it defrosted for cooking tomorrow. I think I will have a roast, but will need to get some veges in.  Then the leftovers can be shredded into a mornay or some such thing, and the bones reserved for stock.

Turns out the birthday party was actually for someone turning ninety. The guests were her descendents...... They breed prolifically in these parts. Must be a rocking granny as there was evidence of excessive alcohol consumption strewn around the recreation area this morning!

It was damp on and off today and the rain has just started once more. As a result I spent much of the day indoors and have made considerable progress on the counted cross stitch (about a square centimetre.....). I also finally got around to cooking the baked Hungarian Pork Chops which are flavoured with caraway seeds, paprika and cayenne pepper and topped with sour cream for the last 15 minutes of cooking. This is the one I have not eaten yet - the first one was carved up and consumed straight from the oven and tasted delicious.

They were cooked in the two parts of my other le Creuset dish - which is a sort of fry pan/cum/casserole dish with lid. This is the frypan/lid portion of it.

I have also rescued a frozen chook from the freezer and am planning what to do with it once it defrosts. Not sure yet, but I am sure it will be delicious - it will have to be as it is quite  a huge chook and it will provide several meals.

Tomorrow is a public holiday so no bank to clean, and since it will be raining again I will probably do some more sewing to pass the time. I have finished Swallows and Amazons and am now starting on Eric Newby's collection of stories 'On the Shores of the Mediterranean' which will be entertaining as he is a great travel writer.

When next I start to talk yearningly about a glass of red, will someone please remind me that it makes me wake up at three in the morning in a very bad mood? I keep forgetting. It's not as if the red I treated myself to was worth it either - not even good enough to cook with, on reflection. Oh well - good thing I rarely have a bottle.

I woke once more at around 7:30 to a grey drizzly day that really didn't get much better. It did clear for long enough to top up the wood supply a bit, but since it is actually only necessary to have a fire because it is wet, rather than because it is cold, I expect I will not get to sleep easily tonight either.

One of the down-the-road neighbours is celebrating his sixtieth birthday down at the recreation shed tonight. The grounds are crammed with vehicles (most people around here have very extended families who all live locally - and no smart remarks about Tasmanians, thank you very much!) and has been filling up since mid morning. Walking the dogs has, as a consequence required a little planning, and we have explored parts of the recreation ground that we don't normally go to unless i am chasing Seb when he gets off leash. We did go for a longer walk along the track down the side of the road in mid-afternoon during a brief spell of sunshine, but otherwise it has been 'confined to quarters' for all of us given the weather.

Well the cold tap in the kitchen gave up this morning and refused to work, but the rest of them were fine. I am not sure it got as cold last night as they forecast - must check (nope it was still more than minus three - must be the goosedown doona). Since it was supposed to be minus four, I invited Seb onto the bed, but he gave me up at around three and went back to sleeping on the sofa - apparently I take up too much space .....

We had the community garden today and I set off only a few minutes late, only to arrive and find that Syche was not coming after all. So I watered my plants in the polytunnel and wandered around checking things and was about to leave when four of the year seven/eight students turned up to tell me that they (and a few of their classmates) would be bringing their buddies from prep over to plant some seedlings. The buddies are around five years old and had planted some seeds in containers in the class room. Spent some time sorting their clumps of five million carrot seedlings into rows and chatting to them, then they went back to class and were replaced by more hordes.

While re-arranging the rubbish tins someone found a dead chook in a plastic shopping bag (must talk to Brady about biological waste disposal, this is becoming a habit), so I took that to the tip between onslaughts and returned in time for the other classes that we usually have. They also came over in smaller groups, and only to weed and water their individual plots so it was not as full-on as it has been for the last few weeks. The four original students however seem to have told their teacher they wanted to spend the afternoon in the garden (they do seem to tell the teachers what they want to do and get permission to do it, which seems a little odd), and so we had to keep them amused weeding a bed. After we finally drove them off, we recovered the plants that were uprooted and replanted them (they should be fine as the soil is moist and they were only out for a short period of time), so the student whose garden they weeded will not notice they were disturbed.

Then home to light the fire and hopefully warm the place up before it gets too chilly. At least tonight we are aiming for plus three, not minus three, which is a blessing.

Despite being minus five overnight I was pleased to find that the taps were running this morning when I went to fill the kettle. You can imagine my surprise when, having completed my morning shower, walked the dogs, pottered around, etc, I went to turn on a tap at ten this morning (by which time the temperature had staggered up to one degree), and discovered the pipes had frozen - almost. I managed to get them running again by some judicious turning on of the taps in sequence (the laundry tap is the last to freeze, for some odd reason).

They have revised tonight's forecast down to minus four (previously minus three), so I am expecting I won't have running water in the morning - two consecutive frosts seem to do the trick. So in preparation for the day I will be filling the odd receptacle so I can heat water on the fire etc to have something like some ablutions in the morning.

Cleaning a cottage and cutting some firewood were the priorities today, and both were completed successfully. So glad I don't have to go clean the bank tonight though!! I was supposed to be paid today also, but it seems Brad was a little delayed so it was not there for me to collect. I am debating whether to run into town to see if it is there before dark, which will allow me to call into our new bottle shop and collect a bottle of red (for the hare, you understand).

I also dug out my goosedown doona and aired it on the line for a couple of hours, then brought it in and aired it in front of the fire to dry it out (very moist cold air today), and it is now on the bed, along with the winter quilt which will be lovely tonight. Not so lovely in three nights time when they are forecasting an overnight temperature of 8 degrees, which is a bit tropical for this time of year.

Another chilly night to look forward to tonight. I did manage to get two loads of washing done and  most of it is dry, though there is a clothes horse festooned with slightly damp jeans in the loungeroom at present. I also cut a smallish bit of wood as supplies were running low.

This morning I went to have a look at a cottage on Oatlands that is on the market for $149,000, but since it is a deceased estate it would probably go for less if you were able to make a good offer. It had a skillion built on the back in the 1960s which is rather low (the roof of the porch is below chin level when you stand out the back). Since it contains the bathroom and kitchen and both need work in a fairly major way, it would be tricky to get building approval for the necessary alterations. The original cottage was a two room Georgian cottage whose owners extended it when funds (and family) extended, so the rear wall of that extension contains two beautiful little windows with really deep sills. One of the windows remains (but presumably faces into the back of the lining in the bathroom), and the other has been removed to make a hatch from the kitchen into the dining room - all lined out in that nasty boarding stuff that was popular in the 1960s. The window beside the fireplace in the loungeroom has clearly not been opened for a very long time (the cord for the television aerial passes though a hole drilled into the bottom of the lower sash) and the window itself is about three inches shorter than the opening it occupies (the gap is stuffed with insulation batting). A bit more work than I could face with limited funds - but a nice fantasy. It has several sheds also, and the large back yard faces onto another street so could be subdivided off if you could pay for the surveying and planning approvals. Sigh.

I had planned to convert to the goose-down doona today, but that didn't get done for various reasons, and will have to wait for tomorrow now.

Last week at Quilting we were talking about the fact that the Tuesday group is temporarily meeting at the home of another friend while Caroline (their usual hostess) is away. We thought it would be a great idea to go out there en masse to check out her new girl-shed and spend a happy few hours sewing. Due to one of us having commitments that would keep her busy till lunchtime, we were going to go for the afternoon only - perhaps three hours. The bit of the conversation I missed (or rather failed to factor into these plans) was that Tuesday group was meeting on Mondays to suit her appointment schedule. So you can imagine my surprise when a few friends turned up at the back door ready to carry me off today. 'Isn't it Monday?' blinks me, having horrors I might have missed a day somewhere. Once we had that sorted out, I picked up my counted cross stitch and away we went.

The weather has continued cold, though this morning was so sunny I was nearly lulled into doing a load or two of washing (which would not have been a good outcome given the way the day panned out), but by the time we got to our destination it was more cloudy and a few flurries of snow put in brief appearances. Then some of that gorgeous miniature hail we get here in Tassie. The three hours dragged into around five hours, however - and would have gone on longer when our first drop-off suggested we all go in for a drink -  so by the time I got home I barely had time to re-light the fire, take the poor dogs for a quick gallop around the oval and off to clean the bank. The fire is now chugging away nicely, and hopefully tonight will not be quite so chilly as last night. I will, however, lay in water supplies before bedtime as the windscreen of the ute was already freezing by the time i came home.


The dead vacuum cleaner has been replaced by one that would suck a hole in the carpet if you left it still for too long. Takes a bit of getting used to I have to say as the last one was rather leisurely. But the carpet has not looked this good in some time. The down side is it has replaceable bags (the other one had a cloth bag you just emptied from time to time), and they neglected to leave a supply of replacements. I expect the current one will last some time since it at least has an open mouth for easy emptying, but give the quantity of paperclips, staples and other sharp objects I pick up each evening, I will be needing a replacement at some time in the future so will place an order now.