Day three of census deliveries and after covering over 270 km I have still only found 79 houses, of which a few are more than likely empty. And that does not count the very obviously empty or those reported empty by neighbours. So not the most populous district for me. Tomorrow I will try along another road, which I drove down today on my way home. There are at least five houses along there, and I will follow it up into the hills to see if that gets me anywhere interesting.

In the mean time, Telstra decided a service was an optional extra this morning, so no mobile service. This was a good thing as I seem to have lost my mobile. Fortunately I have a spare, so will ask Telstra to transfer the service to the other phone if I can not find my real one tomorrow when I am a little less tired.

Nothing remotely photogenic today, sorry. Definitely into Deliverance Country with quite a few locked gates guarded by pit bulls or pigs ... Neither being the sort of thing I want to meet in the absence of company. While I rather like pigs, they can be fairly unpleasant if you lose your footing ...

For some reason Shadow is still quite keen to accompany me. You would think he would get sick of sitting in the car all day, being scoped by the dogs in whichever yard I am visiting. I met a lovely retired greyhound today, in a house that owned several cats. To my great surprise they all got along excellently well.

Day two of census deliveries since the plumber apparently had a change of plans. So I have now covered 50% of my land area, though only delivered 40 forms. It is a rather slow process as I suggested yesterday with everyone being hospitable, so it was almost a relief today when someone told me she would not be filling in the form. I advised her of her obligations and then handed her a privacy envelope. Can't be fagged arguing with that lot, and she was happy to accept the form and the envelope and promised to seal it inside so I don't have to see she had defaced the form. Seemed the only sensible thing to do between ladies ...

Highlights today were:
Stonehenge

This rather clever garden seat which had glorious views out over a valley (the house is for sale, but be warned, the view and the seat are the only things worth having)

And a rather nice long chat with a member of the local constabulary. He was a surprise find after driving several kilometres along a dirt track to a remote farmhouse. There he was in full uniform, sitting in the police vehicle apparently watching the farmhouse. Suspecting he was waiting for the owner, I got out of the ute waving my Census label to avoid being approached as a potentially hostile felon. Turns out he owned the farmhouse and had just popped in to check on the birthing of his suffolk ewes. One nice sturdy ram lamb so far... He was a fortunate find as he has now gone over my map with me and we have worked out which of the forestry trails I can avoid going down due to lack of houses. We had a nice long yarn about some of the characters of the district (my neighbour included) and so it was a good find. Got home safe and sound, ready to head off tomorrow down another set of roads.

Census delivery day

It was a soggy foggy old start to the Census delivery this morning with it barely being light by nine o'clock. My fellow collector passed her test delivering my form and i passed my test delivering my first form as well, so set off into the fog and rain regardless. I only did 60 km today, with a total of 21 houses, three of which were derelict (and i am pretty certain another was as well, but left a form in case ... Here are some of the more picturesque empty houses en route:

One of the empty houses had me completely fooled so it was lucky there was an immediate neighbour who could give me the low-down. The blinds were ajar and you could see the remains of the last meal sitting on the kitchen counter, full furniture, children's toys scattered as if just left, and a yard full of great children's play equipment. Talk about the Marie Celeste. Apparently they just up and left a few years back. And before anyone starts thinking something sinister is going on, apparently they are all alive and well and living closer to Hobart now ... All very odd.

One of the problems of delivering in the country is that everyone wants to know who you are, where you are from, how long you have lived in the district ... and if no-one is at home, then someone else will probably casually drive into the yard while you are there to let you know where they are and when they will be back ... So you spend a lot of time chatting to people you will never meet again, having cups of tea (and no-where to 'go'!) and generally wasting time. Rather pleasant really. But since i have about 100 houses more to go I am not sure my kidney's can stand it, lol.
Tomorrow it is difficult to know if I will be censusing or roofing - it rather depends on the weather.

Well I have no idea what is going on wood-wise, but am very pleased with the quantity of wood delivered yesterday whatever. So far, having stacked four rows @ 2.5 metres long and one metre high, I have unearthed only a wheelbarrow full of rejects (overlength) and I still have almost as much again to stack. So that last 3 ton I received was well under the mark I would have to assume. Meanwhile the fire is chugging away at a fairly slow rate as we are planning to have eight degrees tonight. A couple of degrees higher than the daytime temps have been over the last few weeks.

The rest of the day has been spent wrestling with the English Tax return in the hope I can figure out what is relevant to the Australian Tax Return which I have yet to deal with. All too confusing for me so have fallen back on the good old standby of sorting things into chronological order and making nice neat labels for them so I feel I have achieved something. Sigh.

Tomorrow is Census Startup day, so dont be surprised if some stranger comes knocking at your door will you.

More frost last night. Tonight is forecast for a positive degree temperature, so it will be interesting to see if they got it right.

As it was, by the time I headed off for quilting this morning it was still white with ice (was only minus 0.5 at that stage, but the 'feels like' was minus six), and so I had to work out how to signpost the location for the new woodman to deliver the fire wood. So I found a couple of old palings that had ice only on one side, and spray painted a sign in hot pink marker paint and laid them on the grass in the right spot. As it turns out the woodman did not arrive until I was home from quilting, so I was able to direct him myself, but it would have been useful had i not been at home at the time ... I will keep them for future use in case of different locations kicking in as i move things around.

I have finished the icing on the top of the last cupcake, but made no progress on the patty-cake paper as I discovered I was low on the desired colours. So have had to rummage in my scrap collection for pale colours that will coordinate well enough to make for light/shade on a paper cup. Have found two tones of pink which should work (the icing is pale purple swirls) but will check again in natural light tomorrow before using it, lol.

And then the wood arrived. I paid a premium price for this lot at this time of year and cut to my preferred length so was predisposed against the carter but when it arrived it really was cut to length and seems to be rather more than the two ton I paid for. So will measure the heap once I have stacked it to see if I am right. If so, then perhaps it was not such a poor deal. Will be checking out a couple of wood suppliers from further out for next spring's deliveries though ...

Positively temperate last night, with only minus two degrees at its worst. Though tonight should make up for it. The good thing about all this frost is that the days are positively glorious, albeit chilly.

I was, predictably, off to quilting today. I took the top with me, along with the backing and am getting Caroline to do the work. Decided hand-doing it will keep me busy for rather longer than I could cope with, given the tedium of doing running stitch for several kilometres. The particular quilting pattern I have chosen, in combination with the cotton wadding we now use, makes for a nice soft, drapable quilt which is what I am aiming for. My main objection to the machine work so far has been its tendency to being stiff.

I have stopped quilting for a few days to finish off a counted cross stitch of four muffins as I realised it is Lucas's engagement barbecue on Saturday week and I have no gift. Finished and framed it should be an acceptable gift. And I will go to the mens shed next week to make the frame if I finish it in time.

So the fire is lit, and wood cut for another chilly night, and the dog, the cats and I are settling in for the duration.

You Know that it's cold when ...

The car still looks like this an hour after sunrise

And inside the bedroom window has these pretty patterns on the glass:

And on your way down to feed the chooks (and remove the inch of ice from their water bowl) you come across scenes like this:

Granted, it was only minus four point five last night, so a slight improvement on the previous night. But it was in the subzero range already by eight at night and so stuck around rather longer than usual. Granted also that the bedroom window is one of the two I have yet to sort out, but even so ...... aaaaargh!

So much of the day was spent cutting firewood, oddly enough, and some time was also spent with my area supervisor for the census (we start delivering forms next Friday, so prepare your smile and friendly greeting for the poor collector won't you). Then, having chased the neighbour's dogs out of the yard for the third time this morning and having chased them away from the chooks last night, and having chased them all the way home only to discover everyone was out as well as the dogs, I finally cracked and called the council dog inspector to come sort them out. they seem to feel it amusing that their dogs have killed all their chooks. I will be rather less amused if they start in on mine which are vulnerable to their attentions given the way I have constructed the runs (the fence is sitting in the floor of the drainage ditch. So the wire is high on the side the chooks are, but clears the top of the ditch by less than a foot on the other side - not even a slight challenge to a border collie cross ...

I have beef stroganoff cooking away at present which will be dinner, along with one of those cauliflower medley thingies I cooked yesterday.