So This Week...

While there have been some lovely personal moments like a visit from our daughter and youngest granddaughter and Grandparents' Day at our oldest grandchild's school was great fun not everything everywhere has been so wonderful.

But I'm not going to talk about all that is going wrong in the world. Instead here a few entertaining links.

Aw. What could be sweeter than a little white lion cub making friends.

Then there's a baby cheetah and his puppy friend.

And finally some ice dancers - Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir perform at the 2017 World Championship.

Hooray!

We haz rain - and what a lot of rain it has been. It was enough to cause a massive morning rush hour traffic jam on the freeway because the rain was so heavy everything ground to a halt. That looks good for much needed rain in the farming areas so let's hope it does get there and doesn't fizzle out before it gets inland.

Meanwhile every little bit of greenery I can see - from the street trees to the multitude of plants in the  veggie patch and everywhere else in the garden - looks happily revitalised. It always amazes me the difference rain makes to plants. You can water by hand or sprinkler as much as you like but it never makes the same change in the appearance of plants as rain does. The only thing that makes even more of difference is if it's a thunderstorm bringing the rain. It turns out the extra shot of nitrogen that makes its way into the soil with lightning acts as fertiliser. Well, that is unless the plant is unfortunate enough to be struck by lightning, of course.

It's the Winter Solstice

and for no other reason than I can - and it cheers me up - here is a photo of some of my veggie garden.

I'm in need of cheering up today because I'm supposed to be out with friends for a movie and lunch. Only I'm not, am I. Instead, having been let down my body - something that happens more often than I would like - I'm home, in bed and in pain.

So let me talk about other things that are more pleasant - which brings me back to my garden where we are starting to harvest winter veggies regularly now. As you can see, we're even somewhat spoiled for choice truth be told, and the thought that I'm actually growing some of our food is highly satisfying. Even Pisces, who does not share my enthusiasm for gardening, although to be fair he is more than willing to do any heavy work I might ask him to do, enjoys going out and picking what he wants when he wants it.

There's one other thing I'd like to add to our food production - and that's some hens. Going out and collecting fresh eggs is mighty appealing. That's where Pisces and I do not agree. I grew up in a family which kept hens and ducks so I have a fair idea of what poultry keeping involves. It's not that hard - and actually I rather like hens themselves. He, on the other hand, has no experience of it and sees it as all too much. So for the moment we're at a bit of an impasse but I'm not giving up. Who knows one day soon I might be posting pictures of some sweet little chickens. Fingers crossed.

Slightly Confused

Not me. It's this daffodil I'm talking about.

It's in the flowerbed where I planted a whole lot of daffodil bulbs about a month ago - you can see some of the still quite small Iceland poppy plants I put in at the same time in the picture - and so far only about half its fellows have started to come up. I wasn't expecting to see more than a few leaves and certainly no flowers from the daffodils for at least another six to eight weeks but this one just poked its leaves out and must have panicked. 'Whoa, it's warm,' it said to itself. 'It must be Spring. I'd better start flowering - and fast.' So it did.

I'm not really surprised it's confused. I was out working in the garden yesterday in a lightweight summer t-shirt and sweltering in jeans - and it's winter here.  While it's been cool at night the days are pleasant - in the low twenties or high teens most days. The big worry is if this fine, warm weather continues because we're way below average rainfall so far for this time of the year and things are looking grim for the farmers if we don't get some decent falls soon. I've been having to hand water every couple of days to keep my veggies going, not what I'd usually expect to be doing at this time of year.

Oh well at least this stray daffodil is brightening the outlook from the family room.

Meanwhile At the Garden Centre

Last night we got some decent soaking rain - the first for this winter. This meant I wanted some more veggie seedlings, of course - what better time to plant them after all - plus some fertiliser and other oddments from the garden section at Bunnings. As well we really needed to see what alternatives there are to our old and unreliable clothesline, its tendency to fold up whenever we put sheets on it being disconcerting to say the least.

Well, we're still without a functional clothesline but we do have most of the rest of what I wanted - as well as a few impulse buys. Everyone needs a mushroom farm in a box, right. The other thing I was hoping for was asparagus crowns - I have a small bed already but I want to plant more. I couldn't see any and went to ask. A sales assistant went to enquire while I waited.

Soon there were three people, two women and a little man who looked remarkably like a leprechaun, discussing my problem. Much debate went on then they all disappeared into the depths behind the checkout. I waited. The leprechaun suddenly popped back out.

"It's not looking good," he said and disappeared again.

A minute or so later he was back again. "We're talking to horticulture," he said and was gone.

In a little while he was back shaking his head sadly before he was disappeared around the corner of the building. The woman I had first talked to reappeared. Apparently I was a couple of weeks early so I'll have to go back again. Oooh, I can buy more seedlings then, I guess. What a sacrifice, a prospect Pisces is less impressed by than I am. Can't understand why.

The leprechaun reappeared and helped pack up my purchases. As I looked back on my way to the car he smiled and waved cheerily. What a lovely way to end a shopping trip.

I've Been Busy

Well that's what I'd like to say. Truth is these days  - and by these days I mean ever since I got sick at the end of last year - I only have a limited time span in each day to achieve what I need to so all the other stuff just keeps getting pushed back. Still my health is slowly - oh so slowly - improving as I whinged to the doctor the other day. He, nice man as he is, said, 'Well, it'll take as long as it takes, I'm afraid.' which was not what I wanted to hear. I've reached the stage of frustration where I want to push myself and I do. This invariably ends badly.

And that, my friends, is why I am sitting here in my PJs at 1:00 PM today. Yesterday I set myself the task of editing a short story and sending it out. Even to be considering this is an improvement because I haven't been able to summon up the energy - or brain power for that matter - to write or edit or anything else for the past six months. I expected it would take most of the morning and I was right. I was almost finished when I took a break about 1:00 PM to walk around in the sun and water the pots.

When I came back disaster had struck. Word had crashed taking with it all my edits from the previous two or so hours. I'm not sure how this happened because I was sure I had saved all but the last few minutes. Apparently not. It turned out to be a blessing in the end because I remembered pretty much what I had done and was working my way through the corrections when I realised I had a problem. This is a science fiction story and the science part was working well and making sense - except I'd forgotten to explain how these folk got around. I remembered when I wrote it  - oh so long ago now it seems - I had thought I'd go back and sort that and obviously hadn't. I had a picture in my head and every time I read it I presumably saw the image in my mind but neglected to put it into words.

It wasn't that hard to fix but by the time I had done that, finished the edits, fixed the formatting (which had gone completely haywire and kept reverting to something I've never even used) and sent it off it was nearly 5:00 PM. By this time I've usually been back in bed for a couple of hours. I closed up the computer so exhausted I could barely see and I literally stumbled to my bedroom where I collapsed on the bed, too drained to even get changed for an hour.

So today I'm paying the price and I'm off to bed as soon as I put up this post.