accidental success

9 February 2019

At last the weather has broken and we have rain and coolness.  The long hot spell got harder as it went on once all the moisture had been driven out of the air.  We have been really worried about friends in Tasmania who are close to huge fires burning there, but hopefully the rain has saved them too. They went to Tassie to escape the climatic problems here, but it seems that with a warming earth there are no safe places to escape to.

Today I am cooking the first pumpkin of the year and preparing sweet corn for the freezer. This week has been hard because it is the tenth anniversary of the big bush fire that caused so much destruction in our valley.  We would have just let the date slide past, but money was given to put on events and it has all been talked over on radio and TV.  Edd got roped into a radio interview and altogether the only way to escape would have been to go on holiday.

At least we had a distraction in the week when we did a day for a group of Montessori Students from Taiwan. They were a delight and with staff numbers almost equal to students the day went really well. I did learn though that we will have about 60 kids here when the school has its orientation day for new kids , which is rather a worry. It seems as if we have launched ourselves into another business by accident.

Another good accident is down between us and our western neighbours.  I brought various cheap native trees and planted them along the fence line as a way of preserving our view. One of them is now covered with red flowers. Edd has been trying to grow a flowering gum here for 40 years without success but it seems that one of the cheap trees I brought has turned out to be better than I expected.