family week end

January 3. 2014

We have just survived
another week of extreme heat. Yesterday was well over 40 degrees so we all
retired into the house, where, although the temp has risen now to 25 it feels
cool. Josh arrived home on Friday after travelling all night. The flight from Albany
was delayed so that they missed the next flight from Perth to Melbourne. Josh
is used to this sort of thing now and found ways round the problem so that he
arrived in Melbourne just a few hours late.

Today he left again in
the car that we have organised for him to buy. He had to stay longer than he
had planned to wait for his luggage to catch up with him and to arrange to have
the car transferred into his name. This was surprisingly hard, mostly because
he is between addresses and states. He is now on the road on his way to see
Robbie in Queensland. I have just spoken to him and he says the car is going
well and the temperature outside has dropped to 38. It had been 46 most of the
day.  Last night he joined us for
one of our hot summer night BBQ’s in the ruins. Edd has now got the pool filter
working so the kids continue to have nice blue water to swim in. They do their
best to splash it all out of the pool, though.

The animals have
managed well this week. Imogen, the goat with a white belt round her tum
developed watery blood stained diarrhoea and we suspect coccidiousis. We shut
her in a small hospital pen with fresh water and hay to eat and fed her two
teaspoons of sulphur a day. She is now back to normal but I have no way of
knowing what aspect of the treatment worked.

Keeping the plants
alive has also been hard and involved a lot of time spent watering. I am
rewarded with zucchinis, cos lettuce and tomatoes. I worry most about the young
trees. Today I had to pump water from the dam to the little pool above the
ruin. The water lily in there was not going to manage another day without help.
Last night Bo’s golden retriever wallowed in the muddy bottom of the pool and
came out black and muddy. At least down by the new house the rock garden copes
with the dry heat without any attention. I have a few plants in pots on the
front patio but that’s it.

It has now cooled a
lot here. We are back below blood temperature again. Our bodies must have to do
miraculous things to keep our inside temperature stable in these conditions.