Saddness

                                                                     Tiling progress.

                                                          More festival of light photos.

                                                                       Silky the fairy.

                                                Fire thower at the festival of light

August 28 2016

The snails did not survive the trip down south.  They arrived perfectly packed in a surprisingly quick time and we put them in a tank of water at the correct temperature but it was already too late. This made me very sad because I hated to loose them even though they were about the size of a pinhead. Strangely, I have not been so sad about lose of life for ages.  We lost our dogs, neighbours and friends in the fire but I sort of went numb. Perhaps this return of feelings is a sign of recovery. We obviously have more to learn about snail transport.

My tiling in the bathroom is progressing at snails pace.  I spend several hours a day working there and I think I am at least half way now.   It is like doing a huge all white jigsaw puzzle.  I have to keep telling myself that having a hot shower every day will be the big reward when it is done.

The fruit trees are coming into blossom along with the wattle and lucerne trees. Even the oak tree by the dairy has swelling buds. The arum lilies have large white flowers and the native wisteria is still covered with purple. Edd has now completely restored our fence with the neighbours towards the bush and has been walking around bone hill assessing what to do about our boundary fences up there.

Our neighbours have a habit of piling all their junk right beside our boundary fences, so we need to keep a good tree cover in front of the fences to hide the mess.  The trees we planted by the lower boundary are doing well but the new neighbours that side have faced the back of their house towards us.  From our drive entrance we now see an ugly back yard with cloths line and sewage tank, rather than the beautiful green paddock that we viewed before.  We could not see another house before the fires so this is a big and rather unwelcome change for us.  Unfortunately trees can take years to grow.

I have started making hard cheeses again now that the goats are giving more milk.  This year I am back to trying a Gouda style.  I still have not worked out the best receipe for a plain hard cheese. Making the feta and cream cheese is now no problem and I would love to make a hard cheese I could rely on.