Time for relaxation

Friday 26.1.2018

We have a bank holiday for Australia Day today, not that it makes any difference for us.  We still had to feed and milk animals, but there was a storm last night and the vegetables can probably miss out on watering this morning.   It is very humid and now that the sun has got up it is also very hot.  Not a day for hard physical work.

We had our holiday last week when we stayed with Al and Pip in their seaside town.  It has been between 30 and 40 C most days, so some cool sea air was very refreshing.   Edd had a swim and I enjoyed eating food that I did not have to cook.   We went to a restaurant on a peer and had fantastic food on Sunday evening. I ate a cauliflower cooked in cider batter that was amazing.

It was great to spend time just talking with Al and Pip with out the pressure of time constraints.  Pip is now in the last phase of her pregnancy and I wanted to find out what they needed.   It is sad that this Grand child will live too far away for us to have much of a relationship.   Six hours diving is too much for us on a day trip.  Al does it a lot for work but we are past that stage now.  We even find that driving between here and the suburb where Wayne, Dani and Ella live takes an effort that reduces the time we spend together but at least we do not have to spend a night away visiting that grandchild.

Al’s house is larger than their last one but he uses one of the three bedrooms as an office and Pip stores all her medical herbs on a bookcase in the living room so they really need more space.   Luckily the new rooms they are building are coming along well and look fantastic.  Al and Barry have done the stonework and I loved the effect they have created with the colours of stone, grout and timbercrete blocks all harmonising.  Already from the street the house is totally transformed.

The drive down there was awful. with road works, diversions and crawling traffic. We decided to come back on a different route by crossing the heads of Port Phillip Bay on the car ferry.    There is a ferry every hour and we just caught the one at 2pm with out a second to spare.   The boat ride was great and the drive back up the Mornington Peninsular was a lot pleasanter than the drive down. 

We even had time to stop at Garden World, my favourite destination.  The rock collection there is better than any museum or other display I have overseen.  They have many person-sized geodes filled with Amethyst crystals as well as shelf loads of other treasures from the earth.  The plant collections are guaranteed to temp.  I rarely escape empty handed. This time I got some small bromeliads to fill in spaces in my indoor garden.  Many of my plants are too big and need splitting so they are now waiting outside the door for attention.

Back home Bo and Indi had done a great job looking after the farm.  The cat had caused a bit of worry by getting locked up in the donga toilet one night and the milk room the next.   (I had closed the spare fridge doors before I left. He got into the fridge once, and I did not want the doors to shut on him and lock him in with out air!).  He is not at all sure about being a farm cat and has now discovered where we live and wants to join us.  He comes everywhere I go and wants to be stroked.  I think he is regretting the bad manners that got him a job he did not really want!