The bird of peace

May we know a peaceful 2018.

Thankful

An hour before I started to write this, it rained. We are officially now declared a drought area. We have had no rain other than a few early morning mists for nearly 8 weeks. The situation for farmers has been so desperate there have been suicides. Tragic and terrible.

So I'm here to state publicly how thankful I am. Today we have shared our Christmas lunch with friends, and we are very thankful for them. I have had a much better year health wise. I actually survived a trip to the UK without being sick and coped for two weeks on my own on my return whilst my husband visited relatives in the N. Hemisphere.

I still have work, and we have a wonderful home and the amusement of 3 cats (ours) and 19 chickens (not ours, but they think they are). I've taken hundreds of photos, written thousands of emails. I have had some sad milestones; two of my mother's siblings have passed away, an uncle and an aunt (both in their nineties) and my Dad's oldest friend. But there were lovely milestones too; one of my God-daughters became engaged, the other is due to give birth to her first child in two days. Also a friend has moved to NZ from the US, so it will be easier to see her.

So I am thankful and signing off for 2017.

Tree ornaments

For the last few nights I have been watching our neighbour's chickens put themselves to bed (i.e. roost) in our trees. It is really amusing and cute to watch.

Here they are:

Beautiful gifts

Last year, about this time, our postbox started to receive additional decorations, after I had decorated it with tinsel. I would come home from work and find extra tinsel or a Christmas tree ornament added to the decorations from the day before. It was a mystery until the New Year, when the neighbour responsible confessed.

This year, I decided to covertly decorate a few of our neighbours boxes along our stretch of road with tinsel and a bauble or two, to give them the pleasure of a mystery too. A visiting friend helped me in the subterfuge and one evening around dusk, two middle aged women could be seen leaping in out of bushes to avoid being spotted as they wrapped the said boxes in Christmas glitter.

Day Two, my post box gained a glamorous strip of red tinsel and another ornament (of a small cat). Of course, this time I knew who the culprit was.

Today I received this amazing gift and can't resist showing it to the world as it is so delightful and creative.

The giver knew I love hares, and created this amazing scene inside a shoe box. They didn't dare leave it in our post box in case I was tempted to shake it and ruin the whole effect. The gift was from one of the tinselly postbox owners.

It is nice to dream up anonymous surprises knowing that someone somewhere is scratching their heads.

Happy tinselling!

Oven ready

We are living in an oven. We haven't had rain for 30 days, and our property is dry as dust and we are about to run out of water.

Our neighbours chickens have moved in to our garden permanently, or at least it feels that way. I put water out for them daily and they seem happy to snooze in our hedges and steal the bird food on the lawn.

Some of the girls are determined to be "oven ready" and park themselves decoratively inside a terra cotta pot. Sometimes they share, sometimes they don't.

Meanwhile the cats enjoy watching them, which is all they have the energy for in this blistering heat.

The sky has been full of rain clouds which promised much and delivered not a drop. On Monday we will need to buy a tank load of water.