swine flu

The number of cases of swine flu in Australia last week has tipped the official WHO categorisation to pandemic.

We are obviously taking precautions-

From Blogger Pictures

kevin's stimulus package

We finally completed our rather late tax returns for the year 07-08 a couple of weeks ago. Little Kevin Rudd introduced a 'stimulus package' to all tax payers to encourage people to keep spending in the recession: basically a $900 tax refund, and we were hoping to be eligible.

The upshot appears to have been that most households now possess massive plasma screen tv's. In fact demand for these ( not made in Australia ) items has led to waiting lists of several weeks in most retail outlets.

We were lucky enough to claim a rebate and also each received our package. At least we spent ours on an Australian made product, namely a piece of a horse, rather than a tv or a holiday in Fiji. I hope Kev appreciates that we are not un-Australian

only fools and horses.....

Today we bought a 20% share in a racehorse. She is filly born Aug 14th 2007, and Scott assures us she will run like the wind and earn us a large amount of money, but we are not holding our breath. I will post some pictures when she is scrubbed up and training is underway.

We do need some help though- she needs a name. This has to be based on the Sire and Dam's names which are:

Sire: Seidnazar
Dam: Our Demeter

Any suggestions?

Georgie says I will have to acquire a frock and a hat for attending Race days. I have agreed to buy a hat if she wins a race, and eat it if she wins two races.

rain and frosts

We got our wish granted over the last week with heavy rains, dragging this year's rainfall closer to average and now only borderline drought conditions. The newly seeded lawns are flourishing despite a couple of heavy frosts, and our water tank volumes are not quite so critical.

Fencing still at an impasse, so Marley has not yet arrived. Georgie has sourced us 3 pregnant ( hopefully) Wiltshire ewes to keep him company so we should have our mini flock soon.

Ten days of sorting out the large shipment from overseas- somewhat thwarted by having both cottages full all week so we were unable to dump pieces of furniture into them. We were very lucky to acquire a shed the size of an aircraft hangar in which to temporarily house the surplus.

From Protea Farm 1

'Making the beds' was another task- we only shipped headboards and footboards, so timber was purchased and all our power tools put to good use.

From Protea Farm 1

Another major job was to build a stud wall to partition the office from the house so that we could rent out the house as a separate entity, so we can add another skill to our repertoire.

The first party to rent this house are due mid-July so we thought we had plenty of time to get it ready, but the guest phoned last week requesting an advanced viewing today so we have been working overtime to get it fixed up and ready to be inspected.

Finishing touches today and hopefully the house will be acceptable.

kangaroo skittles

bang! goes another kanga

On the bonnet of the van.

Lyrics Kate Bush 'The Dreaming'

OK, technically it was my car and not the van but the above is one of the most stupid lyrics in pop history and one I never thought would be relevant to a real-life scenario. On returning from the recycling centre at dusk, trailer in tow, a stupid roo jumped the fence and I hit it at 60 kph while travelling on a wet road.

Large creature the kangaroo. The car is somewhat dented despite the 'roo bar' attachment, and the driver side wing dented where it made contact with a roadside post. The trailer ran over the poor creature as well, just to ensure that it was well and truly deceased.

I needed to open a bottle of wine on my return, a very unpleasant experience.

Pickfords delivered our gear yesterday- some of it is recognisable, a great deal of it has arrived in self-assembly format, so we can spend many a happy hour playing jigsaws with the crumbly pieces formerly known as expensive china. Smashing a cast iron garden seat and table was a triumph.

So now we have enormous furniture to place in smallish houses, complete with a fine film of extraordinarily pungent powdery mould spores.

It is nice to be reunited with the pieces which made the trip unscathed, and I am sure we will work out what to do with it all. James dog is delighted to play camouflage games on the sofa.

From Protea Farm 1

The house looks pretty organised this evening.

From Protea Farm 1

From Protea Farm 1

no woman, no cry

Marley is recovering well this afternoon after we anaesthetised him and removed his testicles, Hopefully I will be forgiven.

pickfords arrive tomorrow

After over 2 years in storage we will be reunited with our furniture tomorrow. All of it cleared customs apart from a box of sundry wicker and pine cone based Christmas decorations (which we elected not to pay to have gamma irradiated) and 1 chair of a set of 6 which has to be woodworm treated at great expense.

We finally got the rain we were praying for so the timing is not great for unloading furniture, but we are very excited at the prospect of having sofas, beds rather than mattresses on the floor, and all our pictures, kitchen stuff, cd's and who knows what else- I really cannot remember what most of the stuff is after so long.

So there will be a frenzied few days while we rearrange the furniture in 3 houses, put pictures up everywhere and choose what has to go back into storage again. Looks like we will be staying here.