G'Day,
Is anybody out there anymore, since I have been away from my blog for so long?
Anyway, for my archives and for anyone who may be interested and still remembers me, here is an update on what I have been up to over the past month.
Well, you know if you have read in here before that I was disgruntled at having to move house. We were kicked out of the house we were living in a few weeks ago at short notice because the owners wanted to move back in. That was o.k. it is their house.
The rental market in Canberra is very competitive and each house we inspected, (and there where many,) was also visited by thirty or more other prospective renters, so as you can imagine it is quite hard and stressful to find another house to rent. We applied for seven places and had confirmation that we were accepted by the present real estate place just 3 days before our cut off date to go to Queensland for my big sister's wedding. As you can imagine it was a mad rush and we were absolutely exhausted. But we did it..... we did it. I can be very determined when I need to be and am capable of pushing myself work wise, to a place beyond where it is physically sensible to go, and I pay the price later.
So the new house? It is a small three bedder and we have had some difficulty finding places for our goods and shackles, we even had to find new homes for some or our furniture. I didn't like that but I guess it was time to do that anyway, and we still have too much stuff, I am bad at throwing things away. The house is ok though. When we moved in it smelt terrible, I guess they let their animals rule the house then tried to cover it up by perfuming it with sweet smelling cleaning chemicals, the blend was unbearable but I think it has improved with cleaning and spraying and bi-carb-soda-ing the carpets. My boss Brett came and sprayed the carpet with industrial deodorizer for me. It is funny how we will tolerate our own foibles house keeping wise, but refuse to tolerate other peoples isn't it. I am not a perfect house keeper but I reckon I am not as bad as some. I have sure seen some doozies in my cleaning work, oh boy have I, and am pleased to brag that my home has never and will never stoop to that standard.
Anyway, we have a house to live in, we had to take what we could get and BONUS! It has a great productive garden. Not too many flowers but lots of fruit trees and a vegetable patch which was very over grown but has great looking soil. Pete has been working on his days off and has weeded and replanted it with an assortment of vegetable seeds and seedlings. Part of the vege patch includes a good size and abundant strawberry patch. The fruit has no comparison to the flavorless berries sold in the supermarkets. It is great and full of juice and flavor. We have been going out the back and eating straight from the garden. There is a fig tree, a nectarine, 2 plums, a peach, 3 espaliered pear tress, 3 cherry trees, a lemon, apricot and loquat, and a large grape arbor. The old man who planted them sold this house 6 months ago and was italian, a race who are known to be great fruit and vegetable gardeners. Mushrooms have also been popping up in the back lawn and we have had several feeds of them.
So....... we went away to my sister's wedding with a house hastily jammed full of unpacked boxes and stuff every where. I had to leave my beloved cat and dog at the kennels and you should have seen their poor faces when I left them, we have never had to leave them in a kennel before, poor things. They have been so neurotic and needy since we came back.
We flew to Brisbane and then on to Rockhampton where we were met by my sister, Mum and my neice Tatham and her new beau, Brennan. We were delayed at Brisbane airport between flights for a couple of extra hours at Brisbane airport, so that was pretty annoying. Then they ferried us in two cars, (there were a few of us) a bit over 2 hours inland to the town where my sister El lives and works, Biloela. I think it has a population of around 4,000, quite a nice friendly little place. El has a house up there rent free and a car rent free with her job. Lucky bugger. It is a large house on a 5 acre block, I think the house we are in here would fit into her lounge and family/bar room easily. Haha. I got a tour of the hospital where she works and had a BBQ lunch with her workmates. They were nice people. Bonus of being the boss's little sister I guess, hahaha. We stayed there for 3 nights then moved to the coast to a town east of Rockhamptom called Yeppoon where the wedding was to be held. The place we stayed was in a great spot, right on the beach. The units were smallish but the owner was great too. It was great to sit under the coconut trees and watch the water gently lapping, the children playing, and the tides go in and out. There were lots of shells and tiny crabs all along the beach and I even got in the water and feel the gently waves rocking my body, then on the way home the taxi driver said a crocodile had been sited in the area a few days earlier....if I had known. Hahahaha. We will definitely have to go back there to explore some of the great barrier reef islands, which we didn't get to look at this time around. North Keppel and Great Keppel islands where right in front of us there.
The wedding was great, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. There were visitors from all up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia. I put some of the photios in my face book page and I will try to put a link in here so anyone who wants can have a look at them. As I said I will try, ha ha.
So back to Canberra and her pleasures. Yep it is a good place to live. The drought has broken and spring is in all her glory after all the rain we have had, beautiful. It has rained again today on and off, we seem to be getting showers every second day lately.
Last weekend after doing a lot of sorting and organizing trying to get everything in the house organized I went out on Sunday afternoon to an open garden display at Burra. Burra is a semi rural area near here. O.M.G. you should have seen those gardens. Just gorgeous. Emerald green countryside, landscaping and flowers every where. I got to see 4 or the 6 gardens before I ran out of time in the afternoon. I was talking to a lady at one of the gardens and we were saying how do people manage to put all of their time into gardens like that to get them up to such a standard to display. Well two of the gardens were run as a sideline to small businesses run by the owners. One lady and her son ran a nursery and tea blending business, another husband and wife team were iris breeders and there were over 7000 named varieties all in flower at just the right time, so spectacular. At the nursery place I was lucky to negotiate the driveway in my tiny car though, she started slipping on a steep hill and the corrugated dirt gravel road, hahaha. But, when I got up there....oh the views! I had lunch there and spent my money before I got to the iris place so couldn't buy any of the plants there, ah well I have other irises and they are in flower now too, though the rain today is probably finishing them off.
Yesterday I got some extra work at the university where they are renovating a big cafeteria, so lots of scraping cement and climbing up and down ladders and mopping plaster dust off floors, but the extra few hours pay will be nice with Christmas fast approaching.
I went shopping today and bought some cloths for the warm weather, two pairs of trousers and two shirts. Nice.
I have also started a course of treatment on my poor old legs. I have been having acupuncture and acupressure massage. The acupressure massage has been quite painful. They seem to know just where to dig their fingers into your legs to cause the most pain, but it seems to have made a difference already. What I have been blaming on being fat for many years on my lower legs is actually fluid from bad circulation and with the treatment the swelling has started to go down. I am interested to follow through and see what results are accomplished. If it works the way I would like it to I will be able to go on long walks and exercise again the way I would like to do without pain and finish a shift at work without hobbling home and out of the car like a drunken person at the end of the day.
O.k. that's about all for the update for now.
Bye .
Love Linda.