Yarrow has a new bed

Four of the five bedrooms at the Grange had a double bed: the odd one out being Yarrow's, which had a rather wobbly bunk bed. Nice for the occasional guest sleepover, but there is usually a spare bedroom here anyway, depending on which of the girls are staying where. (Bella, a grown young lady now, hardly sleeps here anymore, as she has the Myth and her Bails cottage at her Mum's house ... not to mention her lovely loving boyfriend Tim ...).

And young Grange girls being young girls, they like to lounge around on beds and chat and read and watch movies with their sisters, and Yarrow's bed was not too conducive to that sort of social behaviour.

So, when walking through a furniture store in Ballina while whiling away time before dropping Kat at the airport, Tess, Yarrow, Kat and I saw this lovely bed ... which Yarrow "reeeeeeeelly reeeeeeellly liked, Mum". And it wasn't too $$ so I bought it and after dropping Kat at the plane (Bye darling Kat!! Come again soon!!) we managed to squish the packages into the Subaru Forester ("Well if fold this chair down, and we angle it *this* way, and slide that *there*, and fold this underneath, and sandwich Yarrow against the door and fold Tess in six ungainly positions -- OK, don't breathe for about half an hour, Tess, no worries, should be right -- it *should* fit. There!").

Then in the evening Yarrow and I dismantled her old bed and put it away (nicely labelling each part and cling-wrapping the bolts to the relevant posts for future assembly). Then Yarrow unpacked the new bed and deciphered the quite reasonable instructions and then with only a bit of help from me, assembled it. And here it is. New bed for Yarrow!

I took the photo by holding my camera high above my head and hoping for a reasonable focus / pic. Not too bad ...

Kat is here!

Our lovely and much-loved family friend Kat flew up from Sydney to stay with us this weekend. We've had a great Grange bonfire and an amazing curry dinner with the Parentals, and this moning we went to Bangalow market, and had a fantastic time.

Here's a nice picture of Kat and Tess being decorous and calm, helping out with some genteel gardening.

They're a fine pair of ladies, I can tell you ;-P

Shedding some light

Dawns are good. Dawns ... those moments when the sun just nudges over the horizon and nuzzles in on the mist... Those moments when you're sitting on the back step, sipping a hot cup of tea, and you watch the world wake up, and the day ahead is full of potential, and anything is possible.

Camping trip to Bald Rock National Park

One of my favourite pasttimes: camping!! On the second day of our camping trip at Bald Rock we decided to go scramble to the summit of the largest granite rock in Australia ... Here's a picture of Briony ready with a smile after a cup of billy tea made on the open fire.
Tess peeks out at Briony from the bedwarm snug of her own rug ... Cute, Tess!
Big Sister Briony gets Eskimo kisses from Yarrow... Awwwwwww ....
And here are the awesome threesome, ready to tackle the big climb!
It's very steep going, up a fairly sheer rock face, even for Tess who has climbed the rock many times before...
Yarrow, Briony and John follow shortly after.
Up top there are secret mazes and gullies with mosses and rocks and ferns ...
On the central ridge before the top: three girls in silhouette, reacing for the sky ...
Some elegant summit statues...
These are some of the 'pebbles' one can encounter along the way...
They say a rolling stone gathers no moss ... I wonder when these will be ready to roll?
John and I took the longer, enchanting and beautiful valley walk down again from the summit. Here John's passing under a natural dolmen made of some wee pebbles. The girls went straight down the rock face!
And upon our return to the camp site there were a few wallabies ready to say hello to us in passing...

Such joy to go camping with three bonny girls and a resourceful intelligent loving partner in such incredible surroundings ...

Ramshackle

Parts of this lovely farm are rather .... quaint.

See closeup photo: we even have a ramshackle holding the back gate up.

It's obviously doing a good job as the gate hasn't fallen over yet.

Wildlife visitor

Two female wallabies and their two youngsters came to visit early one morning. They pottered about just outside the electric perimeter fence of the garden, and didn't seem unduly put off by the occasional zap on the nose. Hopefully it will teach them not to go too close to the road!

I'm enchanted to see our local wallabies, especially as they turn up quite infrequently.

I do wonder how the local wallaby population will fare, given the increasing numbers of cars passing through the village.

Some more dawn pictures

Taken on 12 and 22 March 2010. As with all photos in this blog, click for a bigger and better resolution!

Remy: of "Place cat here" fame ...

Looking fairly relaxed here :-)
They don't call me a Russian Blue for nothing! (Even though I only cost $10 at the local tip ... See how I've come up in the world!)

Doing adminstration on John's desk (Dealing with the In tray or out tray?);

Warming the butter tray of the esky ("let's go camping!");

Surprise! Look what we found in the cupboard!

Jus' hanging with a best friend ...

Let's get cooking ... Come on, I'm waiting :-)

Perception

Deyz de same :-)