Long weekend

I only had a short long weekend really, as I was away in Sydney on field research (interviews for the hospitals project). But luckily there was enough weekend left to really enjoy a rare and precious visit from John's darling and much-loved mother, Tuffy, who is 85, and her loquacious learned engineer husband Tony.

On the Sunday evening my parents came for dinner too and we had a merry bbq dinner with much conversation and laughter.

Despite the daytime rain John and I got quite a lot of gardening done, managing to pull down most of the horribly invasive madeira vine / potato vine and rubber vine which was smothering an entire row of native rainforest trees on the village-side border of our farm. We used the tried and tested method of weaving the snatch strap through the massively heavy entanglements and pulling them out with the 4WD Forester. This will disperse tubers which fall on the ground but there was no other alternative: at least we can reach the ones on the ground as they start shooting up again ... Tuffy and Yarrow were very helpful heaving logs and branches out (from a tree which had collapsed under the weight of the vine) and onto the bonfire stack. Despite her diminutive physique, Tuffy is amazingly strong!

John spent part of the weekend making a lot of marmalade, but unfortunately, while cutting peel, due to a slip of the knife and the ensuing distraction involving bandages and bandaids, it partially burned and now tastes a bit smoky. Only a bit, though.

Tess wasn't very well (sniffly cold and an allergic skin reaction) but she did take some nice photos of Remy playing on the frangipani tree. See the bit of elkhorn fern there peeping at the side.

Gosh, on reading this it doesn't sound as if we had a very jolly weekend but we did, very much so!