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 :-)

Perception #2

(Especially for Louise's son) ... Which is the darker square, A or B? Have fun! :-)

Work on the farm continues

As it's best to get the mowing done before the equinox, John and the Ferguson worked hard today and mowed the top two paddocks. You can see the horses in the distance there near the top of the hill.

Before starting, though, we cleared a smidgin of paddock area and gathered some rocks (this farm grows rocks. Really, it does. All the time...) and I used them to make the beginnings of a small walled herb garden out the front. Not really an urgent job, but I just felt like it.

Also in the bottom photo you can see the two young trees that we planted this week: a poinciana and a magnolia, just near the front gate.

Working on the farm

Tackling the weeds!
Here's a nice photo of John on the Ferguson, pulling the slasher, which is powered by a PTO drive shaft. You can see the neat oscillating front axle, which enables it to better deal with uneven ground . Gotta love the Fergie ... (and John!!)

Frangipani falling

... and caught in a strand of floating cobweb. Lovely. Click to enlarge.

Peter's kitchen

... is a beautiful place to be.

While in Hobart for the annual CAUTHE conference I stayed with my dear friend Peter. He's renovating his house and building just about all the furniture (including this kitchen) himself. I met Peter when I was 14, and he was kind, creative and intelligent then... and he still is.

It's a lovely thing, to be friends with someone for more than 30 years.

Vale, dear Neil

Today, my dear and much loved friend, mentor and colleague, Neil Leiper, will be cremated. He succumbed, quite quickly, to very agressive brain tumors.

No flowers, but donations to the Melanoma Institute of Australia, in the name of Professor Neil Leiper.

I'll miss Neil very much indeed ... he had, and will continue to have, a great and positive impact on my life.

Group dynamics ... Enjoy!

Perception

Honey, we're hoooome!

Well our intrepid young travellers, Tess and Yarrow, have returned hale and happy from their exciting sojourn in Europe (to see pics of their trip go to http://crystalcadenzas.blogspot.com/). They had a fantastic time: thank you Hans and Niki, Anjes, Lisa, Marc and family, Denise, Cees, Bertie, Peter n Trix, and everyone else for making their time so memorable.

I've returned from a very interesting field research trip to central NSW (I'll put some pics up soon).

When we got home (simultaneousy) we found that Briony had festooned the house with delightful 'welcome home' signs. And John had arranged a surprise welcome home social event, inviting our much-loved Gales family, as well as Teagan and Bonnie, over for a relaxing social afternoon. We had a lovely lovely homecoming ...

The photos show:
- the largest of Briony's many welcome home signs, above the door to our bedroom. You can see where Marc, John and I have removed the plastic 1970's panelling to reveal the original wall boards. We've yet to restore and repaint the walls: a job for much later.
- Tom Gale, cat whisperer extraordinaire, relaxing in the hammock with Sunny, in the afternoon sun.
- A gathering of olives from our olive tree in Julie's basket. Kel climbed to the top of the tree to collect these. In the meantime I was telling Julie about the latest book I read, which she's going to borrow. Hope you enjoy the book, Julie! And we look forward to tasting the olives when they're ready!

Away in Wello

I'm going away till Wednesday 20th, on field research in Wellington ... that's Wellington in country NSW, not NZ Wellington or British Gumboot Wellington. I'll be there with Kevin (K1) which is really nice :-)
Kevin tells me there is no internet in Wellington ... so I'll have no updates till Tess and Yarrow are home from their travels again!

Fridge poetry

While I was in Parramatta doing the hospitals research, I bought the family a new set of magnetic poetry. Briony especially has been having fun concocting some creative language events :-). Some of them, Briony being Briony, are NSFW (he he) but here is a lovely poetic message ...

More snakes!

We like snakes, we do. They complement our jewellery beautifully.

Tess and Briony model the new models ... :-)

Thanks, Kel and Tom!

Morning all

Here are two pics of this morning... view from the back stairs.

In a state of bliss ...

What a hard life he leads... ::sigh::

When I reincarnate I think I want to come back as one of the Grange cats...

Body art

Denise's Christmas present from Briony was the promise of some body art. And here is the result! Lovely to watch this art take shape. After the show, Briony doodled on her own leg, too ... while I did her foot ... Body art is good fun!!