we're getting that way this week! my sister just sent me a pic of their place with 8" of fresh snow. it will melt off soon there and the moisture is welcome.
Some sprinkles of rain today I love the cloud cover. I don't want to have coffee cos it reduces my appetite and I have a lot of leftover Chinese food to get through!
The ducks are doing my head in today. There is one girl who quacks and sets the rest off. I got up late this morning and the girls had broken in to be with the boys. They are not of age for it to be a problem yet, but they made a racket! I tripped over Jenshen the hen and hurt my hip so I am not going to chase ducks until I know I wont stack it again. I got 3 of the boys back around the back so there are only 3 more to get. I am going to try and figure out which girl is the trouble maker and try to palm her off to someone else. I quite like the boys doing such a good job of trimming lower leaves and hanging around the kitchen window for scraps QUIETLY.
My neighbour told me to get rid of some, since no one eats ducks or duck eggs here. I just duno why that is. I did notice this town is very set in its ways and is not at all open to anything new or different. Its almost like a gated community without the gates and the rules are not set, just implied. I feel like a kid who's always in trouble from their grandparents. The good part is, it has driven me towards the Jehovahs witnesses of the area, who have more freedoms and much wider interests. Maybe someone in that group will want a duck
Coolish here today 44 with winds, so feel like of 38. Only mid 50 high. Just a few days of below norm temps. Mid 80s a couple days ago. Makes dressing for the day a cliffhanger.
I work inside for my job today, so not an issue. Dress code has requirements anyway. Fewer choices to make. It will be a long day, short one tomorrow & off Fri-Sun. Garden time! Need to get busy with planting.
No gardening for me today, doing some autumn house cleaning! The dust really builds up in this house. I cleaned the doors and the kitchen and bedroom windows, inside and out. Ran the dishwasher and have the washing machine on.
It is starting to cool off at nights but still not too cold to pull out the extra doonas yet. 6C (42F) over night and about 25C (77F) in the day time. So lovely! I'll try to air out the house as much as I can before the cooler weather comes. Its not too erratic here yet. People already have their wood fires going, doesn't seem cold enough to me yet!
Just thought I'd share this because the headline was hilarious. The news had the story of the whale washing ashore a few days ago. Guess they didn't want to repeat history with the disastrous results of my birth states most infamous attempt to get rid of a dead whale.
They played video of it in school for us every few years. Lessons in always know how much explosives you really need.
Same watching films and video about St Helens back in grade school and middle school. That anniversary is coming up next month. We didn't really get any ash in Umatilla, but I can still remember being outside in the garden eating strawberries (I was 5). The sky was getting dark and Mom came out and made me come inside incase ash started coming down. I remember some of the news video of the next few days. Mom still has a baby food jar of ash in her cabinet. Plenty of relatives had some come down.
we're still getting mid 20s here and it is snowing out but i don't know if it will be enough to stick or what.
i thought we lost most of the daffodil flowers that had bloomed because when i looked at them this morning they all looked ruined, but they managed to perk back up by this afternoon. not that we don't have plenty more, but i was hoping to get some pictures of a few of them that i may not have pictures of already.
I have been pretty lazy this week. The shire is burning off the bushland surrounding the town and the smoke settles on us overnight. It looked really eerie with the smoke rising through the trees over the train tracks. It was a wicked sight at night with small fires all around, but it did make me cough and sleep too much for a few days. Its shut the ducks up lol. I got my clarinet out tonight to clear out the lungs and remind myself how to breathe.
It is ANZAC day tomorrow, but because mass gatherings are cancelled, we've been asked to attend the service on our driveways with candles all over the country @mischief is NZ doing similar? I practised the last post and rouse on my clarinet tonight and it was easy enough, there is a #musicformateship thingo but I am still not sure if I will play it at 6am, we don't have letter boxes to have warned my neighbours... I'll see how I go, I can still play it to myself anyway. It was fun to have a reason.
The new owners of the general store have so much more fresh produce and a wider variety of products for lower prices than the last owners did. I don't know if they will find themselves overstocked, or if it will attract people to shop closer to home than going all the way to the regional co-op. Either way, I am really happy the store is open again and their cafe does good kebabs for when I am too lazy to cook. I got 2L of milk for $1 which is unheard of these days so I am set to drink hot cocoa to my hearts content