Garden at dawn

Woke up very early this morning with cramp- around 4.30am - and couldn't get back to sleep, possibly because I fell into bed at around 9.00pm the night before - very early for me. By 4.30 I'd had my usual 6-7 hours sleep and my body didn't want any more.

Got up, made myself some Milo then worked at the computer downloading photos. Don staggered up at about 6.30 to find me the early bird for a change. He went back to bed, but I took advantage of the beautiful summer dawn to get some photos of the garden - well, the parts I have been working flat out on so that it doesn't look too bad for the 50th party.

Almost new

Here is a photo of the new colour for the back of the house. It was taken very early in the morning, so perhaps lacks some of the warmth it shows later in the day.

Still a mess around the veranda, but I still have the woodwork to do before I can tissy it up and make it look smart.

Painting

With our big day coming up - 50th wedding anniversary - on Jan 8th, I decided it was time something was done about painting the back of the house. It was renovated in 2004, but the outside painting was never done. We could never afford to have it painted professionally and were waiting until we could find the cash. Of course that never happened. Then Don got ill and we had other things to worry about.

Finally I decided a couple of weeks ago I would have a go myself. I had my left shoulder done in September and that was feeling reasonable. Don has just had a pacemaker put in so I wasn't expecting help there. Daughter Jo and her partner Steve offered to help out.

So, this morning I bought paint etc and got started on the taping and cutting in.

Before I knew it, Don was out there with a roller and got started on a wall. It took about one and a half hours and we were humming along and very pleased with ourselves. Jo and Steve turned up and took over - by then my shoulders were about to give out. Three hours later and it was done. And looks great.

Now I just have to play with the woodwork and we will have a new house.

Kenneth

A regular visitor to our garden has been this fellow. He comes in every week or so, eats the new shoots on the eucalypts, then moves on. On this occasion he was intercepted by one of our dogs and took refuge in a nearby tree. Didn't appear at all fazed by the locals - aka me. Let me take his photo, then continued up the tree.




We have named him 'Kenneth'.