Cup Day

I had a dollar each way on Vow and Declare but made a small loss on the day, not having success in other races. I worked in the afternoon and took the top off two beech trees to fill an order for 40 tall bunches. There'll be much of the same activity till Christmas then through January and February, or till the beech is depleted.

It has been a good spring for blossom. The lilac, bird cherry, viburnums, dogwood,(except strangely some trees that didn't flower) mock orange etc kept us busy. Blossom has almost finished. We had a good deal of rain through winter and early spring, and it was cold, very cold, well into October for the most part. This slowed flowering down, giving us a better chances to get most of it.

Beside this regular cyclical work, and pruning etc, I was busy with renovations at home, work we planned to do at home in preparation for selling our house this spring. It didn't happen, we didn't get enough done, painting and such. My and Lib's Lib's busy work routine prevented us putting the house on the market. Maybe next year, maybe not, Lib has eased off talking about selling, retiring and moving to new pasture in our advancing age. She has recovered well from the chemo etc and has a bit of sparkle back. We'll play it by ear for now.

Cousin Bruce and wife Jill have had some trauma on a trip to the USA. Jill had a perforated ulcer which led to peritonitis and several days in intensive care in Sylva Nth Carolina. She's recovering well and Bruce has kept his friends and family informed on Facebook. I commented wishing them all best one time which prompted Bruce to email me asking if Lib and I were OK as I hadn't done a blog post for some time. It was that prompting that has brought me to blog post now. I have been meaning to for weeks but always felt too tired at night, and always too much to do daytime. The new STP reporting for small business to the tax office caused me a lot of grief and time trying to register and comply by Sep 30 and then subsequent reports. It would be too painful to me to explain but let's say I spent many hours on the phone in queues till I could wait no longer and had to start again the next day. I really think the world has gone quite mad. The traffic is horrendous whenever I venture far and is getting bad locally. And people drive so fast and do such reckless stupid things.

Perhaps I'm just getting too old for it. I watched a Clint Eastwood movie called 'Coogan's Bluff', a good antidote to a hard day's work on Melbourne Cup day, and it amazed me how things have changed so much. In the end scene Coogan sat smoking in the helicopter crowded with passengers that took off from the roof of the PANAM skyscraper in New York. It reminded me that my first trip OS was to the USA in 1979 on a PANAM flight. I think PANAM went broke at some point decades ago. The movie was made in 1968, 51 years ago, time certainly flies.

We had a surprise visit from our friend Ian Sinclair weekend before last. On the Tuesday night he rang, I thought he was in Canada where he lives, but after some conversation he said he was camped on Mt Terrible near Jamieson, one of our haunts in our youth, again about fifty years ago. He was here last January and had a knee replacement done in Canada in July. He bought an airfare to Australia on impulse because of an offer too good to be true price wise came up but he had only half an hour to accept. He rang the other night from Robe in Sth Australia and is headed to WA and then up the coast. Good luck to him, he's a free spirit if ever there was one and loves birds and the bush. He's getting his other knee replaced when he goes home. He has two boys, one about 30, the other 19, which is why he stays in Canada. He likes it there anyway, He lives in the Yukon which is about the size of Victoria but has only about 35,000 people to our 5 million plus.

Our garden has been beautiful this spring and abounds with birds. I have a lot of wood cut for next winter by virtue of my pruning at the farm. We burned so much this year from May till now with not many days warm enough to not light the fire at night. We did cop a heat blast or two in October but only for a few days then it got cold again. The poor old bees have had a hard time and struggled through.

To finish on a happy note. I saw a satin bower bird yesterday. There was something moving near where we throw our peelings from the kitchen. It retreated into the shrubbery so I waited motionless for a few minutes till it came slowly slowly back further till it was in my clear view 10-15 feet away, feeding from the fruit scraps from our daily morning fruit salad. It was going to town on what was left of a mango. A beautiful creature, it made my day.

Thanks to Bruce for the prompt, and I wish you and Jill well for safe return home after such an ordeal. I'd like to think my enthusiasm for blogging has returned. I've got a Ralphie tale or two to tell, continuing from some posts on Mt Waverley a few months ago.