Mae and Nick come to visit

Young people seem to have no hesitation about night driving - do I vaguely remember those days? Yes, I do remember driving to Adelaide from Melbourne after work on a Friday on several occasions in my twenties...Mae and Nick left Canberra about 4.30pm yesterday and arrived on our doorstep, apparently awake and functioning, around 11.30pm last night. It is lovely to have them here. And in one piece.

Today they have been poring over the old scrapbooks and photo albums. Lots of giggling.

It was a stinking hot day yesterday but cool enough today for some outdoor work, so we wasted no time harnessing Nick's blokey muscles for some blokey muscle work involving sawing up a tree, the hard way.  A chain saw may be on the Christmas wish list.

Mae is towards the end of her "on-week" for chemotherapy, so the energy levels are low and she is queasy. She did well to cope with a seven hour car journey though.

David reads a "Hustler" magazine. He dreams of mounting things and having fun.

Suitably uplifted, he then mounts his new "Hustler" ride-on mower and starts having fun. Its a steep learning curve. Steep learning curve up the side of the dam, nearly gets wet, repositions, heads off towards the top of the block.

More birds. I like birds, can you guess? This is a darter, also known as a "snake bird" for that long, thin neck. It swims in the dam with just its snakey little head showing. Then spends ages drying itself in the sun. These birds are related to cormorants and their feathers do not repel water, which enables them to swim underwater rather than floating like ducks do. But the downside is that they then have to dry off - hence the description "shag on a rock", referring to cormorants sitting on a rock and holding out their wings to dry.

This is Egbert, our resident cattle egret. He has rather suddenly developed beautiful golden breeding plumage. But Egbert seems a bit confused. For one thing, Dude the horse is not part of the cattle family. Also, Egbert appears to be wasting his splendour by displaying to completely the wrong audience and no lady egrets have been attracted to Egbert's vicinity.

Id better get off the computer right now and go help with lunch. David and Nick have just arrived back from the beach.  Tomorrow, we all head off to Yarrahapinny, north of Kempsey for a retreat.