Home alone

This week I am home alone as David has gone to Canberra to lend support to Mae and Nick during chemotherapy week.  This is cycle number 9 for Mae. She has three more after this one, twelve in all. She's sounding relatively cheerful at present; having had a little longer to recover over Christmas seems to have really helped her body and spirit to deal with the onslaught of chemotherapy. But it's still hard. She can't wait for it to be over. Here's a snap David sent this morning from the chemo suite. Mae is nearly always the youngest and smiliest person there. A very easy patient for the staff. Cooperative, uncomplaining and determined. If attitude counts for anything...

I have stayed home this time so as to work on getting my practice back up and running. I think I've located premises to work from, at Halliday's Point shops. Lots of details to sort out before getting started, but I'm hopeful it will work. I don't want to go back to the clinic I was consulting with in Taree last year. It was an hour in the car on these dangerous local roads each day to get there and back and the overheads were very high. I just want to work two or three days a week to get us back on our feet financially. Plus I do enjoy the work and it feels really worthwhile. Hopefully enough referrals will come from local doctors and word of mouth. We'll see won't we?

Meanwhile, work continues on the great garden project. This photo is of me planting out one of a pair of Jacarandas by the front entrance to our land. What a delight, to be able to grow Jacarandas! These beautiful feathery, spreading trees flower in November on bare branches, turning themselves into purple clouds. None of these in Canberra.

Took this photo on our dam of an unusual duck taking refuge in the searing heat we've been having this last week. It's a beautiful male chestnut teal, resplendent in shimmering emerald head feathers and rich chestnut breast. I had never seen one before.

This fellow (below) is a regular visitor though. A pied cormorant, he's having trouble getting airborne, probably because he's so full of water and food from grazing on the bottom of our dam.

(Above) Cormorants have to dry themselves off a bit before they can fly properly, so that's what he's doing here.

Last time I was at the Bus Depot markets in Canberra I bought some rainforest bean seeds from Merrywood Seeds and Plants. This Australian native (castanospermum australe) makes a great indoor forest and it's So Easy! Recommended. You can email orders on go74116@bigpond.net.au.

Blessed bit of rain last night. Neighbours tell us this is the driest period they have ever seen in their 20 years in this area. Wonderful. We brought the Big Dry with us from Canberra it seems.

It's much cooler today, just as well for the tilers who arrived this morning to start the job of tiling the outdoor terrace. It's a big job but we think it will be worth it, make the terrace more usable as outdoor living space and will also pretty up the necessary bushfire buffer zone immediately around the house. No more plants growing up to or on the house, like we had in Fadden. Country living calls for a different approach.