Hot & Moist

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We’ve had a couple of weeks of extremes on the weather scale…

This time last week we were in the midst of a deluge, and were out in said deluge digging drainage trenches, and watching our 10kg doorstep float away!!

The good thing about the rain is it replenished some ground-water, which was badly needed.
Everything was getting very dry!
It also meant that for the best part of a week, we got away with not having to water the gardens and orchard.

This week, we are suffering through 32+ degree heatwaves. [35 today!]

A lot of the plants – especially those in the nursery – are sagging from the brutal heat (as are we!), and we have been almost able to watch the grass growing as fast as we’ve been mowing it!

As of this weekend, the whole place has been mown, but it will only be a couple more days before we need to start the process again.

The house yard is already looking raggy and in need, and we only mowed it 4 days ago! 😐

We’ve got a decent bit of work done at the house in town.
The back wall of the house has a fresh coat of paint on it.
We’ve finished all the hallway walls, and the wood-heater has a fresh coat of paint on it, and looks a million bucks!
The fridge recess has also had its first lick of paint, and will get a second coat once the trims go on.

We’ve also finally got around to processing 20kg of tomatoes that have been filling up the fridge slowly but surely over the last couple of weeks.

This time around we made a tomato concentrate – which can be used as either tomato sauce (ketchup), a soup base, or as a sauce for things like spaghetti bolognese, lasagne and other pasta dishes.

We did 10kg at a time, and each vat of sauce needs to boil down for about 5 hours to concentrate properly – so its pretty much an all day process – but the taste makes it sooooo worth it!
And we know exactly what it contains.
Priceless!

After the deluge, the Nursery needed a bit of a tidy-up, especially as one of the shelving units had sunk on one side, and was leaning rather precariously…

We’ve had loads of pavers that we’ve saved up over time stacked up around the Farm in various piles, and decided that this was a great place for some of them to be put to use.

Its looking pretty schmick around there right now, and while there are currently a few pavers that have the wobbles a bit due to the uneven ground, once the next downfall of rain arrives (which is rumoured to be later this week) the pavers will naturally level off into the damp ground.

The pavers also mean that we’re not plodding around in ankle high dry leaf matter, which could be a lovely place for the not-so-nice variety of reptilian visitors to rest and be unintentionally stood on!

It will also mean that when the ground IS sloppy from the tropical rains that we tend to get at this time of the year – it won’t be the usual muddy quagmire.
WIN WIN!

Its less than a month now until our youngest daughter and her Fiancé get married, and a lot of relatives will be coming from near and far to celebrate with them – so it will no doubt be not only a wonderful event to finally witness (they’ve been together over ten years now!) but a busy time all round with all the social ‘stuff’ also.

Its been quite a while since the majority of our kids have been in one place at one time, so it will be fun to have them all bouncing off each other again – along with their associated aunts and uncles, and kidlets.

As well as a weekend full of love & commitment – there are bound to be a lot of laughs – thats for sure!