Change is good – or so I am told.

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

stressMy life has undergone a bit of a change. On 31st. December we  locked up the church and the hall, made our farewell to the Session Clerk and set off home. We had only just finished lunch when we had a telephone call to tell us that the Session Clerk, Mrs. Mashford, had had an accident and was waiting transportation  by the Air Ambulance to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, some 450 klms away, where she would undergo emergency surgery. It seems she had fallen at the back of her house and had broken both legs and injured her back. At least that was what they thought – one was definitely broken but the other one was too badly swollen to tell and x-ray. The Royal Flying Doctor (RFDS) Air Ambulance arrived at 5:20 that evening and she was transported to Adelaide. She was made comfortable and they did the operation the following morning. She has fragmented one ankle and that required the parts to be brought back together, plates inserted and screwed into place. Her back is just badly bruised so no problem there. The other leg is very badly swollen and they still cannot tell but they suspect that it also broken.   So why does that mean changes for me? Simply we are a small church without a minister and the day to day running of the church and the services are undertaken , in turn, by the three elders – Mrs. Mashford, myself and my wife.  My wife is unable to travel so she does not go outside of town. Helen is the Commissioner for the General Assembly and I am the Commissioner for the Presbytery. With Helen out of action, the rotation becomes one service every other week instead of every third week. At a bedside meeting, I was elected as the Commissioner for both Assembly and Presbytery – as allowed for by the Code of Practice. Between that and having to take a service every other week, really adds “interest” to things.

The dogs are still inside but with the installation of the  magnetic flyscreen across the door, we are able to leave the door open and let them wander in and out as they wish without attracting a horde of flies. The little man had no problems and simply head-butted his way through once he saw me walk through it. Chienna was very reluctant to try it so  I had to work with her a few times and let her watch the little man do his thing before she was comfortable enough to push her way through on her own. The magnets ensure that the screen closes – like a door – behind them.

I am finding that more often than not these days, I have to carry the little one for part of our morning walk. He is 12/13  and although he starts off well, full of energy and enthusiasm, he begins to fade after a while. Like the song says – He’s not heavy, he’s my brother. He is one of my associates and if he needs a bit of a rest, well that’s ok, he’s not heavy.

Bit of a respite for others – but we are still ok.

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

This is My Futon.Outback town swelters through week of 45+C

It’s been an interesting week and there is every indication that it is not over yet. South Australia has been spared much of the fire crisis and only one major fire and that is now under control. There are reports of a fire to the west of us but  nothing  definite yet. Our firefighters are still on standby and we are sending relief fire crews and some fire machines across the border into Victoria to assist and give some welcome  rest and relief to the crews over there. The hardest hit state is New South Wales with over 100 fires burning and fighters stretched to the limit.  Not a lot being done in the garden and the dogs are just flat out inside.

Police have arrested three arsonists who they believe are responsible for starting one of the  bush fires. I personally  think this should be classed as domestic terrorism, but I  have no doubt that there are those who have softer hearts ” they are ill people who need attention, not punishment – I mean they didn’t mean to kill 4000 cattle, 7 dogs and 32 people”. –  Sorry, I just don’t buy that!  Yes, by all means give them medical attention – but in the prison hospital over the next 15 years.

Since I started writing this the temperature here has gone down to 28c but it will go back to 37c tomorrow and building up over the next few days. There are over 130 homes destroyed in Tasmania and 100 people still unaccounted for.  Hopefully alive and well, somewhere, but unaccounted for at the moment. The dogs have enjoyed walks in the cool of the evening and in the early morning. Much of the day they have been inside, but as the temperature cooled they spent more time outside. They like to wander through the back yard and find places to hide as well as shade under the trees. I have two dogs, three dog houses,  three raised beds and six  padded  beds. I have a dog house in the garage and when I am working in there the little man generally takes up residence in that one. Also the door does not close properly so he can squeeze through and go into that bed when he just wants peace and quiet away from everyone – but  then, isn’t that what a garage/workshop is for??

It’s a tad warm (Part 2)

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

fire threatWent out a short while ago and checked the thermometer  under the  shade area and found that the temperature is over 50c. Well, the  unit only goes up to 50c and  the mercury is over that. After that I decided that I would sit down and have a read in the coolest part of the house – the laundry, where the dogs are. I went in there with the dogs, took a cushion  and plonked myself down beside them.  The Air Conditioner is not coping too well, despite the place being closed up and the awnings down. It is cooler inside than out, certainly,  but no where as cool as it should be.  The official State Government website says 47.9c. I have half a mind to move the desk into the laundry with the dogs because the ceramic tiles are cool and they are more comfortable than I am.

According to the news we have broken a long standing record. Up until today our highest ever temperature was 45.8 now the new high record is the same as the State Government Web Site – 47.9 – so the 50c on my outdoor thermometer is fairly conservative.  We move 80 Klms South East of here and we have a temperature of 48c  – another new record.

Ok, so that was yesterday, which topped off several days of searing heat ending in new records across the state. Today, after a record 47.9 the temperature has crashed to  a forecasted 26c – currently it is 21.6. This morning at 7:15 I took the dogs out and were they glad to be “free” for a while – well “free” as in they are on  15 foot extendable leads. They were – like me – just so glad to get out again. It was just too hot to take them out these last few days. I think they missed ” checking the mailboxes”  I know animals have a greater sense of smell then we do, but how a dog can stand sniffing a blade of grass, or part of a bush for ten minutes, is a puzzle. Still, 21.6 – seriously thought about a pullover to keep me warm  :o)

Over  85 properties destroyed and one life lost as fires rage out of control in Tasmania – out of control fires in Victoria and one major fire burning out of control some 80 klms south-east of Adelaide. Nothing up here, which is something to be thankful for.

As expected, many of my plants have died. I did water them  every night after the sun went down, but the heat of the day still  burned them up, which adds to my comment about ” Full Sun” – that may well be, but not for this little corner of the world.  – and before I water the plants at night I have to let it run for a bit before I do  because the water is hot for the first few minutes. The long range forecast is for very high temperatures starting again in the next day or so, but in the meantime, I will enjoy being outside, but again, because of the North Wind, I  need to redo all my work and sweep up again.  Still, if it were not for the trees I am certain that the places would be a lot hotter.

It’s just a tad warm.

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

firiesThousands of Firefighters are  being placed on standby as the temperature soars to 44c and above. To add to the problem, we have a North Wind, which is helping to dry everything out. We are not, officially, in a heatwave  – yet. A heatwave is defined as five consecutive days when the temperature is above 35c. So, if you have, 36,36,42.35,31 – then it’s not a heatwave and if the 6th day soars to 44c.,  then that’s the start of another five day cycle. What you have to remember is that 44c is the “Official” temperature. It is not ground temperature and it is not what the sun is beating down on your wee head. The official temperature is taken in a shaded area not in the direct heat of the sun – like your head.  The dogs are sleeping inside and I have renewed the  bowl of water I have at the end of the drive. In weather like this – when I am home_ I change the water every couple hours to stop it getting hot. This is for dogs, or indeed, any thirsty animal to drink from. The birdbath has a slight leak and needs to be replaced/ repaired. It has been empty and I was intending to do  the repairs soon – however, I have filled that with water also at least the birds can cool down, if needed. The Weather Bureau has warned that we are on track for temperatures above 40c for the next seven days. All the more reason why anyone with a lick of sense should have at least 6 litres of water in the boot (trunk) (for the radiator) and  enough water  for drinking.  Today was 41c, and tomorrow will be 46c – official temperatures so I expect the dogs will be inside all of tomorrow. Actually, unless I have to go out I think I will be inside for most of tomorrow.

Bigger is not always better

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

2013-01-01 07.47.00The State of South Australia covers some 983,482 sq.klm. It’s bigger than Texas but with a total population only marginally greater than  Phoenix,  I suppose we do have a lot of environment. To the west of me – the town of Cowell some 115 klms away   -the photograph is in the general direction of Cowell and there is nothing in between except the general assortment of Australian wildlife. Like many places in the USA  South Australia  punishes people who do not take the environment seriously – they die in the harsh, hot conditions of outback SA. There was three travellers died only a few weeks ago when the car they were driving in broke down and they decided that it was only twenty miles to the nearest settlement, so they could walk there for help in a 45c temperature. They  became lost and didn’t make it and their bodies were recovered only after a massive police  and ranger search. If you treat it with disrespect and are unprepared for the worst that could happen,  the far north of South Australia can be very unforgiving.  Even driving between here and Adelaide, I carry 2 x   3 litre water containers in the boot (trunk) and I always have drinking water with me in the car. When I take the dogs out during the summer months – in the morning before the heat and in the evening when it’s little cooler,,  I generally have a small backpack with a bottle of water and a bowl.

The South Australian Dog Rescue ended the year fairly well and  400 dogs have been saved from the pound and have gone to new furever homes. I have been involved in ten of those, which I have taken from here the 400 klms to the State Capital and their new owners. I hope to be heading that way sometime next week, once this heatwave breaks. At the moment it is 35c but this is expected to rise and to mid 40+c over the next few days and into the start of next week with a cool change coming mid-week.

In the garden it has generally been a tidy up and keep up the watering to what plants have survived the heat of the other week. I have not been able to replace them because it is New Year and most places are closed until today, so I will probably get over to the Garden shop  during the course of the day and have a look at what I think might survive. As I said before I have doubts about labels that say “Full Sun”

The sun has got his hat on.

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs
A few minutes walk from the house
A few minutes walk from the house

The weather has warmed up again and I have been back out in the garden. I am working on  the Crazy Paved  area and trying to decide what to do with it. The blemishes make it unusable for herself. It had been my intention to make this her clothes line area but the  ground is so uneven that I really cannot expect herself to walk on it in safety – but I have already gone through all this. I have started the re-edging and am halfway through that. Once I have that completed I will make a decision on what to do, but I rather suspect I am leaning towards having it concreted over – it would be just too much to  big a job and much too time-consuming to dig it out and start again – not that I would anyway.  It looks  fairly reasonable from a distance but up close it is badly done and very uneven. It’s the devil to try and keep clean  because the dust and leaves get into the cracks and the uneven divisions between the stones and make it a hard job to sweep.   I started by saying that the weather was warming, but in this little corner of the Commonwealth, it can heat up to a point where it really is silly to go out and work (unless you have an occupation that requires outside work) because the temperature can really do nasty thing to you. I personally believe that working outside in the garden in temperatures of 46c  (115f) is pointless because it is exhausing and draining, and that’s what the temperature climbed up to on Monday and despite being watered, fed and mulched, many plants died. I have questioned the  contents of plant information tickets – they say the plant can be full sun, but what does that mean? Does it mean full sun in the highlands of Victoria or full sun on the edge of the desert in northern South Australia. I rather suspect they are  created in Victorian and New South Wales temperatures and not for  40+ of  country South Australia, so “Full Sun” does not really relate to this little corner of the world. Our ‘ Full Sun”  kills them off. I was told that they should survive if I  ensure that the ground is mulched to protect the roots and that they are well watered, but it really didn’t make a lot of difference and the only two plants that survived the extreme heat of  last week were the two “Sturt’s Desert Pea” – which is not really all that surprising since it is a plant well adapted to desert life. However, they are short lived plants and will really only last the season, but at least I might have some colour.

A “feature” of our part of the world is a North Wind. In many parts of the world, particularly in the UK, a North Wind is a very cold wind – they even have a poem about it ” The North Wind doth blow and we shall have snow” Well here, the North Wind is a  hot wind that blows off the hot desert and pushes temperatures up as well as being draining, making the heat worse than it is already. The dogs have been inside in the cool.

Welcome home. We missed you…..

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

A Foxy LadyI was only away for four days but it might just as well have been a month. The dogs set up a racket when I drove into the driveway and even before I emptied the car, I was on the floor playing with them.  At times I think I sort of felt like  General Custer because they did their little dog thing – run around t you in circles. It was so funny – I’m sitting on the floor they are running around me jumping in and out of my legs and every so often they would stop shower me with licks and kisses then  circle me again. She who must be obeyed just sat and watched in amazement. It t was ages before they settled down and I was able to empty the car and get my case in.  I love my dogs and I enjoy their company – they are my associates really.   The good thing is that when I was away this time,  my flowers and plants were watered. Normally she forgets to do this and I come home to dead plants, but this time she remembered.

The front of the house is starting to look nice now. During the course of this week I will start to look at the picnic area and see what I can do with that.  I have looked an a number of options and it was intended that this would be made into a clothes area so she wouldn’t have to move too far outside to hang the clothes up on a line. And no, we do not have a cloths drier because she does not like them and prefers to hang cloths on a line to dry. We did consider using the area  as is, but the crazy paving is just that – crazy – and was really not done all that well. Because she is partially disabled the ground is too uneven for her and I wouldn’t be comfortable having her even try to walk on it. I will replace and make alterations to the borders then decide what I want to do with it. I have bought her two laundry trolleys – one from the door to the dog gate and one from the dog gate to the Hills Hoist clothes

This is my Main Man - the MalteseTerrorist!
This is my Main Man – the MalteseTerrorist!

line.

Anyway, that’s me until next year.  The  next meeting of the Presbytery is not due until 2nd February, so all being well I should not have to  be away for a while. This is good – for me – for the dogs – for the plants. The meeting lasted two just over two hours – that’s  900 klms round trip for two and a quarter hours.   We have six meetings per year – five in the metropolitan district  (I go there) one in the country (they come here). There is only one place that I will not travel too, but five out of six is not a bad record.

Round 2 begins

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

This morning dawned fresh and clear and until about an hour ago it was still so.  About then I started to see that the sky was dulling down and dark clouds were slowly moving in and sure enough, here we are in the middle of another thunderstorm. This is passing strange – we don’t generally have three in a row like this. Two in one day was bad enough but three in two days is trying the patience just a tad.  There are about 5000 homes without power – 100year old trees were picked up thrown over, along the main streets power-lines are down due to falling trees all of which I said yesterday, but this new storm, if it develops like the last one, could cause more damage. However, having said that, I don’t think it will. It doesn’t have the  same’ feel’ as the ones did yesterday. According to the statistics there were 120,000 lightening strikes across the State.  Anyway, Chienna is in the laundry on her bed and the little man is curled up on my bed. The reason for this is that he must have sneaked in and no one saw him. He was too quiet and it was only a few minutes ago that I went into my room and saw him. I didn’t have the heart to move him so he’s still there.   Yesterday was the first time I have ever seen him concerned during  thunder. Normally he’s not too fussed but yesterday it was very loud and the lightening was very bright.

The “flooding” was a lot of water on the roads, in gardens and elsewhere – it was NOT gushing through people’s houses, it did not threaten lives, it was at best ankle deep and apart from a few smallish puddles, it cleared away very quickly as the storm water drains caught up. The damage we did experience was caused by very high winds that threw down trees and brought down power lines. No one was hurt or injured, but it is interesting that this is the third year in a row that we have had a thunderstorm of this nature right at the very start of summer.

The Right Call!!

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

StormI was booked to go down to Adelaide this weekend, but everything conspired against me.  I was going on Thursday, which would have been a day early, so that I could visit  family in hospital. The Temperature soared to 42c and I decided to  put the trip off for a day.  Then I received a message that the meeting I was to attend  on Saturday had been cancelled, so it seemed to me that it would be cheaper to go down and back by coach if all I wanted to do was shopping. I booked the ticket.  At 2am  this morning (Friday) a thunderstorm struck the area and the dogs were going gaga. My taxi arrived at 5:40and I just paid the fare and sent him away.  I could not, in all conscience, go off to Adelaide and leave Herself, to look after two neurotic dogs in the middle of a thunderstorm.   At 6:16am sixteen minutes after the coach left, the storm passed and the thunder ceased., but the  storm front  is not cleared and there are still rumblings, so the dogs have not settled down and by the sound of things this could go on for a while yet. At the moment I am kind of floating on a sea of  coffee . Once things clear and the dogs are settled down, I might try and get some sleep.  It’s hardly surprising that people get sick easily in this area – an area where the temperature  can climb to 45c in a day and drop  twenty degrees overnight –  this week being a good example where it was 42c yesterday and  25c today – and a thunderstorm into the bargain.

It has just gone 9am and in an hour the coach will arrive in Adelaide. Here the storm has finally cleared and although it is still overcast, everything is fine. Herself is awake and suggested that I should have gone to Adelaide but I still think it would have been selfish and irresponsible had I done so. And I said before, we really don’t do floods here – just very big puddles and lots of water and even that only last for a little while because we have very large storm drains to cope with the  heavy rain that we get from time to time.  By 1:30 pm the  rain came down and there was  crashing and banging of thunder and another storm – louder and wetter –  and the dogs were really going gaga.  The little one  fled out of the house and into the pouring rain.  By the time I got to him we were both soaked, but he got into his house and I could not get him out. Finally did get him out and wrapped him in a blanket and sat with him in my arms until he calmed down.  We gave him a bath. – Yes he was wet, but the bath water was warm. This storm was interesting in that it did cause some damage mostly  due to falling trees.  The ground was wet from the rain we had the other day so this downpour , coupled with high wind, just ripped trees out of the ground along the main road.  and since most of the old buildings have a tin roof, we lost a few of them. Power outages caused by falling trees. I had a friend call me from Adelaide and they suggested that it was not a good day to be in the city.. We don’t really get the full-blown storms (thankfully) what we get is the rough edges – a sort of side-swipe. The older areas of the town get bigger puddles.

All very interesting, really!!!

by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

What’s interesting?  Well to send a few hours writing  and placing photographs  and save to drafts, then come back a little while later and press trash instead of edit.  Oops. It said I could recover it but I could not for the life of me find out how to do this, so I’ve sort of given up. And the oddest thing is that I cannot remember what I was writing about – well I sort of do to  a point, but it’s long gone now. However, it does give me a chance to talk about  the South Australian Dog Rescue. A dog was recently rescued from the pound – which as I said before is a kill pound.  This poor Poodle was  really in such a mess it was difficult to imagine how any person.with any degree of compassion,  could allow this to  happen. The fur of the animal was so badly matted that the vet  was  present when the groomer started to cut the coat. The matting was so bad that the poor animal is left with bald patches on his skin because the intensity of the matting had pulled the roots of the fur out in these places.  The vet  believes that the fur will never grow back in these areas. The dog will stay with a foster carer for a few weeks until it recovers then it will be vaccinated and desexed and once it is over all that trauma it will be put up for adoption.  Until then, it will stay with a foster carer. I have a friend who has recently adopted a dog and the  even after  quite a few months the dog still has  marks where it was chained up around the neck.No, don’t ask me how people could be so unkind, I honestly do not know. My friend and her husband are over the moon with their dog and were pleased to get the  adoption papers  last Thursday. I will take it out for a walk for them tonight along with one of my own – my son will have the other one.

We had a fundraising event for the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) yesterday and although I do not know at this stage how we fared, I should imagine we did well since we were very busy. The SADR had a stall not far from us. It was a lovely afternoon and a very flat out busy three and a half hours – 5pm – 8:30pm. I should say that the event yesterday was the Christmas Pageant and we were at the After-Pageant Fare in the gardens.

Before going out to the gardens  I spent the morning and early afternoon in my garden. I decided to remove the old edging, which was looking a bit “faded and Jaded” After ripping out the old edging I discovered that the bolts I had were too big so I will now have to wait until Monday to get into the hardware store and get the right size. Not to worry, it will look nice when completed.  Anyway, with a sort of unhappy story to start off with, I thought I would  insert a photographs of a ‘ Man in His Office”