Benji – Page 13 – Edgar's Page

Melbourne – The journey Home

24/03/2016 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Andrew with Trish's Koala Bear — Andrew with Trish’s Koala Bear

We drove out of the hotel carpark fairly early on the Monday morning to begin the journey home. I have to say that I was impressed with the drive through Melbourne and found that getting out of Melbourne is actually easier than getting out of Adelaide. Once we left the hotel carpark, the journey consisted of a succession of freeways, toll roads and back to freeways again – moving seamlessly from one to the other. It was our intention to get some breakfast along the way but it was Dadswells Bridge before we stopped – about 300klm. This is the home of the Giant Koala and I convinced Andrew to buy a large Koala Bear toy for Trish to compensate for not being able to get the Tattoo Teddy Bear. I also bought one for Annabell. We had a quick snack there before driving on to Horsham

where we finally filled up with fuel for the car and for us. Melbourne – Ballarat – Ararat – Horsham -Bordertown – Murray Bridge – Mount Barker – Adelaide – Port Wakefield – Home. . I thought we would be stopping in Adelaide for the night, but the boys decided that they wanted to get home so we pushed back through to Port Wakefield – fuel and food – then drove the remaining 300 klm to home. At 11pm, Annabell was surprised to see us as she had expected us to stay in Adelaide overnight. Benji went gaga, he was so delighted to see us (me) back safe and sound. We drove from Melbourne to home – about 1300 klm with Andrew doing most of the driving – which he enjoys anyway. Overall, a fantastic trip on every account – me being away with my boys, the Great Ocean Road, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in Melbourne, Chadstone Shopping Centre and then the drive home.

Tailem Bridge and a healthy looking River Murray

The day after we arrived home Andrew telephoned the Tattoo organizers and asked about the Merchandise. He was told that there had been a glitch in the system and many people were without packages. The ship was now on its way to New Zealand and would be attended to when it arrived there. It was not. Andrew telephoned again and was told that the packages would be sent out from Edinburgh (Scotland) in a few days. As it happened the package arrived last Friday and Andrew brought it over last night. It was quite a good package; I particularly liked the coffee mug – and I have quite a few commemorative coffee mugs from various events. However, it’s good to be home and with any reasonable luck I should not have to move again until early May and then out to Mount Gambier for a church conference. Although, since coming home, my computer crashed (Windows 10) and as a result had a meaningful conversation with the Factory Reset Button. Lost much but I was also able to save much and managed to start again. I did have to rebuild my Outlook Address book and some addresses I still have not got, but they haven’t got in contact with me to ask why the silence.

At the moment I have over the last day or so, designed and printed an Order of Service – cover page and contents – for a Funeral tomorrow. One of our ladies died suddenly and I was asked to do the Order of Service for her. Generally I do that anyway, but the church photocopier is on long service leave for necessary repairs so everything has been done here on my computer and printer – all 100 x 4 page Documents. Just as well the Board of Management are paying for the ink cartridges – although only 30 of that total have parchment covers and are in colour – for family. The remainder are in greyscale. I dare say I will get back to what I was doing in the garden ===in the fullness of time :o)

The Big Adventure.

12/02/2016 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Ok, that’s the second run to Adelaide over now we just have the five day trip to Melbourne and back. I am so looking forward to the Tattoo. In nearly 65 years the Edinburgh Military Tattoo has only moved out of Edinburgh four times and three of these time have been to Australia. I have never been to the Australian event – this will be a first time. We are, as I said earlier, going via the

Great Ocean road. Our first run on Friday will be from here to Mount Gambier. The boys will do in one run what I generally take two to do – overall about 1000klms. But then as Herself suggests, there is nearly 30 years of a difference :o)

At the moment Windows 10 is still causing me heartache. I spent some time with a Microsoft Guru who was very helpful and finally got Word, Outlook, Excel, Power Point and Publisher all working – fantastic. Still have problems in that the start/menu button is still not working on windows 10 and I cannot access the apps – which means that although these programs are working I can’t quite get to them because I can’t get into the applications folder – grrrr… Not only that, my computer refuses to recognise my printer – they wont talk to each other. I am not altogether sure why but I seem to spend a lot of time these days humming Trini Lopez (If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning) It is definitely a true saying “To err is human – but to really stuff up you need a computer”

Benji got a severe talking to the other day as I tried very nicely to impress on him that wakening up and pouncing on a sleeping form at 04:20 does not a happy daddy make. :o) Must have worked

because the last two mornings I have slept until 6am – thank you BJ. This five days away to Melbourne is going to be fun. The poor dog went gaga when I came home from Adelaide and that was only overnight — how is he going to be after five days? This will be the longest time I have been away from him since he was rescued and brought home. The longest I have been away from him was two days and Herself tells me he just sulked in his bed only coming out to go out and to eat. Yes, of course I will miss him.

I am looking forward to the Tattoo and some shopping afterwards. We set back to home on Monday – overnight in Adelaide and home sometime on Tuesday morning. Herself has also been having problems with her computer but rather than upgrade ( it is an old computer) so when we get to Adelaide we are going to have a look around and see what we can find.

Anyway we leave in two hours so I had better start getting showered and things ready. I am taking the camera (of course) and the laptop with me and we’ll see how we go.

Computers and Bushfires

26/12/201526/12/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Hmm.. As I suspected my BSL was much higher than it should be. I got a lecture about health and chocolate so he upped my medication to give the insulin a better chance of controlling things.

That’s how it will be for the next six weeks then back again to ensure that I have behaved and the medication is doing its job. Provided both issues are in sync I can drop back to maintenance level. Finally, I have a full email system back in action. I bit the bullet and installed Office 365. Cost me the office 2016 that was already installed, but there you are, if I wanted Outlook and a mail system, it had to be done. Everything seems to be up and running up to a point – the point being the recreation of my address book, which I will do tonight.

You load 365 and what do you get

An Office Suite and deeper in debt

Oh St. Peter don’t you call me

I can’t log off

I owe my soul to Microsoft

Ok, being silly but all is done and everything is up and running again, so I no longer have any excuses. Hopefully this new system will stabilise everything and I wont have the problems I had in the past – like mail vanishing into cyberspace.

The Vet is closed down until Monday 4th January. If we do have any problems there is another Vet in town that we could go to, but I always think that is fraught with danger in that once you go

Never doubted it Mr. Vader - Sir..... — Never doubted it Mr. Vader – Sir…..

there you might not come back. Mustafa has been closed since 11th December. I went up to see the Grooms at Fussy Dogs and explained that Benji is a rescue dog and I have no idea how he would react around other dogs – I can only go by how he reacts around me and the family. She said she would accept him and see how he went. I took him up yesterday and, well, chuffed ( means really proud/happy) just about says it all and he related well to the other dogs. The girls were quite fond of him and said he was a lovely pup easy to work with.

We had Christmas Dinner at my younger son’s place and all the family were there. It was a great day and I allowed myself one small glass of wine – since I was driving. Don’t like Coke-Cola much so drank lots of iced water. It was a long, hot, day and by the time I got home I could barely keep my eyes open. West to the Watchnight Service, then home then up at 5:30 mainly because someone felt that since it was light it was time for walking – so we did. I am still having problems with the Victorian Registration people and I still have not received any paperwork from them with regard to Benji. However, I have been in to see our Council and I will fill in the forms for them and for the Victorian Registration people and they will deal with it. In the meantime I need a Statutory Declaration signed by a J.P. and they will register the Benji with a note of his registration re the address on his microchip. If no success, we may have to think about a second Microchip.

Just thought I would mention that it has always been our tradition that the Christmas Offering is a Retiring Offering, people decide to leave something or not. We did announce that the retiring offering this year would go to the Royal Flying Doctor Service and a respectable amount was handed over to the RFDS Treasurer.

A devastating fire along the Great Ocean Road has caused widespread damage with over 110 homes destroyed. A difficult area to get into and a major tourist attraction. I have only traveled a short distance along the GOR when I was in Drysdale and it is a beautiful area. This main fire and some other fires are still burning in Victoria but New South Wales and Victoria are working together on containing them. There are over 500 firefighters trying to control the major fire on the Great Ocean Road I think this is going to be a difficult fire season.

Home and Away

09/12/201509/12/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

France, and Paris in particular, are recovering from the recent atrocities inflicted on that beautiful city and people are returning to normal life and revisiting the places they once felt safe in. One restaurant owner said that all traces of the damage had been erased and the place repainted and customers, albeit slowly, are coming back. My son spent last year touring Europe from Vienna to Casablanca spending the longest time of his tour in Paris. He greatly enjoyed wandering the

The Tomb of Napoleon ( son's Photograph) — The Tomb of Napoleon ( son’s photograph)

streets of Paris, paying his respects to the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe and then paying My respects to the Emperor Napoleon. John liked Paris a lot and was greatly saddened by the damage inflicted on her. Oddly enough , and I apologise to any Italians, he didn’t like Rome at all. Some of the photographs in parts of Europe that I use were sent to me by my son

Been a tad on the warm side this week with temperatures hoovering around 40c. Cooler today – only 38c – but a day of extreme fire danger since high winds and possibly dry lightening strikes are forecast. However, I think there is a cool change forecast for late Monday or early Tuesday.

Our Moderator and his wife visited us yesterday (Sunday) conducted the Service and joined us for Christmas Lunch afterwards. We had been criticized by some for the money we spent on the installation of two reverse-cycle air-conditioners, but at 41c, there was not a single adverse comment in sight – a very pleasant lunch in a pleasantly cool hall. Of course, safe to say that the majority voted in favour of the air-conditioners, but the dissenters were very vocal, however, fact is that without these air-conditioners the hall would have been much too hot and uncomfortable to spend any length of time in, let alone have the whole of the congregation sit down to lunch.

The expected cool change came in a little earlier than expected and there was widespread lightening strikes across the State – we even had some rain. However, we were not too bad but parts of the lower state are without power and will be for some days. We have our own power station here – Northern Areas Power Station ( NAPS) – but this is a coal fired station which is coming off line

during 2016. From then on we will be part of the main system and whatever power failures they get, we will probably get too.

The good aspect to all of this is that Benji never missed a beat. The noise of the thunder and the rain – such as it was – didn’t seem to bother him in the least. It didn’t last long at all. Herself always felt really sorry for Chienne because the noise so severely affected her and there was not a lot we could do other than the Vet

medication to try and calm her down. We did buy her a Thundershirt, but it didn’t work for her. It’s cleaned and packed away since Benji has no need of it. I have also been trying to give away one of the dog houses but no one seems to want it and BJ has no need of two. Actually we did have three but I dismantled one and stored it in the garage – will probably do the same with the other one.

Annabell and Benji get along well, so much so that at lunch she becomes his BFF – I get ignored because he really doesn’t like my diet food – I guess he figures he’s a dog not a rabbit. Benji is still not registered yet. I have written to the Canine Animal Register in Victoria and they still have not sent me his Registration and Microchip papers yet. It is now ten days since they informed me that the papers would go into the post that very day, and I believe that either this was a falsehood or there has been a mail holdup by highwaymen on the Cobb & Co Stagecoach ( Australian Wells Fargo) because using a stagecoach is the only way a letter could take ten days to come from Melbourne. Why don’t I register him here anyway?? I cannot because his microchip still lists his previous owner and if anything happened here and he went wandering I would have difficulty getting him back because he would be shipped off to Victoria and I have no proof that he is my dog, so I need these papers.

Fires, Funerals and Scammers

05/12/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

One view of the fire front ( Not my picture)

The fire burning out of control in SA has a fire perimeter of some 240 klm. Fortunately it is well away from us, but even so it was a dangerous and deadly fire. Two people are confirmed dead, one is still missing and many people injured. The property losses are high and the livestock losses have been very heavy. We had fire crews come over from New South Wales and Victoria to help bring the fire under control. The high winds didn’t help. I know, driving back from Adelaide last Wednesday, the wind was fairly strong and pushed the car about a bit, which made the driving a bit tiring.

I was only just home, had a coffee and Annabell told me that the husband of one of our friends died suddenly. Annabell suggested that I get changed and go visit, so that’s how I spent my afternoon. Poor Benji -daddy just got in and now he’s gone again. Everything has gone to the Coroner in Adelaide and all she has to to do now is wait until the Coroner makes his/her decision and hands down his/her report. Then the family can make arrangements for the funeral – which they hope will be next week sometime – in Adelaide.

After talking with herself I decided to take the coach to Adelaide for the funeral. It means that I can go down Wednesday morning, go the funeral and be home on Wednesday night. Tell you what bells – the “best laid plans” thing is fairly accurate. I was planning not to be away again until February at least, but life has a way of upsetting plans. There are reports that the lowest of the low have been at work in the fire devastated areas. By “Lowest of the low” I refer to the trash known as looters. There have been reports of looters raiding the damaged property that had to be evacuated in haste leaving everything behind. I’m sure I read somewhere that we used to shoot looters. Honestly, I don’t know what is more devastating, to lose your house and everything in a major fire, or to come back and find the house intact, but broken into and your valuables stolen by looters.

My mail system is still down and although I am getting some limited mail through the browser, it’s not ideal. My son is coming over tonight and we will download and install a new mail program, so by the end of the day we should have everything up and running. I have stripped most of the MS programs from the old machine but I have kept it active because my photograph programs are in there and the difficulty of downloading and installing them again is not really worth the trouble. Better to leave them where they are.

To be cheated (scammed) gives one a sick and empty feeling and, unfortunately that’s what has happened. I thought the site I was using to download Microsoft Programs was a genuine site – it

even has a Google Certificate – but it was not and not only did I not get the program, I lost the cash I paid for it. Not a happy person since my bank said they could not block or stop the payment since I had paid voluntarily and there was nothing they could do except advise me to open a paper trail by writing to them and then, if there is no response or no program forthcoming, I can, in the fullness of time, open a legal dispute claim and attempt to get my money back. And that, it seems to me, is how they succeed with what they are doing – it’s a long and expensive procedure so people just either don’t go through with it, or never start. So from that, you can understand that my email system is still not working correctly. The site, by the way – and to all intents and purposes, it is a sponsored site by Google – is still up and running and I have been advised not to name it as this could create legal concerns.

The lady is wearing her blue dress

19/11/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Friday /Saturday 14th Nov.

I am in Mount Gambier, which as I said before, is about 900+klm South-West of home. I arrived here yesterday afternoon after a five and a half hour drive from Adelaide,

Not enough sun to show its true Blue Colour

where I stayed overnight. My accommodaying is quite pleasant and spacious so I am comfortable enough. In the morning I will attend to Presbytery and in the early afternoon, head back to Adelaide. I’ll stay there overnight again and head home on Sunday morning. I will have been away for four days and although John has come over each night to take Benji our walking, I have to say that I miss my dog. Goodness I’ve hardly had him five weeks and I miss being away from him already. Herself tells me that he gets excited when John comes to take him out but most of the time he jumps up on my bed and stays there for much of the day.

I did get to see the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier and although it was quite blue, it needs the sun to bring out the full colour and we didn’t have much sun today. For most of the year it’s just a normal water colour but from mid-November it starts to change due to

some chemical reaction. It was a volcano. There were two other smaller lakes beside this and although there are viewing platforms for them, they have mostly dried up. By the time I come back here – probably in May – the colour will have gone. We are not due back here again until May of 2016.

Adelaide 14th/15th

The meeting finished just before noon and I did not stay for lunch but headed back to Adelaide, arriving here shortly after 5pm. stopping only briefly at Keith for fuel. The freeway was fairly quiet, so it was a good run through to Bolivar. I called home to let herself know where I was then had a fairly good sleep. I packed up and was on the Main Highway to Port Wakefield at 5:35 and with only one stop for fuel and food I was managed to catch the after service coffee at the church before going home with herself to get attacked by an excited dog. I think it’s fair to say he was glad to see me. It was only four days for me, but that’s a long time for a dog.

The trip, however, was great and I enjoyed passing the wineries and vinyards and although all the major wine producers are there, there is a fair number of smaller boutique Wineries and the next time I come through here I am going to make a point of stopping at some of the smaller wineries and perhaps doing a bit of a stock up :o)

Home 16th. Nov.

In the meantime my computer is playing up something chronic. I cannot get into my mail server and I don’t know how much I have lost. I cannot get into other programs so

although I need to finish off the Magazine, I cannot because I can’t get into MS Publisher — so, we are doing the best we can until Wednesday when John will come over and help me set up the new computer. I’ve just about had it with this one- it’s been an on-going battle for months now and although this is not the first time I have lost mail, this time it is serious and I cannot even get into the mail server. and it’s only my good nature (??) that stops it from having an up-close and personal with a sledge hammer. However, it’s not a total loss and after we set up the new computer I will format this one and see what we can do with it. Use it as a spare with Windows 10. At the moment I seem to have no major concerns with the Internet and internet programs, but everything else is gone haywire. At the moment I still have no mail system but we are working on that. Part of the concern is the amount of stuff I have on Outlook Express – which is no longer available. We are having problems setting up the Windows Mail system, but as I said, we are working on that.

Post storms and mining.

14/11/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

The place is slowly drying out. One Mall shop is still closed as repair work is being done, everyone else is back in business until the next belt of rain – whenever that may be. But it’s great – $56 Million upgrade and the roof leaks !! The garden is drying out and once that happens -probably sometime today – I can start to clear up everything. I can do that in between packing and getting ready to head off to Mount Gambier (900k West). I will be away for four days. I will, of course. take my camera with me, the question is, should I also take the Tripod? Probably, if I have enough space. I’d like to take my dog with me so I can say I have at least one friend in the area. I always liked that comment by Sean Connery in “The Last Crusade” – “My Boy, we are pilgrims in an unholy land”

I have been out and about this morning and everything is drying out fairly quickly. Once the rain finally stopped the flooding dissapated as the storm drains caught up. The mud at the far end of the street is also drying out – but the ruts are nice. A new form of gardening perhaps?? Was awake at the crack of dawn this morning, got dressed and took Benji out walking for over an hour and a bit. I have extended our area so I roughly do about 12,000 steps a day, which is about 6 miles. Perhaps not a lot for some people, but a lot for me in a day.

Today (Sunday) everything is definately drying out – well, it would with the temperature at 36c. ( 96F) The walks take place earlier in the morning ( to avoid the heat and the flies) and later in the evening ( oddly ehough to avoid the heat and the flies) Even so, I will have to start taking my belt with me – a waist belt that has pockets for a plastic bowl and another for a water bottle and one for black bags. It’s interesting in that he already equates various items of clothing with walks and if I go near them he thinks we are going out and generally speaking we are. We had a hotish 37c yesterday and a milder and cooler 26 today and everything is just about dried out. I spoke to John over the weekend and he will come over each day I am away and take Benji out walking, so at least he will get some exercise. The mining boom has just about gone “Boom” but new houses are still being built, however, not quite as many as there were six or eight months ago and some of these

Can't remember where I got this from. — Can’t remember where I got this from.

houses that were build are already up for sale. With the current unemployment rate in Southg Australia ( the highest in Australia) I can see this increasing and the “for Sale” signs becoming more frequent that they already are. It is a very uncertain time not just in South Australia, but Australia in general since our State and Federal Governments have based their budgets on the revenue from the mining and comodities boom – which is just about finished. Interesting times!!

Where is Noah when you need him?

06/11/201506/11/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

I haven’t the foggiest idea who said “be careful what you wish for – you might actually get it” Four serious thunderstorms in less than three days. That was fun!! A fair amount of property damage, serious damage to crops and structural damage all across the peninsula. Port Lincoln, at the bottom of the Peninsula, took the brunt of the damage but we took a fair hit ourselves with damage in the city center and the major shopping center. There was flooding all around the place – not the damage to houses and sandbag kind of flooding, but the streets and carparks were flooded with the storm drains unable to cope with the volume of water. There was also a lot of leaks in the roof of the new supermarket and several of the new shops were partly flooded with one still closed for repair. The

Taken at the Garden Center - Not my photograph — Taken at the Garden Center – Not my photograph

thunder abated and the lightening faded and the rain stopped and we thought it was all over. Poured again an hour after that and kept going until after midnight. That’s when much of the flooding took place. The morning was quite but by lunch it started again – another cloudburst and thunderstorm. That stopped about 3pm and we had a break until about 5pm when we got hit yet again. We had a shorter, smaller storm the following morning and according to reports we had over 63mm of rain in two and a half days. Eveything is still damp and wet but the good thing – the thing we should be thankful for – is that it was thunderstorms and rain – THERE WAS NO WIND. With that amount of rain a high wind would have been a disaster – these gum trees would have come down like they did some years ago. That was only light rain then but a very high wind and enough rain to loosen the soil. That would have been really serious. So it’s all been fun and games these last few days and like me, even people who have lived here their entire life said they had never seen anything like it. Makes you thankful that we don’t have a river anywhere near here.

That's What Port Lincoln looked like - not my photograph - — That’s What Port Lincoln looked like – not my photograph –

Up here at my end of the town no flooding to speak of but the road and the gardens of the new houses are awash in water and mud. With only bare earth the workmen driving in and out – when they can – as well as people who have done nothing to the earth in the front of their houses, the area is like a giant mudbath. However it will dry out in time. At the moment when I have managed to get out with Benji, I have had to change shoes and wash his paws when we come back for our between storms walk. At the moment the damage to crops is still being assessed but reports are that it could run into $$millions.

The rain it falleth on the Just

04/11/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Nice Rain Clouds - these ones didn't amount to much but the others did. — Nice Rain Clouds – these ones didn’t amount to much but the others did.

On Monday the tree people came and had a look at the White Cedar and gave me a quote for trimming it back somewhat. Tomorrow (Wednesday) they will come and do the job. I am quite pleased about this because I really am tired of spending hours on end every other day sweeping up these “berries”. Once this is done I can then think about how I am going to cover up the crazy paving so that Herself can walk on it with safety. The Sturt Desert Rose has taken off again and I have masses of blue/purple flowers. They are very delicate and do not last long, but there are a lot of them and they are constant during their flowering season.

I am convinced that weather people make up the forecast as they go along. Yesterday they promised heavy rain and even thunderstorms for today and up until now (6:46pm) it has been a lovely day – nice – not too warm – just nice. Not a whiff of dark clounds. This is good in one respect – it means that I can continue to work at clearing all the gravel ( cheap stuff) that the previous owner laid down. But in other rerspects it’s not so good because my knee is killing me and I need a break – a day off – so I am equally unhappy with the less than accurate weather forecasts.

Benji continues to settle down but there is still that accusing face at the window if we go out without him. There was a RFDS Barbecue at the weekend and I took him down to let people see him. They made a fuss over him, which he loved, and he got free grub. Bummer – I had to pay for mine :o)

The long predicted thunderstorm finally arrived and it was a beauty. I was delighted to see that Benji gave not the slightest attention to the noise of the thunder and the heavy rain. Reports are that there is a fair amount of flooding and structural damage across the peninsula. The thunder started about 5pm followed by more, heavier thunder lightening

These chicken samwishes, look nise, daddy..

and the heaviest rain I have seen here for a long time. I believe there is some damage to the shopping center. I’ll have a look at that in the morning. It’s almost midnight and it’s still raining – not as heavy as it was earlier, but still raining. It did go off for a while and I managed to take Benji for a quick walk, but the rain was back again before we got home –

not too wet :o)

Benji, Trees and Firefox

24/10/2015 by edgar62, posted in House, Garden and Dogs

Sunday; and for the first time since we adopted Benji, we had a family dinner. This meant that for the first time the two girls were here with Andrew, Trish and, of course, John. I was a bit concerned about how Benji would react to the girls and how the girls would take to Benji. As it happened, my concerns were ill-founded and everything went smoothly with the girls and the dog taking to each other quite well. Overall it’s been a very quiet week and not a lot has happened really. I worked at two fundraising ventures for the RFDS, with a third one this weekend. Herself has been busy writing letters to all the other churches and inviting them to the 36th Anniversary Service of the Women’s Association. I have also found ( well I knew, really) that, since my unexpected stay in hospital at Christmas, some of the temporary restrictions, plus all the medication, I have put on weight. This I am unhappy with, so back to my diet again and get rid of the extra kilos. Once we get into spring and the winds start to abate I should like to get back out on my bike – and yes, before you ask, I am very much a fair weather biker. There is a dedicated Bike Track down at the Wetlands but it’s like everywhere else here in spring and summer, the flies become a nuisance. I sometimes find that rather than deter the flies, the personal fly-spray seems to attract them.

Haven’t done much outside other than never-ending sweeping. I have an Australian White Cedar which has to be – more than gum trees – the messiest tree in

Australia. I have spent days on end sweeping up the mess from the Cedar and can well understand why the council had them removed many years ago. Pity they replaced them with gum trees. These berries, or whatever they call them, come down in the tens of thousands and clog up everything and cost the council a fortune to clean up the mess and unclog drains. The other problem is that everything about them is toxic – the berries and the leaves. This gentleman in the photograph, in Adelaide – has a problem with the White Cedar in the front of his house and the fact that the berries are all over his garden and he has two young children. Many councils are undertaking programs to have the White Cedars removed. The photograph is from the newspaper and I thought it best to block out faces. I need to get a quote for the trimming back of the one I have, which in the last year has just about doubled in size. Other than sweeping, I have had words with herself about just where she wants the washing line. I think she wants it moved back to where it was. Certainly the crazy area is closer to the door but it is now over hanged by the Ceder – tree – branches – birds – washing – thus it has to be moved. In the short time that I laid down the weed matting and placed in the stones, the place was covered in “Berries”. Fortunately I have a blower that is powerful enough to move them but not so powerful that it moves the stones. Herself could not believe the amount of “Berries ” cleared in a a few hours, so I can well understand the Adelaide Father’s concern for his children. For me, well Cedars of Lebanon I could live with, Cedars of Australia, not so much.

This last week has been a week of on-going frustrations with the computer and more than ever I realise the truth of the saying “To err is human, but to really stuff up takes a computer”. It’s been a week that saw my Mail Server crashing ( Outlook Express) the crashing of Firefox, which meant a delete and then a fresh install, and just general frustration. I gave up banging my head on the desk, put the lead on the dog and we went for a drive to the wetlands to watch the swans. That did help and I came back, fixed the computer and got back to work.

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