Suddenly it's New Year's Eve and all this year's resolutions are about to be renewed and ignored. Especially the one about keeping this blog updated regularly. The past couple of months have sped by in a wave of roses and weeds. The garden has looked very pretty in photographs. Beneath those lovely flowers lurks convolvulus that twines its way up stems and strangles everything. And below that is the couch grass that matts itself amongst the root systems. But I keep plodding away. Eventually I'll get on top of the weeds or die trying. Currently thinking about buying one of those DIY coffin kits and using it as a coffee table just in case the garden wins.
In the meantime we all have to contend with the heat and the gale force winds. Tuesday these reached 130 kms here in Tikokino. Plants are now wind burnt and lying sideways on the ground. I meanwhile lay sideways on the sofa, the fan on high, fixed in position so I was doing a reclining Marilyn Monroe with my skirt billowing. No way to work outside as a dirt storm engulfed us. Some silly buggers had ploughed fields which were then lifted into the air and evenly distributed over every surface within a ten mile radius. At one point I looked north and saw what looked like a tornado rising up behind a friend's farm. Usually I can look across towards the mountains but these were obscured with a haze of filth that sped its way across and dumped itself on me.
The chooks didn't care. It saved them all from expending energy on a conventional dust bath. Widget the outside rooster who refuses to live in the hen house since Franz (the dominant cock) beat the crap out of him loves perching on any available fence post and crowing his superiority to anyone who'll listen. Whenever I go outside I am mobbed by a crowd of ravenous hens, chicks, a yelling goat, roaring donkey and an occasional pissed off cat. A friend who often calls this "A Mad House" informed me yesterday that my animals are "psycho terrorists". Couldn't have said it better myself.
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