Sunday 20th July

Back into the routine here again. Sorry for not posting for so long. It has been a busy time with meetings and paperwork, and it has taken a lot of time reducing the 300 or more photos from our trip to Numurkah and Canberra. As you can see from the new slideshow here I have reduced the photos from Numurkah. Have had some lovely garden visits here closer to home too, which photos still have to be processed. Then there is still the newsletter to do for next month.

Lately of course we have all been very worried about Peter and Marg. Let's hope things keep improving for Peter in hospital, and that Marg can get away to get some more sleep too.

What a pleasure to look out at the damp drizzly weather at last. Katie and friends spent the weekend up at Mt. Hotham snowboarding, and said they had pretty well blizzard conditions the first day, and more rain and snow the other days.

Hooray, Katie passed all her subjects including her thesis - what a miracle, and Keryn did well in her subjects too. Both Neil and I did react rather strongly when Katie jokingly talked about a PhD next......."not in this house you won't"!

Would someone just tell those weeds to stop growing please? Now there is this lovely weather, but which is not very nice for going out in, and the weeds they just keep on going.

Wednesday

Well, here I am at the National Library (in Canberra) able to access the internet/emails at last. Neil is at the conference at Geoscience Australia today, so I am a free agent, and enjoying exploring old haunts. Was going to go shopping, but will instead visit the Botanic Gardens, National Museum and National Gallery if I get time.

I am glad to see Ann is enjoying her newest grandchild in NY, though I imagine by now everyone there will be feeling a little sleep deprived.

We are staying in a b&b in our old street, so it was nice to catch up with an old friend just a short walk away yesterday. Canberra is having a cold snap this week, just for us, but it is really what we expected.....foggy cold mornings, with glorious sunny afternoons. Last night we also caught up with another couple we had not seen for over 20 years. They moved to Wagga Wagga soon after we returned from Perth, then we went to Melbourne after they returned to Canberra.

Not looking forward to our long drive back on Friday, but since I have work arranged for Saturday, it has to be done.

Tuesday 17th June

Congratulations Joanne and Andrew, and welcome to the wide world Liam.

Another event today did not go so well.....our tennis Grand Final. We lost by 3 games. A bit disappointing, but I enjoyed the tennis, and was not as nervous as I used to be on such occasions. Was a bright sunny day, but a bit windy, with several points being won by the wind.

However this afternoon also brought back the internet. Having been deprived for almost 4 days, I phoned Optus once again(5th time), but this time I was not so polite, and, among other things, said we would be changing providers if it wasn't fixed within 24 hours. It may be a coincidence, but it was back within 20 minutes, and hasn't faltered since! What a waste of time it was yesterday spending one and a half hours talking to the help desk in India.

Looking forward to our trip to Numurkah this weekend for the Quarterly Gathering of the Australian Plants Society Victoria. And also to our trip to Canberra following, albeit a very cold venue. Will be nice to catch up with some friends of old we haven't seen for some years now.

Saturday 7th June

Just a teeny bit more rain we had overnight, which made the weeds easy to pull out this afternoon. Didn't get much done before I realized it was time to go out to dinner with Ginnie. Was nice to have some time to chat together, and we both agreed it was a nice meal at the Ivanhoe Hotel. Went nice and early, so it wasn't too noisy or crowded.
I enjoyed last night's meeting at ANOS (Native Orchid Society). Have missed a few months, due to forgetfulness, or inability to go. Here are some not so good photos taken on my phone camera - will remember next time not to try closeups with it. Of course there were the real professional cameras out to record the beautiful specimens for the next newsletter. I won another plant in the raffle too.

Wednesday 4th June

Happy Birthday John. Hope you have time to celebrate. Erk.......that means we are both getting closer to the big 0's next year.
Again not much news for the week. However the good news is that we finished the first of our Tuesday tennis finals in great style yesterday, with a big win. So it's straight into the Grand Final in two weeks time. We also had a good win last Thursday, though we are only half way through the season. This week was not looking promising, with one of our girls injured, but yesterday I managed to tee someone up to play for her. I would hate to have to forfeit.
Some other good news is that we had a cheque in the mail from the travel insurers, reimbursing us for our extra airfares we incurred last year for returning a week early for Betty's funeral. No, they weren't slow in paying up either - it was less than a month since I got around to submitting our claim. They had told us we had 12 months to claim, once we'd told them we were going to, so of course with everything else happening, it was put to one side.
No more weekend work happening at the moment, which I am pleased about - might have more time to get into the garden, though Scrabble on Facebook seems to be taking up the slack at the moment! Good news with the rain up north. Wonder if any of it will drift down here?