Back to peace and quiet (I miss those kids!!) and as soon as the Grippers drove away on the next leg of their ‘Holiday Coast’ adventure, the sun disappeared, the heavens opened and the deluge resumed!
Tag Archives: alzheimers
Slash and Burn
Well, I fired the builder. Had to be done, really! The previous week his children had been sick and then he had caught the bug so I didn’t see hide nor hair of him. Monday he turned up looking for a cheque and on Tuesday he presented some very flimsy invoices to support his request for ‘more’. I gave him a cheque but when he hadn’t turned up by lunchtime the following day with no call to explain why, I cancelled it. And reconciled myself to the fact that he would have to go.
He was very sweet, and reasonable eye candy but I can watch Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise for my jollies, and at least I KNOW he’s not going to renovate my house!! Oh well, my intuition was way out on that one! Or maybe I was right, and he would have done it, but it would have been like Waiting for Godot and we all know that I haven’t a patient bone in my body . . . .
Ged to the rescue again! He used to be a builder so he is going to put his hands to good use and last weekend we got more done in two days than the builder had done in a month so things could be looking up! OK it might only happen at weekends but at least I know that it will happen.
My life is beginning to feel like one of those commercials ‘it may not happen overnight, but it will happen’!
George is my saving grace! He has burnt a break across the other side of the property so ‘on the next good hot day ‘ he can ‘set a match to it and get rid of all the bladey grass’. Australian farmers make sense of the phrase ‘slash and burn’. But George doesn’t know that my Natural Farming book says that burning destroys more nutrients than it puts back so while I agree that the years of neglect need to be burnt off, this may be the last year he gets to indulge his pyromania!
He has also been up on the ridge cutting down the wattles and lantana – silhouetted against a pristine sky – an Australian icon. I am so privileged to have him to learn from and also to witness that rugged pioneering spirit. His father was a pom so when we agree we have anything in common he says it’s the pom in us! He is a master of bush craft and I am a willing disciple. He makes me laugh but his story is a sad one. His gorgeous wife who is a real looker with the kindest deep blue eyes, has Alzheimers and he will not give her up to care. His work is his sanity and she is his one true love so it’s a hard row he hoes and he often needs just a little sympathetic hearing from an unconditional heart.
Now we are calling in George’s younger brother to do my post and rail fencing – just a bit at a time when I’m feeling flush! I have been the painting queen all weekend, coat after coat over the vile lime green walls inside and pressure washing the outside and making a start on that. I cleaned out the cattle yards, pulling up all the fireweed and mowing seven years of weeds. George got me in the river to put a couple of wires across to stop the cattle – the river was the same temperature as the sea at West Wittering on Christmas Day in the UK. I did two walks across (belly button high) and strung two wires and plunged straight into a boiling hot bath! Freezing! George and Marcia thought it was hilarious! And now my water wading skills have been requested again for early Thursday morning for a repeat performance at the other end of the property. I think I’ll go buy a boat!