I admit it – I’m exhausted. Trying too hard to show off my independence and get a lot done while Ged is away. Planting tree tubestock on a cliff face in 40 degree heat. And then slipping down the bank with full watering can and grazing breast, arm, shin etc and rapidly regretting my vision of gorgeous red bottlebrush gracing the bank and attracting parrots from miles around! OK, I’ll get back up there, but it is not a pleasant job!

George has been nagging me to stop exercising my limbs with lengthy runs around the property, and to get my upper body into better shape by broadcasting seed in the Angle Creek paddock he cleared. So finally I submitted to his iron will. And bored myself rigid, learning every rock and root in there as I hand scattered a mixture of rhodes, kikuyu and sawdust from the old mill. I’ve now got muscles in the bucket carrying arm that I never had before, little miss piggy eyes from the dust and a serious aversion to sowing! Please God let it rain now so all my hard work and isn’t wasted.

Summer has arrived and we are having hot, hot days. The ground and eucalypts are suddenly desperate for a decent soaking and as I have since sowed more seed on all the cleared banks as well as the lawn (got to get it all ready for our special day!) so am I. Now that I have overcome (to some extent) my rabid fear of the chainsaw I got into some serious sawing and cut down about 16 She Oaks along the river below the house to improve our view and river accessibility. George turned up and, looking very miffed, asked ‘who’s working for you now?’, indicating the chainsaw massacre. ‘Me!’ I retorted – ‘who else?’. Praise indeed – he said ‘good job’! . . . . I think I am finally earning my stripes!

Talking of massacres . . . more fool me I went to the local hairdresser on Friday (hereafter to be known as ‘The Butcher of Long Flat’) and I don’t know how it happened but she hacked off all my lovely long locks and when I got home I felt like Samson shorn of his strength and beauty. I cried and cried. And then, like a lamb to the slaughter, I called in the morning and requested that she try and fix it. Needless to say, both Saturday and Sunday were spent howling for my gorgeous long hair. Please say a prayer for rapid regrowth and that Ged still loves me without my crowning glory. I have sworn to let it grow and the only person who will ever touch it with scissors again is my Sydney hairdresser! No matter that it’s a five hour drive and $200.00 a cut!! Funny that I, who have spent most of my life with short hair, should be so devastated to lose the weight and femininity of long locks.

I have also been mowing the house paddock with Ged’s awful push me/pull you because mine has died and had to go in for a service. I am praying for a ride on for Christmas! I have planted the Gerberas from Gardens Direct and the lovely seeds Mummy sent after her trip to Canada so the daily watering session is becoming a lengthy meditation. The bloody cows have eaten much of my Angle Creek planting and I am trying to convince the horses not to eat the roses! 400 acres of grass to chew and they all have to pick on my small potential plots of beauty!

However, for all my moaning, it is starting to feel like a garden and now that the metal skip is gone is beginning to look less like a scrap yard and more like the setting for a home. On Saturday night, soaking my aching muscles in a hot bath, I realised that even God couldn’t keep going seven days in a row and she had a rest on Sunday, and I have vowed that from now on so will I!

So on Sunday, after a nice soothing run, and a splash through the river, (when Phoenix surprised a snake with markings I have never seen before. It splashed into the river with Phee in hot pursuit but set an amazing pace with its head raised and tongue flicking and I called Phee away before he got into trouble. Beautiful sight.) I had another long soak with Dick Francis and then trimmed Baby’s feet and washed her mane and tail and then after lunch I took them both down to the river and Baby, who I spent all last summer training not to be scared of the water, just got in and wallowed!