Happy Birthday, Your Majesty -- Now We Are Nine!

 

...and the birthday card says it all Another year has flown by, and here we are ... nine!

Just a comparative handful of pictures this time, because her year, and her world, are pretty much the same as always. She had loads of fun at Christmas, when she got a new copra-type mat to tear into, with our blessing ... she's had fun wit boxes, with kitchen paper ... she loves to "help" make the bed, and as for for the Christmas tree -- oh, boy!

So, this was Zolie's year, not counting vast amounts of time spent in her personal jungle (the garden), which, for some odd reason, we didn't seem to photograph this time around...

Interlude in the Catch-up Process: La Nina takes its toll in this backyard

Feeling sad ... sigh. The wind-and-rain storm came through here like an express train last night, and when I went out for a breath of fresh air, in a break in this incessant cold rain ... Charles de Gaulle is down. I'm kicking myself now, because in ten years I never troubled to photograph it properly. It was always just ... there. It was the old rose tree Zolie loved to climb -- which is why the only longshots of it are ones in which she's perched.

It was always outrageously difficult to photograph its huge, mop-head flowers, because almost as soon as they opened, they began to spoil; and, fair to say, the place it was planted had a fence in the background in one direction, plus the neighbour's shed, and from t'other side it was lost in the background clutter of the lemon tree. So I put off and put off photographing it, even when it was in full bloom, with a dozen or twenty huge flowers. Then suddenly, it's too late.

Soooo ... the plan right now is to take several cuttings off it, while the plant is still viable (tomorrow morning), and it's also possible that one or more of its numerous runners might be nurtured into a new shrub off the old root mass. But at the moment ... there it is, sheared right off at the base and lying flat in the area Dave calls "the plum pit," because it's a sunken garden where the old plum tree lives. Sigh.

And yes, I shed a tear. In fact, I shed a lot.

Playing Catch-up With Myself: November ... Spring Comes in Late (thank you, La Nina)

Nothing in the world says "spring" like ducklings! It was so good to see squadrons of them at Belair, Byards, Brodie Road, Laratinga, Perry Bend -- everywhere, this year, whereas last year I don't think I spotted even one. This family, here had managed to raise ten, which is exceptionally good going in an environment where cats and foxes wreak havoc. They were right there on the bank as we finished out a walk at the Brodie Road wetlands. Nice!

By November I was feeling more like my old self. The only thing still lingering from the virus was fatigue, and when I saw Dr Tim for my annual bloodwork, I mentioned this ... he wasn't in the slightest surprised. Without going anywhere near "long covid," which is a very different animal indeed, the so-called "post covid syndrome" hits a lot of people and is a bear to get rid of. Fatigue, foggy thinking, shortage of breath, listlessness ... yep, this was me.

But by the time by birthday rolled around I was even boring myself! It was time to throw this thing off somehow, anyhow, and -- well, Dave knows me. I'm terminally stubborn. Just too stubborn to know when to quit or how to say no. I think I'll be dead for three days before to occurs to me to lie down.

November was pretty good, in fact. We walked a lot, and got up to Clare Valley and, I think Laratinga when the weather was good enough to permit. Got the chance to revisit Seven Hill, which has a timeless charm all its own, and the Gleeson Wetlands, which have become a favourite place of mine.

Late in the month, we went orchid hunting at Belair NP -- but that's another story, which I'll tell in the next post. From a purely personal perspective, it was great to be starting to feel like a normal person again after a few rough months. Do not let anyone tell you that Covid is just flu and you'll throw it off in a week ... not even vaguely true! But spring was bursting out everywhere by November -- it came in late and wet, but when it arrived ... well, I'll close this post out with those ducklings at Brodie road, which say it all. And in the next Catch-up post, we'll go orchid hunting!

Playing Catch-up With Myself: October ... Destination: Yorke Peninsula

We'd wanted to do a road trip for a long time, but with it being so difficult to rationalize taking accommodation where you're almost certain to catch the plague (or SARS-Cov 2, which is just harder to type), we decided to make it a day-trip. This has become our rule, though it's a rule we intend to break when the van has been fully refurbished: van camping is firmly on the agenda. But for now ... it's day-trips, as far as you can go by getting on the road at 5:00am and not getting home till about ten at night. So --

Destination Yorke Peninsula. 

Not that we haven't been there before (we have), but it had been a long time, and the Yorke is different enough to make it attractive. We do travel around a lot, between Burra and Clare Valley, to the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula, as far east as Tintinara and points on the Coorong; and past a certain point, you've been everywhere so often, the idea of going again gets a bit "meh."

So: pack the day before, load the car at 5:00am and get out of Dodge as soon as you're functional. Point the car due north, hang a left onto the Copper Coast Highway, just beyond Port Wakefield, then -- go exploring. The Yorke is a nice place; a lot of people are clearly deciding it's a great place to live, because there are new housing developments everywhere you look. Moonta, Walleroo and so on are turning into yuppie suburbs, with expensive houses and marinas. O...kay. Perhaps people are retiring over there? Because it's difficult to see how so many people would find enough work in the rural centres to pay today's kind of mortgage.

But we were only there for the day, and the weather was great for a change...

It was a great trip, and in lieu of staying overnight somewhere, the day-trip is a happy compromise. But I'm looking forward very much to the van camping, I will admit. The freedom of being able to go out for two or three days is seductive. So the van is going in for service work very soon, and then -- as I write this Catch-up post in early February -- the plan is to head for Mount Gambier. This is going to be very cool, since we haven't been there in ten years or so. So long, I can't really remember when we did that last trip!

We had bacon and egg for brekkie in Port Wakefield, picnicked for lunch at a place with a table on a cliff, set among fields of wild gazania, and stopped for a good-sized snack on the river at Port Wakefield just as the sun was going down. From Port Wakefield to home is about 90 minutes, so we were in good time, and we came home with some nice pictures.