Flower confession time

I have to admit it...

I have a strange flower fetish.

It's to do with bunches of flowers...

I cannot leave them mixed.

Our Small Town only offers mixed bunches of flowers

- either lilies-and-gerberas or native-banksias-and-waratahs -

which I purchase and then attack immediately upon arriving home.

I have to carefully separate the lilies

from the gerberas

and the greenery.

Separate vases.

Can't stand them all mixed up.

What on earth this says about me, I don't know.

(And, to be frank, I am not sure I want to!)

So let us ignore my obvious control issues,

and instead let us feast our eyes upon the beauty of the gerbera.

This is surely my favourite flower...

I adore the delicate clean daisy-like formation.

Simple, colourful, striking, non-perfumed.

(I have a sensitive, sneezy kinda nose

- and a it's ludicrous little sneeze at that).

The gerbera were my wedding posy flower - no fuss, no worries.

And you know what - in the garden they are almost indestructible.

They thrive on neglect - utterly my kinda flower.

I predict mass plantings of these plants in the Granite Glen garden.

I am a mass plantings kinda girl too.

Again with the no-mix thing...

Of course the one thing about gerberas is that

when they are done,

they are DONE.

A little like me.

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What kind of flower rings your bells,

makes your skirt fly up,

or just makes you smile?

World Weather Watch - August 5

Have I mentioned how dry it is here?

Yes? Oh that's right.... I did that already!

Our few lonely clouds just cannot get their act together to precipitate.

Outlook for today (Wednesday August 5):

Temperature: 5-25 degrees Celsius (not bad)

Wind - 9km/hr ESE (nice)

Chance of Rain - <5%> 1mm (= sweet nothin'!)

I guess two outa three ain't bad.

So, what's happening out your window?

Done and dusted...

You know how bushies (and farmers) always complain about the weather?

It's all:

'When's it gonna rain?'

And there's 'bin nothin' in the gauge this month'...

How it's too dry!

Well honey...

Colour me red and dusty and whingy!

For Pete's sake Hughie...

Where's the flamin' rain, already??

Toasted

We did it.

My Dad has been well and truly toasted (but not too badly roasted) at his 'almost 70' soiree at Granite Glen house. It kind of turned into a weekend-long event. The first guests arrived Friday night and I waved the last of my visitors off yesterday afternoon.

But on Saturday it was 'four-wheel-drive central'.

We had about 60 of Dad's mates and rellies to mark this milestone, and the relaxed lunch was perfect for his preferred form of celebration: a good steak and scotch with friends and family.
D'ya like the groovy (and appropriate) serviettes I picked up in Big Town last week?

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There was laughter, there was eating (oh my, the eating!), there were tears (mostly from the assorted visiting babies although one or two may or may not have been mine during the speeches).

This is Dad with neighbours Bill and Clair.

They are the most wonderful couple who lived across the river from us for many decades. They raised nine children (despite being initially told they couldn't have kids) and seem exactly the same to me as they did when I visited them with the measles when I was 10. They have retired into town and their son (the one I went to school with) now runs the property. Dad made a sweet speech and it included acknowledgement of the importance of great neighbours in the bush - he was looking right at this pair when he said it.

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The atmosphere was wonderful... I found it a little hectic but I could feel and hear the relaxed conversation around me as I brought food to the hordes.

When you are hosting something like this, it is easy to get overwhelmed with preparations and feeding people and stuff. This kind of thing is a group effort. And luckily I just happen to have the best support network in the country - including the bunch below.

Have they not got the most beautiful smiles you have ever laid eyes on?

That's Pea on the left - she baked up a storm, delivered a table and a heap of chairs and cleared most of the debris for me at night. As Dad would say: Her Blood Is Worth Bottling. Then there is darling Elle - she and her family travelled hours to attend (her hubs Harv worked with Dad when he was a teenager and they share a great respect for each other), she entertained and laughed and helped me unwind at the end of the day (with a Baileys and by recording the Bush Babe train wreck - see last pic of this post!). Then there is Bon Bon, the incredibly stylish woman married to Dad's baby brother (is anyone allowed to look that good over 30?) as well as being a great neighbour and friend and lending me tables at the very last minute when I hit the panic button. And then there is Megs (P's daughter) who shares the long end of the bus run with my Dash - she was the only girl there her age, but who happily mingled with adults and monitored little kids as required. And she is beautiful. Nuff said.

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I also had my mother who worked her tiny butt off helping with the garden and getting food ready (as well as hauling the laundry shed back from disaster), providing the gazillion extra wine glasses required by the hordes and cleaning up quietly as her daughter collapsed on the couch. And let's not forget my sister who baked her little socks off - the smorgasbord of bread she provided was amazing. Sorry I didn't get a shot of it all Jeanie! And of course there is my hubby... who cooked a mountain of fillet steaks and moreton bay bugs without complaint, not to mention putting up with being handed a frightening 'Honey Do' list a couple of days prior to the event. Even Dad had to help chip the tennis court, tidy up the shed and nail up a "Please Slow Down" sign on an ironbark tree to prevent guests drowning in dust.

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And of course there was my sister-in-law Curly, who took on the mountain of washing up despite her advancing pregnancy (notice how I didn't mention the step required for my high benches, C?) and the lovely Kay and Shell, who helped her. And my gorgeous cousin Bee who not only took on balloon duties, but also camera duties at speech time (and did an awesome job!). There were others too... in fact, I am trying hard to recall what I actually did for the event! I seem to have blocked it all out...

All this work made us a little thirsty.

Now I don't wish to give the impression that we are a bunch of alcoholics, but I have to say that our crowd does enjoy the odd scotch and dry (hello Dad) or the odd cold beer (hello Tex) or the odd Bundy and coke (hello there hubby o' mine!). And I have already confessed to a certain leaning towards a glass of chardonnay on special occasions (like dinner). And besides, we were toasting the continued health of my father on the weekend, and let me tell you, the man needs all the assistance he can get in that department (as previously explained here)!

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The men had a lot of toasts to make apparently, if the low levels recorded in the rum bottles strewn around my patio yesterday morning. I suspect all that pool playing and tall-tale-telling was hard and thirsty work. Elle and I managed to make a couple of private toasts (after everyone else had fallen by the wayside/fallen asleep on the couch) with a dash of Baileys.

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Actually if the Baileys people are ever looking to sponsor a blog, I would be the first with my hand up. I may fall asleep within minutes of the second dash, but those are a couple of FINE minutes. Actually Elle grabbed my camera and recorded the fine-ness of it all here:

Something tells me I could be waiting quite a while

for that call from the Baileys' people.

Bruiser...

It's my Dad's 70th birthday soon...

and while he's not all that sure about this whole blogging thing his eldest daughter indulges in, I don't think he'd mind if you knew.

Really, he is pretty stoked to have come within cooee of 'three score and ten' - because Lord knows the man has done his level best to test his mortal limits over the decades. I have mentioned some of his earlier years here, but really I would need a book to really cover the personality that provided half my DNA.

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He is larger than life and he exudes more life force than ten younger men... and in a not-unrelated fact, he has also suffered more injuries (and bulldozed Heaven's knows HOW many less-forceful souls) than anyone else I know. I should know - because despite enjoying a mostly harmonious relationship with him, I have been among the bulldozed.

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Luckily this less-than-comfortable experience served to teach me to stand up and be counted, if I wanted to avoid being regularly bulldozed. And it's a hard-earned talent that has stood me in terrific stead in most of my male-dominated workplaces. A woman that can calmly hold her own, unintimidated by masculine bluster, is a woman that will earn respect. Not an easy lesson, but it has paid off in spades.

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This weekend we are pausing the Granite Glen express momentarily, to barbecue a good steak, fill our wine glasses and toast the man referred to somewhat cheekily by his loved ones as "Bruiser". And we will marvel that, despite having crashed and galloped his way through broken legs, two knee replacements, a smashed arm, cancer, broken collar bones, ghastly gash injuries from various farm-related 'incidents' and goodness knows how many corked thighs and black eyes, Dad is alive, kicking and still going 'flat biccie'.

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And in preparation, I am trawling my image archives along with the one gathered by my aunt (dad's only sister). It is a treasure trove. The first picture in this post almost makes me weep, it's so sweet.

Could that really be Bruiser?

This child with the head shaped exactly like my Dash?


Oh gosh... this one gets me too.

That is my grandfather holding his newborn son, my uncle, who would one day be a tearaway rodeo rider and then father to four great kids, now a devoted grandfather himself.

My aunt (holder of the photo archive) poses sweetly to the right in her white shoes.

And Bruiser... could that be he at left, with the band aid on one shin?

So upright, shoulders back, half-smile, as close to his much-worshipped father as possible.

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Soon after this photo was taken, my Dad would head off to boarding school and my grandfather would succumb to a terrible brain tumour a couple of months after that. It's the only image I have seen of his with his three children and it bring a lump the size of Uluru to my throat.

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And then there is this one...

This young father with his firstborn child.

Me and my dad.

I have his swarthy dark complexion, the brown eyes, and apparently the very same 'bulldozer-ish' approach to things when I get a bit focussed. Or so I'm told.

Thanks Dad. I think!

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I guess the one thing I always think of, when I am trying to illustrate the kind of man my Dad is today, are his hands.

These are not computer hands.

Not mobile phone hands.

Not dainty or soft or manicured.

There is even part of a finger missing from his left hand - something about a horse striking at a rail and nicking the pinky. And a doctor pulling off the hanging end section and throwing it in a bin... no microsurgery for these hands!

I cannot begin to imagine that these hands are old.

Or done with.

They are strong and capable and sure.

(I hope) for many, many years to come.

Here's to you, old fella.

And here's to bloody well looking after yourself please,

to ensure that I get to blog about the 80th!

WORLD Weather (and roof) watch WEDNESDAY

I will admit (up front) that I am not here.

Not here at the computer anyway... and some would argue not all here, ever!

I am actually travelling to another Big Town with Mum to help her choose a stove for her new house, and get stuff for my Dad's 70th birthday celebrations this weekend.

On the road again!

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Nonetheless, I am scheduling this post for my World Weather Watch Wednesday in the hope that everyone is still keen to share their outlook with the Granite Glen mob? Hello? Anyone out there?

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And to make it slightly more interesting I thought I would give you a look at our roof.

Yar, you heard me. Our roof. For without our roof, I wouldn't be in contact with the outside world! Cause that's where the dishes are...

Please meet our TV dish (on the left) which brings me four different state's worth of ABC (cause you can NEVER have too much ABC!), Channel 7 and Imparja (a Northern Territory flavoured amalgam of channels nine and ten - crunchy!).

And the internet satelite dish is on the right... we have a kind of love-hate relationship, the internet satelite 'broadband' dish and I. I love clouds (the real ones that bring rain and relief to our parched grass, not the teasy, fake kind as illustrated above). The broadband satelite dish hates clouds - it shuts up shot the moment it cannot see blue sky (or even stars at night, there is no tricking it!). Sometimes it goes r-e-a-l s-l-o-w for kicks, even whent the weather is clear. Oh how I long for city broadband, the kind that whizzes so fast your hair stands on end. But bush beggars cannot be choosers... not city broadband for me!

*sigh*

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Enough of my whinging... here is today's

Weather for Granite Glen:

MINIMUM - 1 degree (C)

MAXIMUM - 22 degrees (C)

CHANCE OF RAIN - less than 5% of less than 1mm (i.e. buggar all)

Mostly sunny (fair dinkum?)

So coat, jeans and t-shirt weather, and above average chance of decent internet access... shame I won't be there to enjoy it!

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What's the sky like in your neck of the woods?

Hop, hop and away!

This is a sight we pretty much see every day around here...
but I am aware that for many people dropping by my place,
the view of roos nervously dashing off away from the road
is kind of an unusual thing...

So here you go - meet Mama Roo and her half-grown joey.

These photos were snapped about 15km from our house, in our steer paddock.

Notice how, as our dry winter sucks the colour from the landscape,

the kangaroos begin to blend perfectly with the sepia grass...

making it all the trickier

to shoot them accurately

....with a CAMERA!

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Gosh, what did you think I meant?