Back home

After my excitement about going west to see my boys - and various friends, I'm home again. I had a most pleasant week seeing who I wanted to and having time to chill. I also had the good understanding that we had done the right thing to move to where we are now.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the easy access to malls and activity - yea for Ikea and their $1 breakfasts! But I enjoy more the tranquility of where we are now, thus making the sojourn to see my boys all the more exciting allowing me the chance to mall surf once in a blue moon.
I've been home almost 3 weeks and that time has flown as we reopened the cafe on our winter schedule - which makes for long days as it isn't so busy; but we will be open for the winter, and we are picking up bookings for Christmas parties, which is always exciting. It is one of my best pleasures trying to make a pleasant evening for a group of people. It has a certain adrenalin rush - like the cafe when a group enter, but this is a different adrenalin surge. There is an anxiety about food quantities and the hope that it is cooked well - not burnt - and all that good stuff. Once the desserts are served it becomes much calmer in my mind and I can relax.
We had a week of stormy weather - rain that wouldn't go away and then high winds. We were lucky in that we live up on he hill, but many folks suffered with flooding. The winds didn't seem to do too much damage, but I don't like high winds - they scare me.
Family life is back to normal again, now I'm home. The chickens are getting more distinctly separated. We have had the greatest difficulty discerning the genders in some of our birds. Some of the males mature faster than others, I think we are now 'there'. We have a house of girls (with 2 boys) and a house of boys (no girls). We have heard of a place where we can take our unwanted males and they will do the 'deed', leaving us with 'oven ready' chicken. We just have to find out where this place is and make the trip! The girls are safe. Well, I say that. On Sunday we were having our morning coffee when we heard a terrible hullabaloo outside our window - it turned out that a hawk was attacking one of the girl chickens. We chased the hawk off and it sat on the garden composter defying us until Phil threw a stick at it and then the dogs chased it off! This hawk was the same size as the chicken! We thought we only had foxes to worry about for the safety of our feathered family!
Our neighbour up the hill came down & ploughed our vegetable plot - I'm so grateful for him doing this as it is too much to dig by hand. In so doing he has brought another crop of rocks to the surface. We have quite rocky soil, it grows good stuff - as long as you want the crop 'on the rocks'!
Finally, today we attended the funeral of our 'next door' neighbour - about a kilometer away. Poor Ed hadn't been so well over the summer, but he looked quite well on Sunday at church. Funny what a week will bring. We will remember him fondly and always refer the corner to his property as 'Ed's gate'.