This morning, as I approached this tree to do my stretches after my walk, this little guy was catching worms between his glorious songs to the morning. I didn’t have the heart to disturb him, so did my stretches at the next tree and enjoyed his singing:-)

What a beautiful morning it was this morning! Up early enough to catch the sunrise, little tufts of winter grass appearing on one of the sandy paths, the ospreys in their nest in the top of the tallest pine tree…who could ask for more?

This morning, to get the kiddliwinks tired as it’s the school holidays and they are BORED, we took them to the “blue park” (Tom names parks after the colours of their slides). They had a great time, climbing up the stairs to the top platform, then coming down the slide together is a tangle:-)

Then Christopher patiently taught Thea how to swing herself (again).

Today Tom was on school holidays, and Rob and I had to do some errands for our boat, Dusky Dolphin. So we took Tom with us.

On the way to the boat we dropped into a deli to get some afternoon tea. When I looked around to tell Rob and Tom that I’d found some nice food, this is what I saw…

Look at their hands – it’s amazing the gorgeous things that come down across the generations:-)

For the first time in at least six months, Rob’s favourite umbrella has been unearthed for use in the…rain! Yes it rained this week. Apart from the storm of 22nd March, we have not had rain for a long, long time.

Yes, summer is over and the cooler days of autumn are well and truly here. I even had to find a jumper to wear on my walk yesterday – it took me at least 10 minutes to find it, it’s been so long since I wore it!

When I was in the back yard today, sweeping up the next lot of leaves, I heard a butcher bird calling from the branches above. I put aside my rake and watched it for a while. It alternated between calling and having its head on one side as it listened to another butcher bird calling from somewhere nearby. My fingers and toes were crossed that we have another pair of them coming together soon to make babies each year as we’ve got used to:-)

This morning at 8am sharp we had Dusky Dolphin in the lifting pen at the sailing club, and the waiting lifter put the slings under the right places (directed by Rob!) and she was hauled out of the water.

It was straight to the wash-down bay, and you can see the before and after of this process!

As we walked beside her to the bay, my nose remembered the ocean-y smell she always has when she comes out of the water. It had gone with all the marine growth after her wash-down:-(

Various workmen and Rob and I will be busy doing the annual maintenance on her for a few weeks now…

Tonight Rob came home and, with his characteristic grin, put this on my desk in front of me. It was a very generous Thank You! gift from a very grateful patient, whom Rob had brought back to life after she had had a heart attack in January.

Apparently she is much happier and more relaxed about life since she “came back”.

This morning the builders came…the builder’s supervisor and his assistant, the builder’s glazier and his assistant, and the builder’s electrician and his assistant. They spent 2 hours going through all the storm damage, including the aftermath of the inland sea that had sat in the ceiling space until it flooded or seeped through. As they were finishing off, it was time for Blaine to take Tom and Thea home. Thea had her stickers that I’d bought her for Easter, and insisted that each of the builders take one and put it his tee-shirt!

She’s a funny girl.

When Tom opened his last weekend, he too went around the house giving out spider stickers, and Rob put his on the back of the cord-less telephone!

Yesterday Rob and I dragged ourselves from our sick beds to start cleaning up the leaves in the back yard. The storm had cleared a lot of the leaves out of our trees and washed them to the ground. So we had a HUGE leaf drift in the back yard. And we took down the broken shade cloth, sadly just renewed a few months ago.

As we worked, we heard calling:

crows, magpies, magpie larks, butcher birds, the lone black cockatoo, the black cockatoo group, the lone cockatoo joining the group (yay!), several “28” cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, doves, kookaburras.

And later, as we sat in the family room enjoying our end-of-day drinks, the flock of silver-eyes that comes through our yard each evening at dusk was back!

There are definitely less of each bird species, but all the species are here once more.

Thank heavens:-)