Hectic

I never have enough time these days therefore I am resorting to point form.

1. Farewelled Brett (he headed off to snowboard in Whistler, and work if/when he finds the time)

- 24 yo country bumpkin told me I would still look attractive if I wore more!
- ended up at the Casino at 6 am with a wiggle of the yellow persuasion, turns out he grew up over the hill from me.

2. Farewelled Dave (he is headed for Chicago mainly for work)

- The trip down to Melbourne was very eventful
a) I ran out of petrol, but managed to stop just across the road from a service station.
b) very shortly after I resumed my journey I noticed the car wasn't traveling smoothly so pulled over to the smell of burning rubber. I must have punctured my tyre when I initially pulled over after running out of petrol. This completely killed my tyre. I was about to change it when the RACV (roadside assistance) pulled in behind me and kindly (and speedily) did it for me.
I considered buying a lottery ticket.

- Out for drinks in Melbourne a girl came up told me that her friend liked me. A mate of Dave's kindly (played the part and) told her I was his wife and to bugger off. Later one of the girls with us asked why I didn't even look to see what I thought of him.... it just reminded me of primary school....

3. I'm now back at the vineyard. I spent the morning collecting samples of various grape varieties. I then had to do some work in the lab to determine the Beaume, which indicates sugar and therefore potential alcohol levels and this was as close to doing an experiment as I have been in years.

Frozen vines

On the other end of the weather spectrum some vines in the same block that had the lightening strike, suffered from frost bite over winter. Damage from frost bite is only obvious much later.

The vines are basically ring-barked, stressing the vine, causing the leaves to turn red (and look very pretty) and the grapes in the bunches are often varying sizes.

Fried vines

Lightening hit one of the post on the vineyard. This fried all the vines on that row. Luckily the root systems wasn't killed and the vine produced new shoots

Animals

When I left the farm before Christmas we had 1 dog, 4 chickens, 5 pigeons, 4 ducks and 4 geese.


When I returned we (still) had 1 dog and 4 chickens, but now had 6 pigeons, 13 ducks and 10 geese. Dad bought new geese but the other fowl were newly hatched. The ducklings were gorgeous but the same couldn't be said for the baby pigeon...



Mum getting cross with me

The pigeon did look a little better once it had grown some feathers.

Farm Sunset

Farm

My sister has left for Griffith, she is at another winery getting some experience. Aside from the odd trip home she will be there 'til April. Thus my father asked me to move to the vineyard and work with him. So here I am.

Life on the vineyard used to be relaxing, sleeping, reading, the occasional walk with Boo... Now I get up between 6 and 7 am and work until 8 or 9pm with a couple of hours off in the middle of the day when it is too hot to work. But even in my lunch break there is always something else to be done... Ahh well it's good to be busy after all this time off.

Dot

A very good friend of my mothers died the recently and I went to the memorial service the other day. It was a very interesting experience, Dotty was 94 and had lived an amazing life. She spent the majority of her life as a nun, then left when she was 66. She then spent the next 28 years living life to the fullest. She saved her pension and backpacked around the world on a shoes string, going everywhere, doing everything, including sleeping on beaches in Goa with her grand niece. Her last trip was just last year. She also had an incredible thirst for knowledge. She decided she needed to learn how to use a computer so she could access the internet. So she enrolled in TAFE. She loved it and kept re-enrolling in all sorts of course. When she tried to enroll two years ago there was a problem, the computer didn't like it, so head office called up as they thought there was a mistake. No one had ever enrolled at the age of 92. She enrolled in another course again the following year and would have this year as well.

She truly was an inspirational woman.

On the weekend

I went to a wedding. It started with a Greek Orthodox ceremony. I have never experienced one of these before and what made it even more interesting was that most of it was in Arabic. I decided the bride and groom must have been married when everyone started clapping and they went to sign the register.

The reception was another unusual event (for me), again a lot of Arabic spoken, but there was also two features of the wedding I really liked. One there was dancing when the bride and groom arrived, there was dancing before the main course and there was dancing after the speeches. The groom's father did a great job giving his entire speech in English, I could tell it was very difficult for him (most of the people in the immediate families had flown in from Jordan/Egypt). But the other feature I loved was the ability for the people in the reception to demand (in a very sweet way) that the bride and groom kiss - by chiming their forks and glasses. It was very cute.

It was a very interesting wedding

Happy New Year

Welcome 2008! New year = clean slate, yah!

Christmas, that time of year when you eat too much, drink too much and spend time with those you love. My Christmas was, ummm, well it is over for at another year. That said I did get some excellent presents, another chilli plant - I can never have enough of these, a very handy pocket-sized take everywhere chilli supply and off the subject of chilli, a blowtorch. These presents did greatly enhance the whole Christmas experience!

NYE saw a last minute plan change and late dash to Wollongong. We watched the fireworks on the harbour, after John very skillfully found parking for both the cars just meters from the view point. They weren't quite Sydney's fireworks but they were surprisingly good. We then saw out 2007 with (too) many jager bombs, lovely food and wonderful company.

The following day we all headed to the beach, when we arrived the flags were about 2 meters apart, but soon after the beach was closed. Fortunately there was a pool so we were still able to cool off. I realised I only went to the beach once in Australia in 2007, hopefully that wont be my only visit in 2008.

Unfortunately, I left one of my cameras down at The Gong so can't put up any photos at the moment.