Change In The Weather?

Normal for out here is clouds flowing in from the west, and occasionally dropping a bit of rain on us. Infrequently we might get clouds from the north to east quadrant of the sky that would occasionally drop a bit of rain. I remember sitting at a barbeque with friends across the road a couple of years ago and everyone commenting on the clouds from the north that were dropping a light sprinkle on us, saying how unusual it was.

In the last couple of months we've seen clouds come in from the east to north-east more frequently. At least two or three times this year already, and it always seems to co-incide with the big storms off the coast up in Queensland/Northern New South Wales. I'm not sure whether they will bring us any rain yet, the ones flowing in today don't seem to be putting a lot of effort in, but it's still early yet. They might put in some effort around 3pm. My fingers are firmly crossed as we haven't had any since the camping trip.

A more traditional westerly storm back in March

We didn't end up making good on the plans to go out camping again, ill kids don't mix well with the cold autumn nights that go along with camping out here. Maybe if we'd gone then we would have had more rain ;-)

I also held off on tree planting, I'd like to wait until the fruit plants are dormant, and I'm going to get another load of sheep manure from a local farm so that the other trees can get a good start in life. To be honest I'm also a bit reluctant to stick them in. I want them in the right spots, so I don't have to adapt plans around them later, and it's rather difficult to anticipate every possibility. I did nip out there last weekend and do a bit of measuring and planning. The time between now and planting can be spent designing the best plan of where the various things should go. I've only drawn up a hundred or so variations to date, there can't be many more possibilities!

I also managed to get out into the berry patch here and give it a good weeding and clean-up. Just got to try and keep it that way! Our new chooks have final reached laying age, we got our first egg yesterday, and another this morning, so we're off to a good start. I also had a chance to fire up the forge and hammer some hot metal, very satisfying after all those months. I made a rough imitation of a hand-held weeding hoe, though it didn't turn out much like I'd hoped. I'm going to try making a trowel and a replacement handle for our frying pan as my next projects, hopefully this weekend if time permits.