A winter’s tale …

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is sometimes regarded as something of a problem child, being part drama and part comedy (in fact there is a school of thought that believes the play is really a parallel of the fall from grace and beheading of Anne Boleyn in 1536). Luckily there has been no drama on that kind of scale in the Huon Valley, but the last week has been hard to categorise exactly. The weather has played its role and has been characteristic of what I think a Tasmanian winter should be like. At times it has been gloriously clear and crisp with bright sunshine, at other times it has been pouring with heavy winter rain and then again for a few days it was simply very bleak and very cold with snow prominent on the surrounding hills. 

Cath and Pepper hogging the fire

Despite the inclement weather and the general sense of not being able to achieve quite as much as expected, when I think back over the week and bit since our adventures with the wassailing, we have actually achieved a fair amount. First and foremost among these was the visit of Cath’s mum to Cracroft Farm. Cath drove up to the north of the state early in the week and drove back the following day, bringing her mum down for a visit. At 97 years of age, Frances was remarkably chipper when she arrived and seemed none the worse for the 4-hour plus drive. It was pretty incredible that she was seeing the Huon Valley for the first time and is an enviable accomplishment when so close to notching up a century. We were really happy that Frances could make it down to visit as our paddock is slowly being transformed into a garden courtesy of a multitude of gems (irises, hellebores, daffodils, snowdrops, rhododendrons, azaleas and camelias to name but a few) from her garden. 

Treasures from Grandma's garden

Although she did feel the effects of the drive the next day, by the afternoon it was clear that she was eyeing off the tractor for a spin around the yard.

Grandma eyeing off a tractor

In between driving Frances to and from the Huon and sheltering in place while winter storms raged around us, we did actually manage to achieve a few things. In a previous post (‘The avenue …’), I mentioned our friendly four-legged neighbours, the Dexters. This week the Dexters left us, hopefully for greener pastures, and left behind the wonderful parting gift of trampled hay and cow manure. One of the first big improvements we made around this time last year, was to get the retaining wall on the eastern face of the shed sorted out by using up a pile of rocks that was a huge eyesore (see the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos in the post ‘The blue digger …’).  While the wall is great, the area just beneath the it, particularly the north facing aspect, has become overgrown with weeds and remains very rocky. We have embarked on a soil improvement scheme which has involved large amounts of horse manure and a steady stream of trampled hay mixed with cow dung from the neighbours field.  The area is now starting to look like the beginning of a beautiful north facing garden bed. 

 

Our final project before Cath’s departure for Brisbane today was to put up the wooden posts that will act as the corner pieces for our orchard fence. After much measurement and failure to reach agreement on the positioning of a perfect rectangle we resorted to dead reckoning and simply ‘eyed’ out the best positions, knowing that the positions would have to shift dependent on the state of the ground (we are located on an extremely rocky ridge!). We managed to get all the posts in, including two additional ones that will hold the entrance gate. In fact, the whole episode was carried off in perfect harmony with no lurches toward the divorce courts at all. I suspect that all bets will be off when we finally have to decide on a conventional stay, or a box stay for the posts. 

 

 

Conventional versus box stays

 

I think we have agreed that the rocky ground favours the conventional assembly, but then there is the secondary question of whether to notch the post or the stay! Amazing what can keep you awake at night on a rural property ….