The week beginning 13 July, 2002.

Saturday, 13^th

We went to the birthday party of someone who, at present, only answers to 'Harry'.  He's five and is Stephan's great-nephew.  Stephan made his fabulous cheese-cake and, oh, how unfortunate, we had to bring some home again.

Sunday, 14^th

What a bee-yoo-ti-ful day! A treat for the mud-dwellers.

I cleaned out Ms Duck's bath (outside our living-room window), which had become rather mucky, with her washing herself, too many other-duck visitors and lots of things growing around the sides.  Duck had become a less frequent bather over the last couple of days, so I scrubbed it all out and it's as 'white' as it ever gets.  She sat on the edge of the roof and looked quizzically down on me at work.  I dashed in to get the camera to catch that look, but she'd unfortunately moved on to a grooming session and wasn't taking the same amusing interest.  Look at that sky!

It has been 57 days since we've had a day without any rain at all.  There has been the occasional bit of sunshine, quickly followed by more rain, but I don't think the sun-bursts have lasted for more than half an hour at a time.  Fortunately the temperatures have been quite mild, so although we have been very damp, we've not been particularly cold.

Monday, 15^th

Finally, some decent pig-hunters!  We've had enormous numbers of wild pigs out at the back of the farm, digging up the pasture and making a terrible mess.  We've counted as many as 30 at a time, basking in the sun on a hill-side. Fortunately I've never come across anything quite as big and fierce as this big boar, which chased the two guys up a tree and severly injured a couple of their dogs. We welcome hunters who get out there and actually do something about our pig problem.  We've had various attempts made by blokes with guns, a bloke with bow & arrows, blokes with dogs & guns, blokes with dogs & knives and blokes with dogs who caught pigs and took them away to release somewhere else.  Some of them have managed to lose their dogs every time they've gone out, with which we have not been at all happy. The best sort are these, who arrive with dogs and whatever weapons they choose, go out for a while and return with the same number of dogs and at least one dead pig! Bravo and Encore!

There has been a lot of lovely sunshine during the rest of this week.  The downside of fine winter weather is frost at night and we ended the week with three in a row and one was particularly crunchy!  Our main grass here is kikuyu which is particularly frost-sensitive and goes yellow and then dead looking after frost.  It takes a lot to kill it, but it won't grow much until the weather warms again.