First Meeting
Today Shimi is exactly 8 weeks old and we brought her home. She did not enjoy the trip home in the car but decided she loved her new bed. Mahli had smelt Shimi on us over the past weeks and she tentertively met her on the front lawn before she came into the house. Mahli’s behaviour reminds us of how Jessie was when we brought Mahli home as an 8 week old puppy…. if she looks the other way and pretends she is not there.. then she is not!
New bed
Kids in the Kitchen
On the middle weekend of the Spring School holidays J, P & R and kids and Cliff, Mitch, Sheldon, Caitlin & I spent a few days at Mandurah. We were only spending Saturday and Sunday night there. We decided that the kids could cook dinner on Saturday night. Caesar Salad was decided on. Mitchell (18), Eila (15), Sheldon (15), Caitlin (14), Lewis (13) and Aaron (13) headed to the kitchen and without one fuss all decided what part of dinner they were doing.
Mitchell diced the chicken and he and Aaron headed off to the bbbq to cook it. Caitlin diced and cooked the bacon. The boys diced up bread and drizzled it with garlicy olive oil and put it into the oven. Eila, Sheldon & the others then set about cutting up the salad. Lettuce, onion, capsicum, avocado etc.
The final result was spectacular and delicious and we were all very proud of our kids. Not so much because of the food but because not one of the whinged and there were no disagreements. Total Team Work!
More amazing is that without a sound Eila headed back to the kitchen and washed and wiped up on her own!
Shimi gorgeous at 7 weeks
Shimi - 22 Oct 2009
Shimi is 7 weeks old and she is absolutely beautiful. I dropped into see her on the way home from work today. I figured it would be good if she got to know me a bit and that if I smelt and sounded familiar when we pick her up next Saturday to come to her new come that maybe she would settle more easily.
All of the puppies are just so gorgeous…. 7 weeks is just a lovely age when all their little personalities start to come out. As it turns out Shimi is a quiet girl. Several of the others were yapping a lot, one kept climbing over the little fence into the next pen, no matter how many times Stef put her back! I picked Shimi up and sat her on my knee and she happily stayed there for 15 minutes. She sniffed me all over and looked at me quietly. She reminds me a lot of the type of puppy Jessie used to be (Jessie of course the reason why we chose to get a goldy!).
9 sleeps before Shimi comes home 
We chose Shimi today! 3 weeks until she comes home.
Shimi 5 Weeks old
Caitlin with pups (4 weeks)
We decided to go and meet Bonnies puppies so Caitlin, Cliff and I headed over there on Saturday 3rd October. Although 9 puppies had been born we discovered one had been put to sleep (the largest female) because she had a cleff palate and couldn’t feed properly. So that leaves just 4 females and there are two people choosing before us. We contacted the owner, Mark, the following week when the pups were 5 weeks and he advised that the first person having a female had already chosen their pup and they will advise as soon as it is our turn. Hopefully that will be sometime during this week.
I asked Mark about the big difference in size of the puppies…. a couple are large, several are medium sized and then there are 2 very small ones. He said that Bonnie had been mated on 3 occasions and therefore conception had occured over a 5 day period and that the smaller pups were last conceived. Mark said that the smaller pups will catch up in size in their first year.
Well two weeks have past on spring clean 15 and I feel two weeks better than the last photo. I have exercised more in the past two weeks than any other time in the past 18 months and that alone has made me feel great. I cycled 40kms on Friday, spent Sat, Sun and Mon working up at the farm, and Cliff and I cycled 16kms to Canning Bridge and back after work last night getting home just on darkness. Tonight we will be leaving dead on 5pm so we can repeat last nights cycle.
Richie
Today, after many, many years of procrastinating we took the plunge and bought a tractor! Richie is a Shimbaura Tractor that was originally used in Japan and has been imported as a 2nd hand machine. They get a good looking over and service to make sure all is ok before they are sold. Richie has only done 298 hours work to now. It seems crazy that Japan only allows cars and other vehicles (and obviously tractors) to have a short working life before off loading them to elsewhere in the world (I guess to spread the polution!).
Anyway…… we found Tractorama after speaking to our Piesse Brook neighbour who had bought a very handsome tractor there some months prior. We’d previously looked at bobcats (way too expensive), dingos (too small and light for the work we need done), articulated vehicles (very expensive) and tractors before (usually ones leaking oil and in bad repair). The tractors we saw all looked almost new but had not had paint touch ups or anything. We narrowed it down to 3 we liked that were in our price range and that Cliff could sit in without his knees painfully banging against metal as he drove it.
Richie (named so as Shimbaura is similar to “Richie Sambora” of Bon Jovi fame….. don’t know why that came to mind but it did at the time and I can accept that Cliff thinks it’s totally stupid and a name not befitting a tractor any way) will be delivered to his new home in two weeks time. We are looking forward to many years of happy sand moving, stump pulling out, rock shuffling, trench digging and diggin in of reticulation! It’s gotta beat doing all that by hand as we’ve done for the last 6 1/2 years! or hiring machines.
Today Mark emailed a couple of photos over of Bonnie’s puppies. They weighed only 450-500 grams at birth 3 weeks ago. They certainly have grown. We are allowed to go and meet the puppies when ever we like now, touch them and play with them. At week 5 we can choose which little girl will be ours. Somehow I don’t want to meet them yet in case I fall in love with one that someone else will choose as we have 3rd choice out of the 3 girls. In another way I want to meet them and take photos and maybe the one that stands out to us will end up ours.
Left side looking up the hill
As it was the (Queen’s birthday)
Looking down to the backLooking down to the back
long weekend we decided to head up to the “farm” to do some maintenance. We’d stayed there the weekend before and had taken up bedding, towels and other essentials which meant all we needed to take was clothes and some food.
Every time I stay there for the night… window open, fresh air blowing in, dark night sky, stars and silence (other than the dulcet tones of varioius species of frogs) I am reminded at just how magical this place is and how much I have missed it in the past 18 months I haven’t lived there.
Saturday morning Cliff jumped on our newly serviced lawnmower to mow the main grass area while the blades were brand new (before I got my hands on them!). I decided to use the mattock to get out a few rocks (that are large enough to ruin mower blades)
A momentus occasion - Mitch whipper snipping
that were firmly embedded in the
Cliff on the whipper snipper
grass so they were impossible to see when mowing. I then took on the task of digging up the roots and chopping out the two stagnent mango trees. The first only a metre tall has not grown in the 6 1/2 years we’ve had the block. I chopped a branch to test the wood and found it very soft. I only had to dig around the root ball and down a foot to be able to chop through enough of the main roots I could push the tree over and remove it. The second tree was about 7 foot tall but had never fruited or look anything much. Due to its size it was much harder to dig out but I managed to use the mattock to clear beside each of the big roots and was able to chop through them and after pushing the tree in each direction snapped through enough roots to remove the tree also.
Kookaburra - and spot the two willy wagtails
At midday Cliff & I headed down to
Peaceful place
M&D Smiths to watch the footy grandfinal between Geelong and St Kilda. We both wanted St Kilda to win but sadly they never rose to the occasion and Geelong were the better side on the day and took the cup. St Kilda ended the season with only 2 losses all year and about 12 points clear of the 2nd side (Geelong). After the game we headed back up to Piesse Brook to continue on the mowing.
On Sunday Cliff started the whipper snipping. Mitchell met us up the farm (after driving himself there for the first time) and did a spot of whipper snipping. I thought I’d take a photo to commemorate the momentus occasion that one of our children actually picked up a gardening implement and used it (even if it was just for 1/2 hour)… not one whinge was even had (a double miracle).
Mahli exhausted after a long weekend
I mowed the bottom grass area and then started ont he left paddock. Our friendly kookaburras headed over and perched on low branches for a good view of any mice or large insects we may have been disturbing. They have become so tame they are not the least bit scared of us. They sit in the tree and allow us to get to only a foot or two away to take a photo and they just look at us and cock their heads blinking. They swoop down in front of the mower or whipper snipper with seemingly no fear we are going to hit them. They are not the least bit concerned about Mahli either!
On Monday we decided to sleep in and read for a while before heading out to finish off the bottom paddock before cleaning off the mower and putting everything back in our superbly clean shed (cleaned last weekend!).
Next Saturday we have the tree Fritz coming over to quote on trimming the dead wood off the willows and trimming a couple of the branches off the trees on the verge which Western Power have been flagging for years!
The Royal
On Friday 25th September we decided to cycle to East Perth and back (from the Lake House). We headed off late at 10am after buying a couple of doggy toys and bones for Mum’s 6 month old pup Bonnie so she would did up J&P’s garden in our absence.
The round trip was 40kms and we stoped near the river in East Perth for lunch at “The Royal”. Pol had the seafood risotto, Jules had the cajun chicken salad and I had the tasting plate (which scored a 10/10) and probably took me the 40km cycle to work the calories off.
