Summer.....

Summer is here, finally and I forgot how truly awful it can be where we live. I am NOT a morning person and, since the kids are on holidays and we own our own business and we're on a weeks holiday, I tend to sleep in. Then when I get up it is already hot, hot, hot!

The unending humidity drains the strength out of you and makes you irritable. Team it with weeks of rain and you have a devastating mix of washing to do, mud, mosquitoes and high humidity. We also have a whole heap of yard work to do which just kills you in this heat. We tend to do what we have to do before 10am and then retire inside to catch up on indoor chores. The kids are I then have a lunchbreak around 12-2 or 3 where we watch a movie, play a game, read or just have quiet time. After 3 its cool enough in our backyard to go out and do some of the endless lopping and raking that a large sized yard offers up.

Today, I tackled the litter pile. We breed cats and cats have to poop and pee somewhere and we are lucky enough to use an all natural wood based product that breaks down and recycles really well. Problem is we have native trees that don't like a high acid soil. Hence the litter pile. It was fenced in on all sides by a corrugated tin fence but that fence had fallen down somewhat and it was teamed with my childrens inability to throw the litter waste into the center of the pile. Said pile had escaped and had worked its way UNDER my washing line. It irritated me no end and I finally had the chance to put it to rights. Before anyone goes all faint and carries on, it was like broken down woodshavings not actual poop. Poop was removed beforehand.

Anyway, I had started to shovel and cart it into the mud soaked chookpen (which is a whole other issue) and was met by Caitie who asked what I was doing. When I told her, she grabbed another shovel and started to help. I could have fallen over! Then, down came Conor....who grabbed another shovel and started to help....this was getting freaky. Finally Aiden came down and was handed a shovel by Caitlin and he jumped in to help as well. At this point toes were being close to being chopped off by four shovels going at once, so I proposed a Conga line.

There we were, Caitie- shovel, dump, back of the line, Aiden-shovel, dump, back of the line, Conor-shovel, dump, back of the line and finally Mummy-shovel, dump, back of the line. I kept the kids motivated by cheering them on and praising the size of the shovelfulls we had to get. It took about half an hour, if that, of solid work and my fence was restored on all four sides, we had had a run in with a legless lizard, numerous spiders and we all had fun!

Tomorrow, I have to do the same sort of thing with the used mulch in my stud cat pen as we have some Layyyydies coming to visit my boy. Lets see if I can get the Conga line started with the promise of iceblocks????