Settling into our home at the bottom of the harbour is like settling into a holiday home you haven't visited before. Blissful.
I still can't quite believe it when I look out the window to the harbour. It doesn't matter if it's full tide with the sun sparkling off the water, or if it's low tide with all the subtle shade that make up the wetlands. This is our home. It's not just a holiday house, even though the location would suggest that it was. It's our home.
Exciting news in this household is...the grass is growing! We planted grass seed just over a week ago and have been watching it for signs of growth. It really was a labour of love. The effort put into digging over the clay soil ready for sowing was high. After faithfully watering the patch, we now have green mixed in with the brown clay! I didn't expect it to be so exciting watching grass grow! But after the effort, time and energy - and nursing achy muscles after all the digging - it's nice to see some return for the effort.
We have herons visiting us regularly now. There were at least 5 of them perched up in our massively tall pine tree last week. I'm not sure whether they are white or grey herons, but none the less they are impressive birds. They perch up there squawking, croaking, and tapping on the tree like woodpeckers.
The sound of bird noise in the evenings is amazingly loud. Add to that the 'alarm bird' who calls through the night saying "beep...BEEP...........beep....BEEP.........beep...BEEP...." with the occasional chirp to let us know that he is indeed a bird and NOT the dishwasher having a function error! (we checked!)
Things are looking very green after some much needed rain. I'm sure our veges are standing taller and even grew overnight! The rain kept the white butterflies away for a while too...which is a good thing since I haven't managed to make an organic garlic spray to keep them away yet. We have chillies fruiting, and cherry tomatoes promising a decent crop. The tomato plants are still in buckets - and the garden centre lady was sceptical that buckets would be suitable as pots!! We have had brilliant veges growing in buckets and plastic pots every season. No need to buy expensive ones, even though she didn't agree...
School started yesterday, so we welcomed the kids back to a newly decorated and freshened up school. Zac spent many many hours improving the look of the place on the inside and giving the school some love and attention. The kids reactions made the time and effort worth it.
I get waves, smiles and still a few stares as the kids walk up the drive in the morning and back down it to the bus in the afternoon. Some of the little kids aren't sure of me yet, but then yesterday was the first chance I got to say "Hi", and this is a small school in the country where perhaps new faces around school aren't an everyday occurrence like in town.
Hearing the noise of children playing and enjoying school is amazing background noise as I work in my office or potter round the house. It's not so bad living in a bit of a fish bowl!
