Green-Eyed Spaniel and the Birthday Blues

Milly managed to damage her one remaining eye a couple of days ago whilst rummaging in the undergrowth in our gully. And so yesterday saw our first visit to the Nimbin vet clinic. The very patient vet finally, after much struggling on Milly's part, got the anaesthetic into her eye, then green luminous liquid which dramatically revealed to minor ulcerations on the front of her eyeball. After further struggles, anti-biotics were adminstered directly into damaged the eye. The photo left shows Milly at home after the vets, looking thoroughly sorry for herself and distinctly Hulk-like in the eye region. Tam has since successfully applied further antibiotics to the eye, with great patience, and the eye is looking good - panic over and all traces of luminous green have gone. We are now looking at how we can fence a safe area off for Milly. (STOP PRESS: a week later, July 7th, and Milly's eye has healed well).

July is here already and our birthdays are over for another year. Yes we over-indulged, particularly as it was Tam's 40th - having birthdays 10 days apart is a bit like Christmas and New Year, a roller-coaster of seemingly unavoidable over-indulgence - and now, with some relief, its time to clean up my act and get on with sensible, productive stuff. Talking of sensible and productive, it must be mentioned that Tam impressively spent a good portion of her birthday making us a sofa - or rather a base for the foam mattresses that now serve as a sofa. Uncle Bob's saw came out for the first time since arriving in Aus and got the job done nicely.
My birthday began with this huge and divine bunch of flowers being presented to me, all picked by Tam from our garden in the early hours. I then spent the day walking up Mt Warning with my ever-so fit parents (Mum 69 and Dad 74), and the next four days recovering. My leg muscles have never ached so much!

My nephew Connor and his dad Ian (he who lent us his car for six weeks) came to stay for a few days - we took full advantage of the extra muscle power - they cleared a huge swathe of lantana from around the lower damn, enabling us to walk all around the pond for the first time ever. Connor enjoyed thrashing around with two machetes which proved very effective as long as no one else was within swiping distance and no emerging saplings were in the way! Connor managed to do all this and still not get any leaches or ticks on him! Ian and Tam spent hours clearing and resetting our blocked water supply to our water tank - given that inlet into the pipe is 1km away through bush/unmanaged woodlands, this was no mean feat. BIG THANK YOU to Ian and Connor for all their fantastic efforts AND the beer!

Today we saw four dark green and red parrots at the top of the drive - we think they were female King Parrots, but are not entirely sure. We also pruned a Tippocina. I haven't a clue how that should be spelt, but suffice to say the fantastic display of large purple flowers that greeted us on our arrival three months ago are now over and it was time to get that tree in shape - the over-grown branches were about 20' tall and we had to be careful not to damage the neighbouring flowering magnolia.

If its mild and dry tomorrow we can either fix the leak in the roof or poison weed trees, both activities require no rain. Poisoning in particular requires no rain AND no wind. We live on the edge of a national park and so minimising the number of invasive 'weeds' on our little patch is a basic and legal responsibility. And after 4 years of tenants who were not particularly interested in the impact of weeds, and with the rapid sub-tropical growth, we have rather a lot of weeding to do - and some are 20' trees requiring felling and poisoning! So leaking roof or invasive weeds? Or both?! Watch this space.

Candy, you may recognise a few items in this photo, taken late into the night last night!