Almost end of term3.

It's been a busy term at work but nothing much is happening on the house front.
I would still prefer to have reticulation for our garden and lawn at the front of the house but given that we have horrendously poor water pressure the only way to do it is to install a water tank and a pump and G isn't keen to spend the $ on that.

 So for a while we were at a stalemate. Eventually  I gave up the dream and agreed to us using the money on the final retaining wall. We tried to contact our retaining wall man.  No luck. We'd left several messages and then noticed that  he'd stopped advertising in the local paper. We think he was away on holidays. ( recently we've noticed his ads have reappeared so hopefully that means his back but in the meantime...) We've found out a good friend who lives about 100 mins away can do the job though so we might end up getting him to do it.  Anyway by the time we found out about our friend we were almost due to go on 2 weeks holidays so we delayed organising the work.  Now it's starting to warm up I think I'd rather get some lawn before the much hotter weather starts than do the wall. So we are back at square 1.

In the garden there is still some earth to shift before I can get seriously started on the main front garden bed.
The 3 silver birches are starting to get leaves. We still need 2 more. The manchurian pear is in blossom and also getting some leaves. The maple and flowering plum  have little leaf buds and 4 of our larger mulberry cuttings not only have leaves but also mulberries! I'm hoping for some nice weather this weekend as last weekend we had an extra 4 teenagers pretty much most of the weekend and I was on parent duty not garden duty.  Evenings are still cool as are early mornings so we are still enjoying having a fire at night although I don't think that will happen for much longer.

Finally, 3 months down the track we again have a functioning ute that isn't a complete safety hazard. We've been able to get a replacement fuel tank so there's no more fuel leaking everywhere and the front drive area doesnt stink of petrol. YIppee.


Our holiday.

8 days in Bali. :)  We relaxed, wandered Sanur, went to an elephant park and rode the elephants and generally had a lovely time. So much so we've already booked again for next year.

This is where we stayed

.http://www.gardeniaguesthousebali.com/Gardenia/about_us.html

It was a fabulous little place not a hotel complex.   7 rooms around a small pool  leading to a coffee shop near the road.  This was where we had breakfast and  a number of other meals and the most delicious cappuccino's.  We've booked to stay here again.

 This is the elephant Park in Taro ( near Ubud) that we visited.
http://www.baliadventuretours.com/BAT-Elephant_Park.htm

Lovely grounds and very clean, the elephants look well cared for and getting to hand feed the baby elephants was very exciting.