On the Friday night a facet of my ill-spent youth revisited and I spent over an hour studying the form for the 7 race program and making my selections. Then I spent an hour explaining ‘racing’ to the co driver who was quite excited about her first ever day at the races.
But fate intervened overnight and into the morning when the heavens opened up and dumped 70mm (3inches) of rain on us in a few hours which caused the races to be cancelled.
It was even more galling that by lunchtime it was all blue sky and sunshine.
Sunday however found us early on the road and heading west to the quilt shows. I won’t go into details as the co driver has finally started a quilt blog ‘Coloring Outside the Lines’ and you can catch up with news of the shows there.
But that is typical of early summer weather here. Hot sticky days followed by thunderstorms and a cool southerly change. Last night was a corker! Hours of thunder and lightning, some simultaneous, accompanied by patches of torrential rain. And it’s amazing how localised these thunderstorm cells can be. My rain gauge showed 8.5 mm while the official weather station some 20km north recorded only 2.4mm.
Meanwhile all the cattle, including the new calves, have gone next door for a short holiday. Neighbour Bob has some paddocks full of long grass that needs eating and he appreciates the fertiliser that is deposited in the process.
The grapes are growing like triffids with all this warm wet weather and it’s been a bit of a battle to keep them under control (green pruning) as well as keep the spraying up. There doesn’t appear to be the volume of fruit on the shoots this year as in the past however.
So we are winding down for Christmas. Our only commitment for this is hosting the valley get together in a few weeks. Other than that and a visit from the daughter it will be the usual low key event.
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