I am thinking of lining up for the Olympics in a new sport called "Clean up". This morning , Monday morning, is Daycare. The community bus picks Ray up at 9.20am. At 9 0'clock he was ready to go out to the verandah to sit in the sun and wait for them. I went on doing the laundry. A few minutes later I thought I heard a door close but thought no more of it until I heard Ray call: "Suuuuue" . Yep, clean up time and only eight minutes to go until the bus is outside our door. I won't go into the details but I reckon it was like one of those cartoons where you only see a blur as I cleaned him up, put clean clothes on him and just had him back on the verandah when the bus pulled in. If there was a gold medal for the event I would have got it easily.

Apart from that life is good, the weather seems a bit milder so the laundry comes in sun-dried again. I prefer that to putting it into a dryer. The environmentalists have calculated the cost of drying a load at 85c so I must have saved a small fortune over time by letting the sun do the job for me. And with Ray's "accidents" I do a heap of washing every week now. I am aware now of course that I use Depends on him and that is an environmental hazard too but haven't thought of any way out of that. Some things you just have to do.

I was able to spend some time in the garden over the weekend too, potting up, which means taking the plant out of a small pot and putting it in the next size up and adding some more soil to give it's roots more room and allowing it room to grow. As it is mild weather it is okay to do that now. I will reap the benefits in Spring. I have a heap of bromiliads to split up and repot and will keep some and give some away. I have three nice varieties and they all bloomed prolifically this autumn. I have an orchid just blooming which is odd as it should bloom in September. I am not good at raising orchids so think this is one that I got from an old friend who is a real green fingers. Anyway it is nice that it has decided to bloom. I brought it down closer to the house so I can see it and appreciate it.

This time last year I was complaining about the cold. It is cold of a night but the days have been warmer for the last three days. It makes all the difference when you can go out in the sun and just feel the wamth on your back. The tree feller comes tomorrow to take the half-fallen tree down, grind it up and take it away. I am sad at losing a tree. I planted three of them in 1986, all too close together of course and in a position where we now need the sun to shine on our clothes line. But the birds that use the tree, the owls and bats at night, the shade it provided and just the pleasure of hearing the wind rustle in the treetop has given me so much pleasure. So sad to see you go, tree.

The gardening is hard work. I need to redig a lot of the garden at the back of the block but that means moving the gardens and I don't have the energy for it this winter. The alternative is to dig out old long legged geraniums and clumps of tuber bells and take some cutting off the geraniums and plant the bells down the side of the house to brighten up the garden there when they bloom at Christmas time. Then I need to find some alternative plants to fill in the gaps up the back. One of the nice things about that is suddenly noticing that something new is flowering and see how that alters the outlook. It is special to be able to have even a little bit of garden around you when some people live in high rise and have no connection to the soil at all.

We have a lot of bird noises as birds are pairing up already for the spring nestings. A lot of our birds stay as we have a mild winter here. They find shelter on the heathland that comes up from the cliffs the other side of the hill behind us. On a good day I used to take a walk up there and watch the birds fly out of the scrub and out over the sea before circling inland to find insects or flowers to feed on. It is amazing how much wild life there is right under our noses. And it just takes a few minutes of standing still and quiet to see any number of interesting interactions between the world of nature and the world of human suburban living taking place.

And of course if I am really lucky I can drive by the beach and maybe sit a spell and enjoy watching wave after wave come into the shore. It is another way of widening my horizon and putting my troubles back into perspective. Like each tiny drop of water that makes a wave, each person here is connected to others to form a human chain, part of the Earth family, part of a larger planetary system, in a larger universe.

Makes our troubles seem small and insignificant, eh?