Just quickly...

Catherine has *at last* updated her blog - click on the link to the right to navigate straight to Faerytopia.

Timber!

The treeloppers arrived yesterday morning and achieved an amazing amount of work in one day. Two enormous trees are gone - now mere heaps of wood chips on the block. It was sad to see them go.... and watching such a beautiful old tree go down is quite an experience. The word that springs to mind is majestic. Several large pieces of trunk also remain on the block, which we hope to grow vines over alongside the wheelchair pathway.



The trees really did need to come down, sadly. You can see from the above photo that one in particular had a decided lean towards the house. Garry experienced some anxious moments when the loppers were pulling down the first tree using a rope and truck - and the rope snapped, sending the tree swaying towards the house!

The skyline has changed quite a lot, as you can see from the before and after photo looking towards the house and shed from our driveway:




Postscript: One sad thing about this was that cutting down trees is so much against the way I prefer to be in the world. I would much rather plant trees, and nurture them to full growth.... to prune them into beautiful shapes... to enjoy their unique shapes and scents and sounds. Chopping them down is an ugly act, one that brings none of the creative delight that getting to know a tree does.

Awwww

Ctrl Alt Delete cat.... needs someone to hold Alt

see more crazy cat pics

HSM Ice Tour

Catherine and I travelled to Brisbane last Friday to see the fabulous "High School Musical Ice Tour". It was so much fun to take her - she loves both movies and knew all the songs and characters. The show was very impressive, with some excellent ice skaters, costumes and special effects. Makes me wish I could look as graceful on ice! The only sour note was the merchandising, which was excessive and overpriced.

All in all - it was great and we both really enjoyed ourselves.

PS, I haven't been able to upload pictures to my blog for weeks and weeks... a problem I don't know how to solve. Sorry for the pictureless posts, everyone.

Back to uni

Being back at university has taken some getting used to after the long summer holiday. The routine for Garry and myself changes quite dramatically during uni semesters, keeping both of us rather busy. I'm doing two subjects this semester - Nursing Research and Human Pathophysiology. The Nursing Research subject is irksome and should be completely revised (in my humble opinion), while the pathophys is the highlight of my study week. I love the way concepts fall into place and relate to clinical nursing in this unit, and the laboratory sessions have also been very practical and enjoyable.

So it's a mixed bag this sememster.