The moat around my castle

Do you think my library assistant is sending me a message?

I tried to explain to her that the beach is actually not AT ALL like the books she has read. The beach is actually very hot and crowded, and the sand is annoying, and the ocean is freezing cold and filled with scratchy seaweed and dangerous floating creatures and sharks.........

In any case, neither one of us made it to the beach today. It turns out that:

• We had no food left in the pantry.
• We had no food left in the fridge.
• We had no clean underwear to put on.
• The bathrooms were beginning to smell.
• Blue needed a really long walk, and then another one.
• Bills needed to be paid.
• Telephone calls needed to be made.

Need I go on people?

After much of the work was done I took a break in the back garden, and to my great surprise I noticed how beautiful the plants and trees were. I wrote about a cache of jewels hidden in the backyard, and yet it has taken me this long to notice my own backyard beauty.

Here is our neighbours' lilly pilly tree which thankfully shades our side of the fence as well....we have great neighbours!

Here is our eucalypt (its called most appropriately "Summer Beauty")

This is our grevillea.

And this is a vine which has FINALLY started to creep along its wire, and has FINALLY flowered. I have no idea what it's called.

So, dear Badger and Tuli, although I meant to build you both a sandcastle with a moat today, it will have to wait for tomorrow. For the moment though, you can picture me, if you will, unpacking the supermarket shopping in my kitchen, in my little house by the beach which is surrounded by a huge moat covered in blossoming plants and trees.

Yes, I quite like that...a moat which is so wide it is in fact an entire forest. Seeing as we are expecting our guests to arrive any minute, I may have to walk through the forest to show them the way.

Or maybe not.