For those of you who know Aidan, these are two piccies of him at school camp: doing his drum solo at the concert, and as part of the crew in the Mission Afloat whaleboat.

Bosie, with his $500 plaster cast. The cunning little beggar: he knows we have too much invested in him now to ever make capretto of him.

I wouldn't mind, except that I've now put the rubber rings on him, so he's purely a grass-eating pet from now on.

Sue discovers that wheelbarrows are not just decorative, but puts it to good use getting hay for the newly-arrived Clover. Note: 'er indoors is very careful about the boob-height electric fence.

So this is sunny Springtime (October) in Tasmania. Both Suzy and Aidan thought it was a bit of all right...although Brisbane was never like this.

The alpacas arrive. Aidan at the school sports. Bose after his first vet visit for an abscessed throat.

Has it really been 3+ months?

Ok, I'm sorry already.

Plenty has happened since the last blog.

Bose broke his leg. The sensible thing would have been to put him down, but it WAS little Bosie, so $500 later and the cast is off and he is ok although the leg will always be smaller than the other three.

We have a jersey cow, Clover, who is a darling. She does this head-nodding, swaying dance thing when I take her molasses down to her, so she is "our incredible dancing cow."

We are now back to two pigs: Dolly and Tilley remain and the last of the minis are gone. Aidan agreed that it was best for him to swap Goldie for Tilley as it gives him his best option of making a dollar.

In October we had 24 deg C and then, two days later, we had snow, and two days after that back to 22 C. Just after Christmas, we had snow down to 600 metres: midsummer snow in Oz!

We are digging potatoes regularly at the moment and working at building up the organic material in the veggie patch for next year.

I had an interesting school camp involving a face-plant on my part when my ticker decided to go aryhthmic on me. While getting that sorted out, they found that I am the proud owner of a 10mm kidney stone that will take surgery to remove. Now if I had descovered it before leaving the international teaching scene, the comprehensive medical cover would have been very helpful. As it is, I have to wait for an opening in the public system.

Aidan is powering on, working hard at school and at home and growing like bamboo in a swamp. He has become one of the most popular kids in our school, which is a great encouragement to him. He's home with his Mum and siblings at present, and sorely missed down here.

Next post I will add piccies.