Hill House

 Lindsey and Ian have taken advantage of the opening of the border between Victoria and New South Wales to go to Sydney so they can finally meet their grandbaby, who is 4 or 5 months old.

Jim and I have relocated to Hill House to stay with Rupert and Hugo.  Brandy and Whiskey have not. So I go down to Tani each morning and each afternoon for an hour or two each time. I feed and water the cats, play with them a bit, water the garden, check out my seedlings and generally potter around. Brandy and Whiskey don't seem to be particularly perturbed by this, though they are pleased to see me when I appear.  As you would expect.  I  proffer food!

Chris came to Ballarat to go shopping on Tuesday and popped by for a spot of lunch.  We had that at Tani - exciting to have visitors now that it is allowed. Up to 15 a day for now, rising to 30 in mid-December.  I can't imagine many occasions when I would want to have more than 30 visitors in the course of a day.  I'm not sure that 30 people would fit in our house and garden.  They would fit at Hill House, so if I were minded to have a gigantic gathering it would have to be up here. 

Jim added a certain level of excitement yesterday by deciding, against all advice to the contrary, to go out and start planting potatoes at around 17:00.  He can't find his large, potato planting dibber so was using my small, seedling planting dibber. He had planted five potatoes when his knees locked and he couldn't get up.  In fact, he couldn't move.

I went down to the potato patch to see what he was doing and why he was making strange noises. We managed to get him sitting on the ledge that separates the terraces.  I could not get him up.  This was strangely reminiscent of trying to get Stella up last week! However, Jim had not fallen, as such and I was not going to call an ambulance if it could be avoided.  The problem was that his knees were not minded to cooperate. Eventually I got the shower chair which was stable enough to give him some leverage and he was upright. But his knees were still not minded to cooperate and he couldn't walk properly. So I fished the spare walker (you may remember that Stella bought a new one last week; the old one had been left here) out of the shed and we managed to get him into the house.

I am now officially over trying to hoik people up from a sitting position who are unable to get up under their own steam. I will plant the rest of the potatoes myself, not using my small dibber but by digging a small trench and chucking them in. And hope that I remain upright and mobile. There is no one to get me up if I can't do it myself!

Apart from that, it's been a largely uneventful week. I can live without "events", people coming for lunch always excepted, of course.

Stella's Busy Few Days

We met Lindsey and Stella at Pipers for lunch on Thursday. I know we had only recently been to Pipers, but it is in a nice location, has easy wheelchair access and does nice enough food. We sat outside under cover, the weather was lovely, the lake was sparkling and we enjoyed our food.

All was well. Until Stella went to get her bank card out of her purse.  We could not find it! This was slightly alarming because I was the last person who had had it.  On Wednesday, Stella and I had gone to Sebastopol for Stella to have a blood test.  On our way back we had called at the butcher and the IGA and Stella had given me her card to pay for her purchases.  I was sure I had handed it straight back but in the purse it was not.

I went to check the car, to see if it had been left in there.  Lindsey turned out Stella's bag to see if it was in there.  No card.

We turned out the bag again, just in case it was hiding.  Stella found her card in a secret pocket that Lindsey and I hadn't noticed.  Much relief!  Excellent.  Now we can all go off to do various other things.

But wait! I no longer had my car key. I had had it, when I checked the car for the bank card. I did not have it now. Jim and I wouldn't be going anywhere very much without the car key.  There was a momentary panic until we looked in Stella's bag. Again. And there it was. It had been scooped up with everything else after Stella had found her bank card.

Excellent.  Jim and I could go home. Stella and Lindsey went to the disability aid shop and bought a new, lightweight wheelchair and a new walker.

On Friday, Freyja came up from Melbourne on the train to meet Stella, Jim and me for lunch.  We had it at Tani. After lunch I took Stella back up to Hill House.  Rupert and Hugo were pleased to see us back when we got out of the car.  Alas, Stella missed her step going up onto the porch and toppled over.  Fortunately she was not hurt (although a little bruised), but I could not get her back up again.  Rupert, particularly, was dismayed that Stella was sitting on the front porch step and not coming back into the house.  I think Stella was a bit dismayed as well!

We had to call an ambulance to get Stella back up on her feet.  I have to say I felt slightly uncomfortable calling for an ambulance when no one was actually hurt, but the ambulance service does offer a Getting People Back On Their Feet After A Fall service and they were not in the least perturbed about coming to help.  30 minutes after I had called them, Stella was back in the house.

All's well that ends well !

Lindsey has taken her home again now.  I think she is quite glad of the opportunity for a day or two of rest after her busy week up in Mount Helen. She has been lunching and shopping. She went to the Elaine Farmgate Shop and into the city centre. She came and met Brandy and Whiskey.  She had visitors (as well as Freyja, Emily also popped up to visit her). She played with Rupert and Hugo. All in all, I think she had a good week.

Brandy and Whiskey are Helpful

We will sit on the doona while you put the
clean sheet on the bed

This will prevent it from blowing away

I will check the comfort of the mattress
and the cleanliness of the
new sheet

I will check the cosiness of the doona

I think that Whiskey is feeling relaxed and at home
at Tani

Such big, beautiful eyes

 

All things are subject to change without notice

What was supposed to happen yesterday:

• Lindsey was going to work as usual
• Ian would be working from home
• Stella and Frances would go for Stella's blood test in Sebastopol and then possibly go out for lunch
• Jim might or might not go to Hill House and do some digging and might or might not also go out for lunch

What actually happened yesterday:

• Lindsey rang at 07:00 as she was about to leave for work to check that what she thought was supposed to be happening was also what I thought was happening
• Ian rang at 08:00 to say that Lindsey had hit a huge hole in the middle of the road near Ballan and had buckled her wheel. He was heading to Ballan in his car. Lindsey would carry on to work in his car and he and her car would come home in the company of a tow truck. Could I please go up to Hill House and look after Stella
• Lindsey rang to say that Ian couldn't hitch a ride with the tow truck because of Covid restrictions. Could I please go to the Ballan services and pick him up, tow truck due around 9:30 or so.
• I had a quick shower, sorted the cats out, didn't do many of the useful things I had intended to do.
• Jim was bundled into the car in his pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers and taken up to Hill House.
• I prepared tea, mango and custard for Stella's breakfast and coffee, bacon and egg for Jim's.
• Leaving Rupert and Hugo in charge, I headed to Ballan, arriving around 9:30, where I found Ian together with Lindsey's Limping Vehicle. There was no sign of a tow truck.
• Still no sign of a tow truck.
• Still no sign of a tow truck.  I may have been mugged by a cup of coffee, a potato cake and some dim sims.
• Still no sign of a tow truck.
• Ian rang the rescue company. No tow truck was coming (we had already surmised this). The tow truck driver hadn't been told we needed one.
• Tow truck arrived half an hour later. We headed back to Ballarat in Ziggy, leaving Lindsey's car to be taken to hospital in Ballarat by the tow truck.
• I arrived back at Hill House at around 2pm and sorted out lunch. Both Jim and Stella had got dressed in my absence.
• Ian arrived back in a hire car. Jim and I headed back to Tani.

The hole in the highway was indeed a rather large one.  By the time I got there it had sort of been repaired, in that someone had filled it with gravel and put up a sign advising of a "rough surface ahead". I am given to understand that several cars had hit it before it had been filled with gravel and had arrived at the services with buckled wheels (the services are only a couple of km beyond the hole and it was possible to limp along to them and wait for assistance in safer conditions). 

I can't say I was very impressed with Lindsey's rescue company. I had lots of other things I could have been doing yesterday morning and early afternoon other than hanging around in the Ballan Services car park. I suppose, at least, that it wasn't raining.

I am hoping that today will be slightly more orderly.

 

Visitors

Now that the lockdown is more or less over, the ring of steel around Melbourne has been lifted, Checkpoint Charlie has gone and Manky Melbournites are able to travel into the regions, now that all that has happened, we can have Metropolitan Visitors.

This meant that Freyja and Simon could come to visit on Saturday. Which meant that I could finally, finally give Freyja her birthday present which I have been waiting to give her since August. Actually, I have been waiting to give it to her ever since I discovered its existence earlier in the year. It's a vegan edition of a Japanese cookbook which I have and enjoy cooking from. I have had to have much great patience!

While they were here they also assembled the new garden benches which have been waiting for someone to have time to give them some attention.

They met Brandy and Whiskey.

Then we all went to Pipers by the Lake, where we met Lindsey and Ian and had a spot of lunch.

Saturday was the one day during the week when no one was available either to visit Stella, still loitering in the hospital after her (successful!) angiogram, or to liberate her.  So, of course, the morning nurse went in and told her that she could go home on Saturday.  Alas, she had to wait until Sunday when Lindsey and I went down to spring her from the hospital.  We went in Lindsey's car, which is big enough to fit three adults and all of Stella' paraphernalia.

Lindsey went in to effect the discharge.  I drove on to Mount Martha to collect clothes and a few bits and pieces from Stella's house. Lindsey went in to find that Stella was not dressed, still had her picc line in, did not have her medication ready and had not been discharged by a doctor.

I waited in Mount Martha while all these things eventually happened. Almost three hours after Lindsey had arrived at the hospital we were finally able to put her in the car and to take her away.

And now she is at Rupert and Hugo's house, who were delighted if a little surprised when she turned up. They do love Stella.

Jim and I took advantage of a pleasant late afternoon on Saturday to launch our new patio furniture. Now we are waiting for the patio layer to come next week to relay it and to finish it, then I will put an edging garden bed in - and perhaps even buy another garden bench, always assuming I can persuade Freyja and Simon to come back and assemble it!

Sunny Saturday afternoon in our backyard

Jim enjoying the new outside furniture

Patio, newly furnished but waiting to be finished

Lockdown gone

And just like that - Checkpoint Charlie disappeared.  There is no real evidence that it was ever there. The checkpoint itself has vanished. Most of the signs that warned of a Police Checkpoint ahead have gone and the ones that remain now exhort travellers to Stay Safe and Stay Open.

The corollary of the restrictions being relaxed is, of course, that the traffic, noticeable by its quietness over the past months, has now returned. I had got used to quiet roads during the second lockdown and was a bit surprised to be diverted by my sat nav from the approach to the Westgate Bridge on Tuesday, then sent over the Bolte Bridge and along the Tullamarine freeway. This is not a particularly unusual route if you are passing through Melbourne at peak times but I haven't had to do it at all this year. Or not that I can remember.

Still, traffic is a small price to pay for Melbourne being released from solitary confinement. It means that Freyja and Simon can come to visit and I can finally give Freyja her birthday present which has been waiting at Tani since August.

I am not sure why, but we seem to have attracted the attention of fledgling currawongs. Brandy spends quite a lot of time sitting on the dining room window sill and watching the garden. He was paying particular attention the other day so I went to see what he was watching. And it was the attempts by a young currawong to escape from our garden. It could fly, but not quite high enough to get over the fence. Eventually it hopped up onto the table, then onto the back of a chair and then launched itself at the closest part of the fence and just, just, just managed to get over the top.

On Tuesday evening I heard some odd noises coming from outside the back of the house.  I went to investigate and found another young currawong behind the plastic cold frame, trying to get out.  I liberated it and it ran away.  But it is still in the backyard.  It is not quite old enough to fly properly. I figure it's safer in the backyard than it would be on the reserve; it might get taken by a larger bird but it won't be eaten by a fox. There is plenty of water for it and lots of insects, worms and other things for it to eat.  I am hopeful that it will soon develop more strength in its wings and fly away. I do not really need a permanently resident young currawong!

But two in such quick succession is noteworthy.  I assume there is a nest nearby that they can fall into our garden from. Although its parents don't seem to be looking for it.  The adult currawongs that have been around have paid no attention to it at all.

A Sunday Afternoon Stroll

If you walk down our cul de sac you reach the main road between Ballarat and Geelong.  Across that road there are the Ballarat Technology Park, some state government and other buildings and the Federation University, all set in parkland and a forest.  There is a road running through the bottom part of the parkland called Wetlands Drive which runs along a small lake. There is also a bird watching hide. Sometimes, as I drive along, there is a bloke sitting on a fishing chair by the side of the lake.  But he isn't fishing - his labrador is swimming in the lake. There is a little footbridge, but I had no idea where it led to.

In the more than four years that we have lived in the Mount Helen area, I have never walked around that bit of the forest / parkland.

It was a beautiful day on Sunday. There was nothing much happening on Sunday afternoon. Jim, Brandy and Whiskey were dozing on the couch in front of the television. So I swapped my sandals for some closed shoes in case of snake-y encounters and trundled off down our road to have a bit of a poke around.

It wasn't a long walk, just over half an hour, and I discovered another small lake plus a creek bed with not much water in it.  We haven't had much rain recently so the wetlands were on the dry side. I suspect the creek can carry quite a bit of water when the rains come and the wetlands earn their name.

I hadn't realised that this little lake was here

The track only runs half way round it

We drive past this quite often.
It's on one of our regular routes to
Hill House

You can walk all the way around this lake

Baby ducks, a clear sign of late spring

Canadian Creek, not flowing
fast at the moment

University Roundabout

We briefly lived in one of the units

you can see opposite, before we moved

into our current house

I did my library degree at the University
when it was the Ballarat College
of Advanced Education.
The houses across the road weren't there then!

Standing at the bottom of our road,
looking towards the Krooze In Cafe

Heading home.
Ours is the last of the units you can see,
tucked under the trees

I'm off to visit Stella in the hospital today. We are hopeful that she will be able to go home on Thursday, although she will actually come to Hill House for a few days to recuperate.  Someone has suggested that she have an angiogram before she comes home, much to everyone's alarm. The last time she had one of those she bled vigorously into her groin and no one noticed until she had the most enormous bruise all over her body. She had to  stay in hospital for a further ten or so days, lying flat on her back. The time before that she ended up in ICU.  Angiograms really do not seem like A Plan.

We have now had ten consecutive days of no new Covid cases in Victoria and there are only 4 known active cases in the state. The ring of steel quarantining Metropolitan Melbourne from the rest of Victoria has come down. All Victorians can now travel around the state at will. I do not expect to be stopped at Checkpoint Charlie on my way home. I don't expect to be stopped for questioning about my movements at all.

Long Weekend

It wasn't, strictly speaking, a four day weekend. True, Tuesday was a holiday in Victoria but Monday wasn't.  However, lots of people had taken Monday off anyway. And, again strictly speaking, I don't work on Mondays - although I usually do an hour or two on most days.  The advantage of working from home: you can spread your hours out over the week.

Anyway. I went down to Frankston on Saturday, leaving Jim, Brandy and Whiskey Home, Alone. The Covid hospital regulations at the moment mean that hospital patients can only have one visitor a day. There didn't seem to be any point in taking Jim all the way to Frankston just to have him sitting in the car for two hours while I was visiting Stella. And, while it was our weekend to visit, I knew that I wasn't going to be Stella's Visitor on Sunday so no real point in staying down in Mount Martha.

I quite enjoyed the solitary trip.  I had borrowed some of Lindsey's Japanese language CDs and happily listened to them on the way down.  There wasn't as much traffic as I had expected, given that the stringent lockdown restrictions had been lifted a bit. A little more than the last time I went down, but not much more.

Stella was looking much better than she had earlier in the week.  Not that I had seen her, but I had had reports. She was much less breathless.  However, the ankle is remaining stubborn. While I was there an orthopaedic surgeon dropped in to see her. They are suggesting that she might need to have surgery to clean out the infection in her ankle. But before then she has to have another battery of tests plus a picc line. I had no idea what one of those was but Lindsey, when we consulted her by phone, said that sounded good to her.  A picc line was arranged. 

The Berlin Wall around Melbourne remains in place for people trying to leave Manky Melbourne for the purity of Regional Victoria. It is widely expected that it will be lifted on the 8th of November but it hasn't been lifted yet. However, I don't think that it is being enforced quite as stringently as it has been. I pulled up when I got to Checkpoint Charlie, put on my mask, wound down the window and, as I reached for my driver's licence, the police office said "It's Ok. I can see your label.  Drive carefully and have a good evening."  Label?  As I drove away I looked down and realised that I was still wearing my Hospital Visitor label from when I signed in at the hospital earlier in the afternoon 😂

We have had some lovely weather over the past few days. I have been out in the garden.  I have planted some sweet peas along the new trellis in the front, plus some sunflowers in front of them.  I had intended the sunflowers for the back garden but they are ready for planting and the back garden won't be ready for another month. No real reason why they shouldn't be out the front.  I have prepped one of the hexagonal beds ready for runner beans and another ready for yellow beans. The zucchini and pumpkin seedlings are almost ready for planting out. The back garden is beginning to take proper shape

Looking towards the back

Ready for climbing runner beans, bracketed at the top

Ready for yellow bush beans,
bracketed at the bottom

Unfinished patio, waiting for the 
patio builder to come at the end of the
month

I even went wild and cleaned the windows that look out into the back garden.  Not particularly well, but they are cleaned, plus I de-cobwebbed the eaves.  Must get someone in to clear the gutters before the fire season sets in properly.

Today, the weather has reverted to late winter weather.  It's damp, misty, grey and chilly. The rest of the windows will have to wait.