Winter Fights Back

The weather over the past few days has been less than clement.

It was horrible on Friday. It was cold and it rained pretty much all day. I knew that Jim and I were going up to play with Rupert and Hugo on Friday and on Thursday had bought them a bone each.  A proper bone, not a dried bone. Rupert and Hugo are not allowed to have proper bones in the house but it really wasn't a day to insist they go outside. So I set them up on the squishy, old couches in the dining room and made them sit on them to have their bones.  It seemed unwise to let them chew marrow bones on the brand new leather couches in the lounge room!

They were happy with this arrangement.

Much later, Rupert asked to go outside.  Hugo decided he would go outside too. Now, what normally happens when Hugo asks to go outside and the weather is horrible is that you open the door, Hugo starts to go out, stops abruptly, sniffs the air, looks at the rain, turns round and gives you a filthy look and comes straight back inside. Rupert just goes out, does his business and comes back in and goes somewhere warm to dry off.

On this occasion, Hugo shot outside and over to  his bath by the fence, followed in a more leisurely fashion by Rupert. I was a bit surprised. He came back to the conifer tree, again followed by Rupert. What has he picked up, I wondered. It seemed unlikely that Hugo would dash out into the rain to pick up a soggy soft toy. Rupert, maybe. Hugo, no. I went to investigate.

What he had picked up was a baby rabbit. A live baby rabbit. "Drop it, Hugo," I said.  He did not. I said it again, more urgently - and much to my surprise, drop it he did. He regretted this immediately and tried to grab it again but it ran away and went under the fence out into the paddock. The rabbit explained why Hugo had dashed out into the freezing rain. He went back in again as soon as he decided the rabbit had really gone!

The rain cleared a bit on Saturday morning so Lindsey and I went out to Avalon to get some trees and other things. It wasn't dry, you understand, just not as wet. The rain came back in the afternoon.  It was wet and very cold yesterday. Anyone would think it was August rather than mid-November and, strictly speaking, towards the end of spring. I have had the fire lit all weekend. I still worry about the cats getting too close to the wood burner (although I never worried about Marlo getting too close to the one we had in Tupton - strange!). So Jim and I went into town to see if we could buy a fire guard. 

I went to Barbecues Galore, where I had bought the wood burner. They didn't have any in stock. "It's the wrong time off year", said the sales bloke. "People are more likely to be buying barbecues than fireplaces and their accessories."  We both looked out the window at the wind and the icy, icy rain - and laughed! I don't think the temperature got into double figures yesterday and they were forecasting snow down to 1000m.

Jim and I came back home and I went to buy a fire guard online through the Barbecues Galore website.  They had exactly what I wanted for $99. I would have bought it, but the postage fee was $125.  $125 just for postage! Extortionate! I bought something similar through eBay for $75 and $10 postage. Much more reasonable.

It's still raining. It's still cold. I think it's supposed to stay this way for several days. I've almost run out of firewood and I don't really want to buy another lot just yet. I wasn't expecting still to be using the fire by now.  I was expecting to be considering whether my little Dyson space age heater/cooler would cope with a hot summer or whether I should invest in a reverse cycle air conditioner. The last two summers have been very mild in Ballarat. I think we are probably due a hot one this year.