In a year that started with catastrophic bushfires followed by damaging floods and the arrival of the big Rona we should be very grateful it’s all coming to an end. A year of challenges and acceptance, of realisation of what is important to us and gratefulness both for what we have and that we got through it unscathed. Australia has been lucky, isolated by geography and with good leadership who weren’t frightened to impose strict shutdown rules early we have avoided the horrible numbers of cases experienced by other parts of the world.

For our family it has been a mostly happy year. A wedding bought our family home at just the right time to avoid being stuck abroad at the outbreak of the virus. The wedding was cancelled due to restrictions but we were all home together to face whatever was to come our way. Two of our kids had to pack up their life in London and Vietnam via Facetime with friends packaging up their belongings into boxes for them and leases had to be sub-letted and jobs resigned from. Both of them have embraced a difficult time to come out the other side with good jobs and a future to look forward to – not an easy task in Covid – and I am very proud of them both.

Our Bride and Groom may have missed out on their wedding but instead they have bought a beautiful new house and are happily making it a home for their expanding family. They could have been sad or angry especially as the wedding was cancelled a mere 48 hours before it was due to take place – everything was organised and paid for, hair was cut, nails were manicured, boots were polished and the flowers were all ready for the bouquets but they took it in their stride and made the best of things and we were all just grateful that we were together and safe. I am so proud of the way they have handled everything and their focus is now firmly on the future and the arrival of baby number 2 in 4 months. We had a lovely weekend with them recently at their new house and it is so fabulous to be able to stay with them now they have a spare room for guests and to enjoy some quality time with little Cooper who I think thought we existed only in photos or here in The Meadow!!

I have also made the most of having Lauren and Myla a mere 3 hour drive away with a couple of trips to Canberra to help out with babysitting while they worked and to spend time with our little Hurrricane a.k.a Myla!! She is a ball of energy and at this stage has absolutely no quiet side. She is either awake and full of beans or asleep – no grey area for our Myla Moo! I took her to Canberra Zoo for an outing which we both loved although poor old Rara was feeling rather knackered by the end of it – why are zoos always carved into a hillside??? I completely mistimed how long it would take me to get down and back to the car and our little intrepid explorer fell asleep in the stroller and stayed asleep throughout the whole car trip home, through the labyrith of the apartment block gardens, the trip in the elevator and into the house only to wake up full of beans as soon as I tried to lie her down in the cot!! I look forward to having them stay with us for a week before they fly off to Tassie in mid December to start their new life in Hobart. Still a plane trip away but a lot closer than Asia!

The veggie patch is in full throttle with tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, spinach and lettuce all available for eating and green beans, capsicum and eggplant just around the corner. This is the time of year that we plan meals around the patch rather than what we may fancy and I think we end up eating more plant foods this way by far. Our rustic entrance with it’s rusty gate and shabby pergola is one of my fave bits of the property and I am resisting the various “suggestions” to paint it and smarten it up.

The erratic weather courtesy of La Nina has been both a blessing and a curse to our garden. The ferocity of some of the storms has been amazing, in the pictures here we had four inches of rain in an hour and lost one of our lovely spready trees as well. The upside was all that rain soaked in pretty quickly and gave our trees and flowers a deep water at just the right time for flowering and we now have a garden that is green and full of flowers and fragrance.The gardenias are a picture and together with the jasmine is sending a lovely waft of fragrance over the garden, The roses are as gorgeous as ever and the newly planted salvias are coming along a treat. I have changed tact in my constant battle with the weeds and have decided to plant more groundcover plants to fill in the gaps that weeds would otherwise pop up in and hopefully in another year our work load will be reduced considerably. The apricot and plum trees are in full fruit so if the birds can stay away I should have a bumper crop this year. Hello jam and fruit tarts and chutneys!

Our dear friends Baz and Kathy drove down from Forster to stay with us for a week. It was so lovely to see them again but unfortunately I was riddled with daycare germs and quite sick which curtailed our normal high jinx to a degree although we still managed to celebrate Baz’s birthday and get a whole load of little jobs done. These two are pathologically incapable of sitting and doing nothing and miraculously pictures were hung, the ironing basket was emptied, garden beds weeded and planted, chook fences mended, cupboards fixed and the garage tool section completely revamped! Thanks lovely friends for all your help!! One day you will come and stay and just relax I promise!!

So as the year comes to an end I have never been more grateful to be living here in The Meadow. We have been shielded from the worst of lockdown and have the beautiful countryside all around us to remind us that life is good. Home has become more than the sum of its parts and family and friends more important than ever. The rest of the world sometimes seems a long way away but the fact we have close family still struggling in the northern hemisphere keeps it close to home. Let’s hope that next year brings some worldwide relief and a return to a more sensible guy in the big white house on the hill….