And if you want to get out on the water you need a boat.

We have a small boat. Just a small aluminium boat, about 12 feet long. Its got its own trailer with it so we can tow it, we don’t need to put it on the roof of the  car.

Last week was school holidays to we took the family, including kids, away for a few days. 5 days actually at a small resort about 6 hours drive away. Unfortunately there was a really strong wind and heavy rain when we left and I thought it was going to be a really nasty drive but the wind dropped out and the rain stopped after about a half hour, the sun came out and it turned into a pretty nice day actually.

The resort was good. We chose it because it had lots of things for kids to do there. Kids always need to be busy, so if you go somewhere where there aren’t any kid facilities then you’ve got a problem with bored kids.

Nothing is worse than  bored kids. They get in your face and so you’re grumpy and they’re bored. I like to read books while Im away so having bored kids interferes with my reading.

But the kids were happy over the weekend. There’s so many things that they could do, including jumping up and down on this plastic blow up thingy, and they just loved that. That alone kept them happy and busy.

And there was this big tv for them to watch in the games room and each night there was a movie to watch so they loved that too.

And it’s amazing how something like a swimming pool can keep kids happy for hours and hours. I can swim for a little while then I get bored with it.

But I mentioned our boat. We took the boat along because there was a river there and we could take them on the river. And it’s useful for taking other stuff along too. The kids bikes wouldn’t fit in the car but no problem getting them in the boat at all, lots of space.

So it was really worth taking a boat. We spent some time on the local river putting up and down looking at the scenery and having a nice time. We stopped and spent an hour or 2 having lunch while the kids ate lunch and had a swim. And I got to sit and read a book in the sun.

And we did a day on a lake near us too. I bought one of those tyre tubes that you pull behind the boat and pulled the kids around the lake on that. They loved it and wouldnt get off it. If you  have kids and love water you’ve got to have a boat, it makes for a great holiday.

So there’s a little bit about us having a holiday for a few days with our boat. I’ts worth taking the boat along for sure.

The country is the best place to live and I’m happy to say it even if you live in a city. If you’ve read this before you’ll see I’ve already said that previously.

And I love birds too, and one of the best things about living in the country is the birds that you see around the place.

You just  won’t believe how many birds there are out here in the country, thousands. I get them sitting in the trees all around my place. They have very strong beaks and claws and they sit in my trees and pick off the seed pods with their strong claws and hold them with their claws and then break them open with their beaks to eat them.

Now I have to say that I like birds but I don’t really like the damage they do to all my trees. They break off so many little branches to get to the pods that under the tree looks like a wasteland. There’s bits of trees everywhere on the ground.

They’re parrots, and parrots have strong beaks so they can do all this to my trees. But on the plus side they have great looking colors and they look stunning. I get them sitting around the veranda that goes around my house, they sit on the railings and look at me inside the house. And I love to see them there so I sit really still and watch them. If I sit really still they don’t go away.

There’s so many benefits of having lots of birds around the house that you just have to put up with the damage they do to all your trees. I could just run out and frighten them away from the trees but I just put up with  it.

Its got to be so much better living out here. I’ll bet there’s no birds like that in a city. Too many people to scare them off and no trees for them to live in.

And I like all animals, not just birds. Animals are so good to have around the house, as good as birds. I love them all.

What luck, I’ve just had one of those parrots land on a veranda post right in front of me now. I’ll watch it for a while. And it’s not just birds like parrots that I love to see around, I get plenty of animals too, and I think that animals around is hot. It’s like having nature right in the back yard. Animals and birds for me any day.

Country life!

It was just fantastic to get away, I need to get away more often, it’s good for me. But it was a little difficult starting quite so early. Too early for me I have to say. I ended up getting up at 5.

5 in the morning is too early for me. Way too early. At 5 am even the birds aren’t awake much. It is completely dark and feels like it’s about 3am. It’s pretty hard to get out of bed at that time, at least for me, though when you’ve got a weekend to go to it’s still worth getting up for. Something to get up for.

I had  to get going on time to meet some other people, so I picked up my friend. But it took quite a while to get all his stuff packed into our car, we were stuffing things into every space we could find, even on the back seat.

And what can you do about the weather? Raining. And for the last few months it’s been so nice, warm clear weather, just my luck that when I go away it’s  raining.

And when you’re camping the last thing you want is rain. Rain is the worst thing because when something gets really wet it’s wet for the whole time unless it gets warm again. Luckily the rain was pretty heavy but when we were putting up the tent it backed off a little. Some luck at least. And it was a long drive in the rain I have to say.

And most annoyingly when we were driving there there seemed to be all sorts of new speed limits to annoy me, and they did.

But even despite all this it was a great weekend. I did some good fishing and caught a fish and we had it for dinner which was nice.

I do love eating fish, (and catching fish).

I don’t mean a week or 2, just a weekend away, something like that.

I have a treat coming up this weekend coming, I get to go on a holiday.

I get to  go with a friend because my family all have a concert to go to and they can’t come so I get to go with a good friend. Last time I took my family, not this time though.

We are going to take a tent and camp, as I would normally do with my  family. It’s a pretty good tent, about 12 foot square and canvas and really good quality so worth taking. Its heavy but I have a lighter tent that’s smaller but it’s going to rain and I want a good tent that will keep the rain out.

I don’t like getting up too early, I resist it when I can, but we have to go at 6 am on Friday. It’s a 3 hour trip to where we are meeting with some others, and we meet at 9.

But it’s  not that much of a drama getting up early if you’ve got a holiday to get up for, like this weekend. And I’m looking forward to it so it’s not that much of a problem really.

I hope the car does ok, its not very old but its not new either and Id hate to think that the car let me down and didn’t make it there.

Saturday is going to be a free day for us. Nothing planned at all, just a hang about day to do what you  want. I plan to take fishing gear along with me and do some fishing, in fact I bought a new fishing rod this morning. Sadly I broke my old fishing rod a while ago.

Despite the fact that I’m a girl I still love fishing.

My old rod was one I made a long long time ago. I bought the fibreglass blank and all the runners and made it myself and I’ve used it and used it heaps. I was pretty impressed with myself that I managed to make my own fishing rod, even some of the guys can’t do that.

I have no idea how I broke it. I was just walking through some trees and then suddenly I looked at it and the tip was broken off. What happened to it? Who knows. But it was a pretty sad day as I had used that rod so much, and loved it.

It wasnt worth a lot but it was to me though. I mean I made that rod myself, all by myself. And I broke it. So today I went back to the fishing shop and bought a new rod.

New fishing rods cost almost nothing. I paid about 30 bucks for a new one so it wasn’t that expensive really was it? But it isn’t the one I made.

So there’s the news about my weekend coming up. It won’t rain will it and I will catch a fish won’t I? Who knows but I’m looking forward to it.

I started to notice that I’m getting a little fat over the last few years, so I had to find something that I could do to keep fit. It was cycling for me.

I reall love cycling, I just love it.

I found cycling recently. I was getting pretty unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something to make a change in my life.

I tried to do some swimming. Can you believe how boring swimming is? Up and down a pool hour after hour. Well actually it was probably never longer than 30 minutes but it felt like hour after hour to me and I hated it.

Underneath you there’s a line and you just watch that line, there’s nothing else to do other than swim. It’s really boring and I just couldn’t keep at it for long.

So after trying swimming I knew that wouldn’t work for me. I knew I couldn’t spend 4 days a week putting some swimming into my day. Because if youre going to keep fit you’ve got to do it for at least 4 or 5 days a week or you’re really just wasting your time.

And you’ve got to do about a  half hour minumum. Less than that and its a bit of a waste of time unfortunately.

So once I  decided I didn’t like swimming I really had to find something else to do. And like swimming I found running pretty boring too so that was out. What was I to do? Then I thought about cycling.

But I had a problem. I didn’t have a bike. So I wasn’t going to be cycling too far with no bike to do it on. Well actually I did have a bike but it’s really old and all rusted, so no use at all. So I had to get hold of a bike and and they aren’t cheap to buy a new bike.

So I went and talked  to some of the people in the cycling club and found out that there was a new cycling group starting up and that I could join it. So I figured that  it was time to just go out there and buy a new bike.

So I joined the group  and got cycling. I loved it. They did long rides and short rides and I did them all, one by one. But after while I started to get a little frustrated with the pace of the riding, it being too slow to me.

Now Im not young, 45 actually, but even so I wanted to go a little faster. The ride was more social  than a workout and I wanted a workout as well as a social ride. Eventually I dropped out to ride on my own because I wanted to ride a little harder to get a real workout at the same time.

The club also had another riding group that went out Sundays and it had much better riders in it,  and so I decided that I would try and join the Sunday ride, but was worried that I would never keep up with those better riders.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike, it was called a hybrid, and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really loved riding so I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride very fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up with them.

But of course its a hard workout, exactly what I needed.

So that’s my cycling. I love riding, I ride 4 times a week and I’m getting fitter by the day.

Because I do.

Living in the country is a real pleasure and it’s something that I’ve done for quite a few years. I grew up in the city as a kid but you wouldn’t get me back there again.

There’s just so much to life in the country that you just can’t find living in a city. One example for you. I love cycling and do it heaps of it out here in the country. It helps keep me fit and that’s important and I definitely need to keep fit, much fitter in fact. And it gets me into some beautiful outdoors locations and scenery.

Around me theres so much to cycle past each day. Fields with cows, sheep, alpacas and goats. Horses too, though I dont like horses all that much. But I love cows and sheep. I have my own cows which I’ve told you about, each with its own calf, and I love them.

There’s so  many advantages to living out here and cows and calves and chickens at my place is just one of them. It’s nature and I love nature, and to see it.

Now it’s near the end of summer and it’s been so hot. There’s been some really hot weather and it’s getting on top of me, I don’t like the heat at all. Of course it would still be hot if I lived in the city but here it’s still better, to me. I see nature, I see the seasons come and go and I see things like the grass start to grow longer and stop and the leaves fall off the trees and regrow again.

I see the leaves  of the trees turn all different colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing beneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new and I see regeneration.

Nature cycles like I like to cycle, and I love to watch it all happening right through the  year.

Maybe if I lived in a city I’d have a little garden, maybe no garden. And I might not even have a tree at all. Maybe all I’d have is some solid concrete in my back yard and no more, except a BBQ perhaps, I love a good BBQ.

And unlike here  I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change like I do now all year long.

It’s so sterile in the city and I spent a large part of my life in the city so I’ve been there. Of course it’s just me that thinks it’s sterile, not everyone.

Of course all my family lives in the city and they love it. My brother is a  doctor and hes single, so he likes the single life of the city. Theres things to do there that he’s into a lot, and it suits him. But the city is not for me, suffice to say.

I’ve lived in the city for a long time , I grew up there and I really feel now like I’ve wasted so many years there. Now of course it’s true that I didn’t waste them. I had my time and I lived my life but it feels like wasted time. I should  ask my brother if he’d like to live in the country, it would be nice if he lived nearby, but I think it’s unlikely. If I suggested it to him I doubt that he’d move here.

I’m a country girl now. The country for me any day of the week.

But of course even I’ve decided that it’s a perfect day but maybe not everyone would agree. Maybe for some people it’s just an ordinary day. Really ordinary. Maybe you’ve had some bad news or something isn’t working out for you at all or maybe you’re feeling sick.

Now of course that’s my own interpretation. For many people today might be a bad day. Perhaps you’ve just had some bad news or just feel bad. Maybe you’re trying to do something that isn’t working. Maybe you just don’t feel all that well.

So I wonder what it is that makes it such a good day for me and what it is that might make it such an ordinary day for you. It’s not about the day itself is it? It’s  the same day for me as it is for you, isn’t it? I see the sunshine, maybe you don’t. I see all the cows in the fields but maybe you don’t even notice them at all.

Maybe you see terrible things in the day. The best day for me is the worst day for you, that’s how it is.

Surely the only explanation is that it’s all in our minds, the day. We see the day through the filter of our minds, don’t we. We don’t see the day itself, we see what our minds tell us the day is like. We filter the day through our minds and our  experiences of it.

I think it’s possible that if you and I have the exact same experience of the day we will see it differently. You come for a drive with me and we see different things, the 2 of us. You see the same cows, the same sunshine, the same people walking, but maybe you don’t even see them.

Maybe you see something totally different. Your mind registers the same things as mine does, and records it, but it filters it all through the experience you’ve had in the past and mine does that  too, and that makes our experiences of the day quite different.

That’s all a little silly isn’t it? But when I woke up and looked out the window I was thinking about that sort of stuff.

Just a few thoughts for the day. Bye.

So here it is. Public. Whether anyone reads it or not is a different matter.

Isn’t writing a lot of fun? I like to write and I’ve done it for a long time now. And I still love to write as much as when I was young. I remember when I was young and at primary school I wrote so many different stories, I suspect my teacher got pretty bored reading all my stories. And he was  amazed that I could write quite so many when I was so young. But I’m not sure that I’m much good at it, I just like it.

I did a university degree when I got older, but it didn’t include writing, (but should have), I wish now it had. If I was young again and going to university again I’d think about doing some real study about the art of writing and learn more. I studied what I needed to to get a job, I just wish I’d studied what I liked to do instead.

I don’t  really know if I could ever have become good enough at writing to make a living at it, I just like it. But perhaps I could have tried it. If I had my chances again I’d try it, but you never get it again do you? Sad, though of course I could always go back to University.

Writing is a skill like any other skill. Of course you need to have a the desire to write, if you dont then youre not going to get far because its also work just like anything else, and if you dont enjoy it then you wont get far.

If you really love it then you’ll take the time you need to take to develop it till you’re good at it. It really will take time but I’m sure it can be done. You need to work on it every day but if you love doing it then that’s no problem. Every day is fine.

So I have this website and this is where I’m going to practice my writing. I have it on the internet as it’s a convenient place to have it, but I really don’t intend for lots of people to come along and read it. It’s just about me and what I do every day, so it’s probably pretty boring to others. But if you’re someone reading this then I have at least one other visitor other than me, so thanks for visiting my website.

I have chickens and I love my chickens, I have about a dozen of them, and I get lots of eggs. But I also have cows.

I really like cows. Theyre so big yet they’re very gentle. In all the time Ive had cows I’ve never had a bad moment with  them. They aren’t aggressive and they are even tame enough so that even my kids can pat them a little bit, though they don’t like being patted all that much, they tend to pull back when you pat them. They just pull back a little thats all.

You won’t get to pat them much unless you’re feeding them their hay. They like hay and when the grass is short and there isn’t a lot because winter is coming and the grass isn’t growing. But I have a good supply of hay in the shed.

Now if you’re feeding hay to your cows then that’s the time to pat them, but it’s also a bit of a chore. You have to feed them every single day, without fail. Even if it’s raining you have to feed the cows their hay or they get grumpy. If you don’t they starve for the day and like me they don’t like starving.

I feed them all myself. I like my holidays though so  when you go away you have to have something to do about feeding the cows. You need a good system.

I  have a number of different fields fenced  off. I have a total of 7 fenced off. And if I have lots of grass in some then I shut the gates to that paddock so the grass doesn’t get eaten and keep it that way, then when I go away I’ve got a great paddock with lots of grass. I can open the gate and let the cows in for a week or so and I’ve got my cows fed properly while I’m away.

And when I open the gate to the paddock with the grass in it they’re in there as fast as they can go, because they’ve seen all that grass when they look through the gate and it’s right in front of them.

Then when I come back I put them out of that paddock and back into the one without grass and I start feeding them the hay  again.

Right after breakfast I feed them their breakfast hay. They get about 2 bales of hay every day but if it’s too cold I give them more bales of hay and they eat the lot. And they’re not silly, they know when feeding time  is, they’re waiting right out the front of the shed for their hay and they moo loudly if you’re late.

In fact this morning I gave them 3 bales of hay. But it’s getting warm soon and the grass is beginning to grow more and that’s good because I don’t have a lot of hay left in the shed now, enough, but not a lot. But that’s ok because I’ve got more grass growing.

And my cows are always smiling when the grass is getting longer. And the grass is getting longer now, so my cows are smiling.

Luckily there are some friends of mine who can help me to work it all out, it’s pretty confusing but with some friendly help I’ll get there.

It’s going to be a long journey but I’m looking forward to it.