Dalveen Winter Wonderland with Music

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Friday 17 July 2015 and I woke up to snow at Daveen. We've lived there for 13 years and this was our first snowfall. In fact, the last time snow settled on the ground at Dalveen was 1984. How lucky was I to be up there for this fall. I'd gone up there on the Tuesday and was returning that morning, so just managed to squeeze it in.

Goodness me, it has been a long time since I last posted to this blog. Once you get to 60 it's hard to keep up with how quickly time flies. What's happened since I last posted a blog - everything and nothing really. My days at Dalveen are filled with mowing, chain sawing, mending the odd bit of fence, chopping wood for the fire, brush cutting, poisoning blackberry, laying more and more fallen timber on the wood heap for burning this coming winter, taking the dog for a walk, filling in rabbit holes, entertaining the occasional guests, etc. etc. Brisbane days are spent finishing off all the renovations we've done to the house over the last twelve months - or rather making a list of what has to be done and then finding a reason not to do it. I have made New Year's resolutions however, and the dreaded 2014 list has resurfaced as a 2015 list. I'm very into Ancestry.com.au but I've come to a bit of a standstill with my family tree and over the last year have done two family trees for friends and also a family tree for my brother-in-law Peter. I've become quite adept with it now and can practically complete a family tree for a friend in about two weeks. All I need is details of their parents, their grandparents and hopefully some details of great grandparents. We are so lucky in Australia to have so much information digitised and available via the internet. When I think of how hard it was for me trying to complete a family tree back in the 1980s I have to shudder. I look at how far I managed to get and it was past Great Grandparents. Nowadays my tree buckles under the weight of Great Greats, Great Great Greats, Great Great Great Greats etc.

Dalveen is in the throes of a drought at the moment. Our dam is wasting away and we really need about 200mm rain in a day to bring it back from the brink. We've lost a lot of trees to drought this year. Our last Silver Birch finally curled up its toes in 2014 and died from lack of water. Thankfully the Japanese Red Maple managed to survive so we'll still have a bit of colour in Autumn. A Claret Ash died but we have two left; our Chinese Pistachio continues to thrive and look beautiful in Autumn; as does the Liquid Amber. The saddest event for us this year was the loss of our 80 year old Fig Tree. I'm pretty sure the drought did the dirty on it. There are a few suckers growing from the roots of the old fig tree, so am going to wait until Autumn when I'll cut down the old Fig Tree and hope that one of the suckers is strong enough to grow into a replacement fig.

Photographs below show dead old wattle which fell over while we were away - this led to half a day of chain sawing and carting branches away, and finally pulling out the big root system and towing it across the paddock to the pile for eventual burn off; our dead 90 year old fig tree; fence posts rotting out and needing replacing; dam falling away during the drought and opening up a land bridge to the other side; summer storm rolling in across the flowering black wattles.

The Old Wattle died

Thanks to Global Warming the 80 year old fig is no more!

Next trip I'll have to mend some fences - so to speak

Damn Drought has brought a land bridge to our dam

Summer Storm approaching over the flowering Black Wattles