Water water all around

Well, this has been a very rainy week in the rain forest.

On Monday and Tuesday, it rained so hard that the ford connecting our street to Nimbin was too deep to ford in our Ford. Luckily, we had plenty of food in, and by evening the water was low enough so that we could get into the village. The rain continued to hammer on the roof into the night, though, and a visitor we have had before returned - clinging to the outside of our kitchen window was a tiny, bright green tree frog. I think it's great, and he is obviously not stupid -the light coming through our kitchen window attracts moths and other small insects, and I'm sure the frog is now twice the size that it was when I last saw it about a month ago.

On Wednesday, C went into Lismore base hospital for her full term check up. Everything is proceeding well, but the baby shows no sign of wanting to come out into the big wide world. C and Rose made a day of it in Lismore, and we really are running out of things to buy for baby now - we're even stocked up on things like replacement covers for the booster seat, and loads of those little sterile plastic bags in which you can hygienically store the feeding bottle teats. I confidently predict there will be hundreds of things it will seem obvious we should have bought, stocked up on, and/or prepared, within a couple of days of the baby being here.

The weather turned around completely on Saturday, and we had a bright hot sunny day after a full week of rain, so we took advantage by driving to the coast and showing Rose around Cape Byron and the Byron Bay shops - she has been getting a little frustrated trying to find everyday souvenirs of Australia in Nimbin and Lismore (we are more on the backpacker tourist trail than the sunbird tourist trail). We made the happy discovery that the Byron surf lifesaving club position shade umbrellas on the beach, which anyone can use for a gold coin donation - so we were able to have a great picnic lunch just a few yards from the high tide line, watching the surfers and the breakers beat against the rocks around Byron lighthouse.

As I write this, I am feeling achy but happy, as I have finally got round to doing a few things in the garden that I have been putting off for a while - and the real killer is building raised beds. Well, it's not so much the building the walls, as moving the soil into the raised beds that is tiring - but I know it will pay off later, as everything will be so much easier to control. Or, that's what I'm telling myself now.