Wild wild weather

Thursday - five inches of snow. Friday - rain and gale force winds. Saturday - more strong winds, ice, rain. Today - more snow. All this water has to go somewhere... and a lot of it is rushing down Prices Creek and into the Huon River, which has breached its banks at Huonville (the road to Cygnet was closed this afternoon) and also at Franklin, where the swans are enjoying the newly submerged grass in the park.

Egg-cellent

The girls have been doing a good job. Ever since the surprise earlier-than-expected start to their laying, followed by the discovery of a hen sitting on nine eggs, our four chooks have generally been providing an egg a day, sometimes two, sometimes four, sometimes none. The yolks are not all as yellow as I'd like yet, but the eggs are fresh and tasty, mostly around the 60g mark, and brown and speckled, just as Barnevelder eggs should be. This one is sitting in a Huon Pine egg cup given to us by an old friend of David's years ago. She must have known something. Eventually we brought it back to Tassie.

New trees

Late on Monday afternoon I planted two ornamental pear trees, to replace trees I removed recently after they were chewed by one naughty pup. They came from someone in the local Landcare group who was digging up 30 or so of them on their property and kindly giving them away. Monday night we had howling winds and I wondered if they'd still be upright in the morning. Thursday they were covered in snow. Today it is blowing a gale again. They look happy enough, but I'm still crossing fingers that they survive the transplanting and last long enough for me to put up some protective wire around them on the weekend to deter dopey dogs.

Let it snow...

As expected, we woke this morning to a beautiful, crisp five inches of snow. Once it was light enough, we spent some time outside playing with the dogs and taking way too many photos. Bit worried about whether anything buried under snow in the veggie beds will survive though!

Snow dogs

Good timing

On Saturday, our wood heater was installed.

This morning, it started to snow.

Comedy in the Valley

Last night we headed into Hobart for The Comedy Forge, a huge line-up of comedians presenting new material at the dank-yet-cheery old Brisbane Hotel for only $2. Interestingly, we have seen way more comedy here than we ever did in Sydney, simply because it is so easy - no parking or transport hassles and it's cheap. There is also quite a comedy 'community' or 'scene' here with some terrific talent.

BUT... for all you folks who live in the Huon Valley and The Channel, you don't even need to travel into Hobart to see great comedy. The Brookfield Comedy Club is on the second Wednesday of every month, at Brookfield Vineyard in Margate. There's usually a headline act visiting from the mainland or overseas, plus a changing line-up of Tassie acts. Brookfield's restaurant is open for dinner bookings before the show. And then there's the Hobart Comedy Festival coming up later this month. Put it in the diary, come along and have a larf!