Did I get around to it?

I never did get around to it: a round tuit, that is. And I’m only now getting around to it: telling you whether I’ve been walking the talk, that is.

My much-touted exercise programme a case in point: Workout: Pt. 1; Workout: Pt.2; Workout: Pt.3. If I spent as much time doing it as I do beating myself up about not doing it I’d be super strong and super fit. Averaged over a year I’ve managed something like 2 hours total per week on my combined weights and medium-intensity aerobics programme. Some weeks: zilch; some weeks: 3 or 4 sessions. I still really want to up the ante – but like the way to hell, my fear is that the path up Ante Hill is paved with good intentions. Oh well. I’ll give it another year and let you know then whether I got to the top of the hill or, Sisyphus-like, am fated to have the boulder with ‘Exercise Programme’ writ large on it keep rolling to the bottom of the hill before I ever reach my goal.

Moving on: In a September post from 2022, I finished by telling you that “… those gums have gotta come down this time. You just wait and see, I’m gonna get around to it!” And I did fell a lot of gum trees last spring – the ones that towered over the flax and toi toi bushes towards the bottom section of the shelter belt that runs down the middle of our property. Eucalyptus nitens (shining gums), they dry and cure remarkably fast for gums. A mere six months after they were dropped, we were burning them. Not ideal, but as they say: “Needs must.”

Ever since an exuberant TB tester, three years ago, described the then approach to my cattle yard as “not ideal” (TB Tests), the phrase has popped into my head, mantra-like, on many an occasion. I eventually got around to putting in permanent fencing to confine the cattle to a lane that, once I’ve channeled them into it from the drive, takes them through to a holding pen which I use to draft them, one at a time, into the yard. Now that’s ideal! And wait, there’s more! June can use the holding pen and lane as one of the four rotationally grazed paddocks that are for the exclusive use of the billy goat and his mate.

Self-congratulatory pats on the back are short-lived round here. About to begin singing my own praises yet again, I glance out the window and see June weighed down by two full buckets of water. “Not ideal.” Water as far as the goat buck’s trough? That 100 metre coil of pipe I’ve got stored in the garage should have been in the ground two years ago: Pipe Dreams: Part One; Pipe Dreams: Part Two.

Speaking of water and pipes, I never did get around to telling you about the resolution of our water supply woes: Subterranean water pipe blues revisited. Our top storage tank, high up the slope of Mt Michael, haemorrhaged its entire 25,000 litres after a pipe was cut by tractor work in the paddock below. Although, after a week, refilled to the brim, not so much as a trickle was getting through to our troughs or the domestic supply tank that sits on a rise behind the house.

Despair replaced in an instant by joyous relief when, one morning a couple of weeks later, I heard the sweetest of music as water hissed through the ballcock valve and pitter-pattered into the tank.

We never did solve the mystery. The farmer who cultivated the paddock, as well as a neighbouring farmer reliant on water from the same river scheme, also had their pipes cut. Buried in paddocks, where exactly vague at best, water pipe repairs and reconnections seem, at times, to be a law unto themselves. Whatever, we just thank the gods for the return of that most precious of resources.

My patience, a la lap of the gods yet again, also rewarded when Nick and Gillian invited me back for a reading of another of my blog posts: see Unleash the beast! pt.2. Admittedly, I had to wait eighteen months for them to get around to it! I presented them with a few subject choices before being more specific.

They liked the idea of hearing about some of Little Owl Gully’s wildlife. Nick, in particular, fond of bees. To my chagrin, I’ve not got around to it yet, despite keeping two hives for twenty years. “What about my post on bumblebees?”

To my great relief, they enjoyed Bumblebees. What’s more, when Nick said, “A good piece of writing, “Gillian concurred. I swear I didn’t bribe, blackmail or pay them! As it was one of my longer posts, I decided to quit while I was ahead! Anyways, we had some catching up to do.

I daren’t sign-off, dear reader, without a mention of the elephant in my room: see Getting all bookish. I’ve been working on a book for three months now and the plan is to have not only an elephant in my room but a first draft of the entire book by the end of April, 2024, which will be one year to the day from when I started writing it. I’ll let you know next May whether I got around to it!