The river keeps on flowing, but the banks are ever changing (Mostly Autumn)

ART courtyard - pergola, planter and trellis by Wozza

The projects around Red Phoenix Farm have been getting ticked off jolly smartly of late:

the pergolas are all painted and looking spiffy;

A.R.T. is now complete - both the inside and the courtyard (left) is done;

the summer sails are all up;

hedges and gardens are looking peachy.

Next big project for the summer is the carport (cool name - the place you dock your car!). I've been scheming and planning the carport for about a year - ever since we started to transform the garage into A.R.T. I'm also keen to work on a new aviary and chookhouse over the next few holidays.

View from ART

I love building projects - so rewarding and challenging for me and a complete change from the mental twists and turns of teaching. This year has been huge - returning to teaching in Nu Zild after so long away in Al Ain and then China was always going to test me.

I'm generally happy with how I went but I know there will be improvements next year as I become more familiar with stuff (the school, the girls, the curriculum, the staff, the expectations), but I'm excited about 2014 and the chance to build on this start. Teaching is weird in that respect - it's like a yearly cycle of rebirth.


Nature watch returns - the spring into summer transition means the cherry blossom on the cherry tree behind A.R.T. has turned into cherries. This has not escaped the notice of the hungry birds who have been helping themselves.

SWMBO's cunning plan

So SWMBO hatched a plan so fiendishly cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel - simply go to Giant Spiders Are Us and buy the biggest giantest spider they had in stock to drape said cherry tree in said giant spider's web.

The results were...ah...good.

The hungry birds flew down, get caught in the web, became angry birds and were then devoured, pacman style, by the massive metre long spider!

Moral of that particular story - don't piss off SWMBO by trying to gorge yourself on cherrys before she can!

We've had some purlers of sunsets lately as well. As avid readers will remember - an Aussie wattle tree (this here is called the wattle, the emblem of our land, you can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in your hand) fell down some time ago - damned unreliable thing - and opened up a window onto some of our front paddocks and across to some distant lands. The sun now filters through the gap in spectacular fashion as I'm sure you'll agree.

View through the wattle gap, Max and Meg in foreground

And in other news: I am no longer a beardy. I don't know how my friend Stas does it. He's had facial hair since he was about 9 and his beard is massive.

I must be a sook.

I lasted three weeks into Movember and shaved it all off this afternoon. I got sick of touching the whiskers, sick of hairs getting into my food and drink and sick of not looking like me.

Love and peace - Wozza (can you see the real me? Can ya? CAN YA?)