Happy new year, friends!

We've had some great summer weather over the Christmas new year break.  So nice as we got ripped off last summer (what summer?). Two weeks off work in warm/hot days with a cool afternoon breeze. 

Had a delightful snorkle at Island Bay marine reserve a few days ago and shot away with the Olympus Tough. Water still pretty cold though, about 15 degrees, so despite my brilliant 4/3 wetsuit  stayed in only about 20 minutes. Hands and feet went numb. Goggles fogged too so didn't see much except the coast's luscious seaweed garden. But loved it. There's a dive shop close by and they hire  #7 wetsuits so have talked Mish into coming out soon for a snorkle. 

And some dude going by without a  wetsuit on, too tough.

Mish on another day at Island Bay (with island). Great place for evening fish and chips.

On the other side of the harbour,  we had a paddle at Eastbourne. 

Looking to the east over to the city.

  Such a warm day; getting a free hot rock treatment. Aaaah.

And later, a coffee at a new container cafe at the Seaview Marina. Bright idea, right on the water, with boats pulling up outside.

Mish has also been working on the bottom of the yard building a long planter box with scavenged materials and left over roofing bits. This is looking up the yard; new house site on the left. Mish sweet talked the digger guy to give us a few buckets of topsoil, and he gave us enough to fill the planter box - excellent! New owners happy, they had to pay to dump truckloads of soil to clear the site.

We've started to shovel the soil in, SO much easier on  middle aged woman than bringing it down our steps in wheelbarrows from the driveway.

In the next photo, two gates are in place, wired to concreted posts. Long gate to come, on their right. The plan is to grow jasmine climbers all over the gates so we have a fragrant green wall between us and our two adjacent neighbours at the bottom.

Mish doing her usual 'stare and think' design process - this can go on for some time, but the results are usually good.

All we wanted was some rain to make the summer break perfect and the ground less cracked, and good rain has arrived. It's been very dry over the whole country. Ripper of a storm has blown over from Queensland and hit the north and south of us so sea has been raging with whitecaps in the harbour and a king tide today.