Mmmmm, it’s been sometime since I last posted anything, and I’m realising we’re allowing ourselves to settle into mundane ‘house living’. I’ve just been through our recent photos, and the offerings are sparse indeed.

It’s not that we’ve been doing nothing. In fact, life continues to be very busy. So – why are there so few photos? Well, there’s really no excuse, just a few contributing factors. The main culprit has been the new job. What was supposed to be a two hour a day job, which we could comfortably do early in the morning, turned out to be a three hour job, which could only realistically be completed in the afternoons. We realised two weeks ago that the afternoon work was interfering too much with our ‘leisure time’, so we negotiated shorter hours. We’re now back to the two hours we wanted, 5.30am – 7.30am, then the day is our own. So far though, we still haven’t been managing to do much with it.

Next thing that’s added to this recent hump has also been related to our job. Cleaning the pre-school means working in a toddler, germ ridden environment (as anyone who has worked in a pre-school will attest). We’ve both picked up a bit of a cold virus, nothing to bad, just the sort of cold that seems to come on in the early evening so as to disturb our sleep overnight, then disappears upon rising, only to return again the next evening. We’re both tired.

We have still been managing to fit a beach walk in everyday with Mr Tilly. He’s proving to be a terrific little companion, and providing we fit a beach walk in with him sometime before mid-day he’s a well behaved little puppy for the remainder of the day. On the warmer days he’ll venture into the water, and I don’t think it’ll be long before the water will be his main focus.

He’s finished his initial puppy training, and has been quick to learn the first things a puppy should learn. So far, he sits, and lies down on command. He walks reasonably well on a loose lead, and when off the lead at the beach he comes back to us when called (most of the time). He stays reasonably near us when off the lead on the beach, and doesn’t object if we snap his lead back on when we see a need (a bigger dog approaching, or a child that we don’t want him to jump on). Generally, he’s easy to control even off the lead, but we still have a way to go before we’ll feel completely comfortable. He’s not five months old yet, so is still easily distracted.

We’ve just about finished knocking the garden into shape. The roses and annuals are all starting to flower, and soon I imagine they’ll putting on a show pretty enough to inspire Paul to get his camera out. Today while I weeded the front garden, Paul divided and repotted some of our hanging baskets.

I love my garden, and I love having a dog. I don’t mind our little job, and I don’t mind living in a house in Busselton in the summer months. However, I do mind that we seem to have let it all descend into a bit of rut. Now that I’ve realised that’s what’s happened though, I will do something about it. So, watch this space – starting tomorrow I think we’d better get ourselves out of comfort zone and start looking for somewhere close by to explore. There’s so much in this area to see, and to do, and we’ve hardly scratched the surface.