Mr Tilly is settling down again after his first Christmas, and today – so are we. I say today, as we’ve been at sixes and sevens now for a couple of weeks, not knowing if we’ve been coming or going (literally).

With so many people here over the Christmas period Mr Tilly was never at a loss for attention. He loved having the two young teenagers here, Luka and Emma, who were both more than willing to play any number of games with him, including ‘chase’. He loves ‘chase’!

Our little house is situated on the corner of busy Bussell Highway. Sometimes, particularly over the busy holiday seasons (Christmas and Easter), the traffic noise can get a bit intrusive. We’d thought that the noise was the only problem with our location, and have been planting screening plants and bird attracting natives ever since we moved in. The plan has been to block out a little of the noise, and to provide a distraction from it in the form of bird song. As yet, the plants are still immature, so it’s early days yet to see how successful the plantings will be.

However, as we were to find out, there’s more problems that go with living so near a main road than noise…..

After many games of chase with Luka over Christmas, grandson Tim arrived. We usually allow Mr Tilly to accompany us outside when guests arrive, and he’s always so excited to see the visitors that there’s no danger of him doing anything except following them back into the house to say hello. However, upon Tim’s arrival,  seeing another long legged younger male, he excitedly took off towards busy Bussell Highway, I think trying instigate a game of chase.

I couldn’t begin to relate the panic that followed, and I won’t go into  details. Fortunately, tragedy was averted, and Tilly was returned indoors to safety.

We were lucky that time, and realising we may not be so lucky if there’s ever a second time,  we had since been planning to move house. However, today we’ve realised it’s early days yet for that, and it’s probably a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

Sanity has returned, and a more sensible, less knee jerky plan has evolved. Tomorrow Paul is going to arrange some fencing to go between the posts of our front verandah. The fencing will provide a second barrier between our front door and access to the busy corner roads. Additionally, now the silly season is over again we should soon be able to re-commence dog obedience training – and Mr Tilly will hopefully learn to respond immediately to the”come” command regardless of exciting distractions.

So that means we’re not moving – well not this year anyway. We want to see the plants grow, and the birds arrive to enjoy them. Plus we’ve hardly begun yet to knock this little house into shape yet. Watch this space for improvements yet to come……

I think we’ll still be here at this time next year, and hopefully I’ll be recording photos from our little boy’s second Christmas. For now though here’s a couple more from Mr Tilly’s first Christmas: