In lieu of any decent photos of the ducks - hell yesterday we were way too busy stopping them from drowning (more on that later), but in the process of checking through the photos on the camera - and because Fiona and Andrew visited us over the weekend:

This is from before the apple trees were planted, Andy gave Adam a hand to plough over the rip lines so that they were ready for tree planting. Don't you just love the grin - Fiona I think I know what you can buy him for Christmas this year....

But drowning ducklings - well the ducks were okay, and the ducklings could have survived the inundation but the waves were pushing them up against the back of the house. Why you ask?

Well it's been the hottest November on record around here for the last fortnight - climate change / climate chaos? Na - of course not. Global Financial crisis and we'll all bloody leap to at a trillion miles an hour - cause environmental chaos and we'll - have a bit of a chat for, I don't know, say a couple of dozen years and we'll get back to you. If you're still there - I mean not drowned, or cooked, or frozen, or blown off the face of the planet..... where was I?

That's right - our own particular little piece of climate chaos. We cooked for a fortnight so we were sort of looking forward to the cool change (thank goodness I hadn't put the tomato plants out because somebody local had said something about the chance of late frosts in November..... I'd KILL for a frost - but I'm digressing again). Anyway - cool change arrived on Friday in a gale. Blew over the temporary shade covers we'd had to erect everywhere to try and stop the new garden beds from dying off - no problems / sort of expected that. No rain though on Friday. Saturday it sort of sat there and glowered all day - you know / low cloud, humid, sooking sky. That sort of thing. Light rain started up on Saturday evening. Very pleasant. Wandered off to bed.

Woke up to a flood of biblical proportions on Sunday. It was chucking it down. Went out to check the chaos in the chook yard - their secure wire run had collapsed under the weight of water on the tarp that was erected over one end so that we could keep their food dry - so we're going to have to move building their new run up the urgency list toots sweet this week. But just thought while I'm out here - I'd better look at the ducks.

Just as well I did - there was a torrent of water running down the paddock straight in the front door of their house and they were all swimming. The ducks were okay with that, the ducklings were okay with the swimming bit, although they were looking a bit pooped - but the waves of water were sort of pushing them up against the back of their house and I could hear bang... bang .... bang sort of noises.

So I started bailing - standing in ankle deep water and duck poo - bailing away and trying to dig a channel around the front of their house to direct some water away. Meanwhile Adam was rather precariously hanging off a ladder trying to clear the blockage in one down pipe that was flooding his machinery shed - but after he'd sorted that out he came and gave me a hand, and Andy braved the downpour as well - and we managed to get some water away from the ducks house.

By that stage the rain was starting to abate a little, but it took a while.

Later on that day we then had to transfer ducks and ducklings to the hot house so that we could clean out the house and replace their rather sodden bedding. Needed to clean out that house anyway - but kind of wasn't expecting it to be washed down in the process.

Nothing like a bit of normal weather patterns really - must look good to sit up there in your ivory tower and watch the clouds / sun scud along below you. Down here, at the pointy end, unfortunately it's just a tiny bit harder to swallow the scepticism.