Birthday, carport, firewood shed...

My 60th birthday was last Friday. It was a good day. My mum has been here for two weeks now and our mate Phil came from Cairns to help mark the occasion, with new crocs (shoes) and a birthday cake.

He also brought fresh prawns (lucky as the red claws have been scarce).

Mum and a red claw

We started celebrating at lunch time with seafood and a couple of beers, then 3..4…10…? We then had bloody-maries before dinner which was an easy BBQ cooked by the men. Then of course champagne with the cake!

Just before mum retired about 1.00am

A little later Phil and myself

Much later as you can see!

We ended up in bed at around 4am, after a visit from Kermit and his mate, which probably liked the swedish and french music.

Let's party!

Where did you go party-pooper?

I can tell you I really felt like 60 the next day! But we had a ball.

Nevertheless, beware of what you're wishing on you 60th birthday!

 I wished for rain as everything was so dried. The grass was down to nothing and brown. No matter how much water I was putting on the vegetables every night, the next morning the soil was dry again. Don't get me wrong they still flourished and I had to harvest the snow peas and tomatoes every second day!

On the Sunday we had a huge storm that came from nowhere, all of a sudden we had like a mini cyclone that lasted about 45 minutes. Branches from the tree in the farmer's paddock landed in our garden  with its fruits plump and ripe scattering our lawn like Easter eggs! (Pity we don't know if they're edible and are not game to try). The veggie patch took a beating as well, snow peas and tomatoes got pushed to the ground, as  the dill and coriander (goodbye seeds…?). But with a bit of TLC they might still be ok.

Poor veggies after the storm

 Dill looking very sad

Do they look edible to you?

We even had hail for 5 minutes. (Never witnessed hail in the tropics before!). That's when the rain started and hasn't stopped since. But I'm not complaining… yet!

Weatherzone reports: **Cairns has seen one of its heaviest one day rain totals with more than 224mm of rain falling steadily. The city rarely sees this much rain, except during cyclone season, and the last time it exceeded 200mm in a one day was with Cyclone Yasi!

Many parts of the Northern Tropical Coast and Tableland district or from the Daintree Village to Cardwell and just inland have seen rainfall totals of 100-200mm over the past 24 hours, with Goldsborough Alert topped the gauges at 317mm.These downpours look to be kicking off an early start to the wet season!**

We're very lucky that Sven has finished building the carport next to the house, the cars are now parked safe and dry and will be cool (when the sun comes out again).

Ian had to help with his tractor to dig the holes for the posts, as the ground was as hard as concrete!

Ian's tractor at work

Fine machine!

Even Penny agrees

Then Sven  concreted the posts in, and the rest quickly went up, as usual. The longest part was waiting for the materials to be delivered, which was frustrating. If they could have fitted on top of his van he would have picked them up. But too long and too heavy.

Posts up

Posts concreted

Purlins up

However, it was all finished last Thursday, just before the storm!

Job done

Mind you, while waiting for the materials to be delivered,Sven also built a firewood shed, made out of recycled timber.

We used to have all the timber for "Old Benny" stacked under a tarp, but noticed that rats were nesting under, stealing  the macadamia nuts  left  to dry in a basket on the patio table. (They are now inside… No more free feed for vermin… ) We have to use a vice to crack the nuts open, they only use their teeth to make a neat hole. Wish I had their teeth! Oops... careful, no... I'm safe (I hope) it's not my birthday anymore!

The firewood shed is much more practical and cleaner too. 

Nice and tidy firewood shed

Guess what? Sven is now extending the carport, that is in between rain showers… 

Can't keep  still for a minute!