A hot, but social, weekend

 The weekend was a very hot one here, with 37 degrees reached on both days. Saturday was nasty at times because a hot north-westerly battered our plants over much of the morning, killing off the delicate new fronds on our tree ferns. I'm really hoping that we get a bit of rain tomorrow. Anyway, despite the high temperatures, we had a very social weekend, beginning with lunch on Saturday at Mel and E's fabulous house at Cawongla, literally 7 minutes from our place. We met the girls a few months ago when they happened to be celebrating a friend of their's birthday at the Cawongla Store on a Friday night that we were there with our Canadian friend from Cairns, Ryan. They had dinner at our place a week or so after that and they returned the hospitality yesterday. They have such a beautiful place which is based on a 'shed' construction that they have extended with a separate wing for their bedroom and bathroom. I'll take some more pics another time and show you the interior (oh and the girls as well :-)
After lunch we splashed around in their above ground pool - one of those ones you can get quite cheaply from various department stores - we might do the same.

We were possibly going to head to Lismore Show on Saturday night (Mel and E had actually been on the Friday night and the last time we were there was a couple of years ago with Piglet and Glen) but our mate, Trent, who had convinced us that it would be a good idea to go, if just to eat a dagwood dog (pluto pup) decided it was too hot and dusty so we had a quiet night at home watching Phantom of the Opera (the 25th anniversary production at the Royal Albert Hall - brilliant).

I got up early and set about watering our trees and shrubs before it got too hot and did this diligently for an hour or so before feeding the boys their lucerne which has become their staple now that there is so little grass in the paddock. We're thinking we may have to buy in a big round thingie of lucerne since the hot dry winds continue to brown off any grass that has managed to grow. Our friends, Warwick and John from Melbourne arrived at midday and we enjoyed a long lunch with them starting with a chilled bottle of Pol Gessner champagne. The boys are up staying with friends Matt and Stuart in Bangalow and looking for property to buy as they are keen to relocate up in the Northern Rivers. Which will be completely fabulous if they do.