When we were sick for a couple of weeks a few months ago, it wasn't COVID. We tested negative for COVID, RSV and Flu.

But this time it was. We were both sick, this time with COVID, over the Christmas to New Year period. In theory I was a day or two behind my wife, but she's tested negative a few days ago and I am still dragging my feet. Feels like a head cold. I'm heaps better than I was, but still struggling. Plenty of people have had it worse. We didn't have to go to hospital or anything like that. Its our first bout of COVID. I was worried how it would impact us and any pre-existing conditions, but we survived.

I've since heard Myrtleford was a COVID hotspot just before Christmas, with a lot of locals suddenly picking it up.

I didn't do much for a few days. I'm back out and about now, but am pretty much depleted by lunchtime, and in fact have slept on the couch in the afternoons most days. That is so not something I normally do!

Luckily, its sort of the quiet time for us. There is still stuff to do, but nothing particularly time critical. I finished repairing the fence in our front laneway, and finished the job of moving the gates. This means the cows can have the laneway for feed...the grass is almost waist-high. The bonus for them is an apple tree in the laneway. Its old, very big, and was covered in apples. The cockatoos have had a few goes at it and knocked the top apples off. The cows reach up and pull down the lower apples. Usually we get nothing, but it keeps the cows entertained. Strategically the laneway injects them between both neighbour's cows, on either side, and there is a few days of cows shouting at each other over the fence but they've settled down now.

Because the gates have moved there are now some trees exposed to the cattle that were previously out of reach. In a few days they have smashed a tea-tree to the ground, and shredded two lilac bushes. We have two birch trees that sit below the powerlines. The arborists employed to keep the powerlines free cut these to the ground. They have regrown from the stump, but the cows are rapidly shredding the new growth. Not unexpected, but I am always surprised at how fast and thorough they are at wrecking trees.

The firewood that needs cutting up has grown exponentially over the last couple of weeks, with another big tree dropping a branch. This was an enormous Ash. In March it was defoliated in a week by the Lacebug that had run out of olive leaves, and it has taken a knock. There's a lot of dead wood up there now amongst the fresh growth. We were lucky, this was a very long branch that pointed at the house, but it fell between the house and my car without causing any damage. We've only just had the roof restored from its poor health, and the new tiles and freshly repointed roof was missed by millimetres. The trees around the house are very big, and gloriously shady on a hot day. But big trees have big branches....!

(Oddly, we had arborists in earlier in the year to take down two big branches off the same tree. They were both looking suspect, one with pressure deformations causing the base of the branch to bulge suspiciously. It would have been simple for them to remove this new branch as well, but there was no sign of any problem with it.)

I've been using the river pump to keep the vegetable garden alive. We've had a few hot days (37, 38 the last two days) and the vegie garden goes into decline quickly at that heat. But yesterday the pump just stopped. I've had a few goes at sorting it out and am not there yet. It seems to be fully primed. That is, it has a full pump body and the pipe up from the river is full. I think the issue it needs to have a depth of a metre in the river (according to the manual). The Ovens has dropped and where the pump is it isn't a metre. This afternoon I tried running it with only one tap open. It ran for longer, but in the end still cut out. Weather forecast for tomorrow is rain, which will buy me a few days. But I'm not convinced we'll get any.

A few years back we had chickens, but I stopped when foxes cleaned us out. I'm gearing up for a return to chooks. We have a good chook yard near the house. Its a big space, fenced 2.2 metres high, more than 60 square metres. I've re-enforced the base to prevent anyone digging in, and there's now concrete blocks weighing down edged sheets of heavy mesh. To dig in you now need to start digging 50cm out, dodge the sharp points of the cut off mesh, and dig through rock hard clay for 70-100 cm. Do-able, but probably not in one night. Any holes started to be dug under fences by wombats I am now filling with concrete. That is, holes that open up secure paddocks. The wombats have free reign to create havoc everywhere else. Just not the chook yard....

This time last year I was slowly boiling to death in a plastic spray suit, desperately trying to stop the Lacebug explosion in our olive trees. So far this season we are under control. In fact, I have seen almost no Lacebug around this year. Whatever happened last year in north east Victoria to create that tidal wave of Lacebug, its not happening the same this year.