Autumn Days and Nights

The log stove is in action again. It's lovely and cosy and heats up the family room a treat. Of course, it is the only room in the 8 room top floor that does get heated! Downstairs fares worse. There was a gas wall furnace near the kitchen but that died with a bang last year; this is what happens when you mix a leaking roof with an electric power point, but I digress. The gas wall furnace heated a small breakfast room and vented through a wall to usefully heat the next room...the family room. Thus the adjoining room it helpfully heated was the only other room in the house already containing heating! Everything else is icy. All costs and joking aside I am going to get some ducted heating people to come and give us some quotes. It's ridiculous. I'm colder here than I ever was in UK!!!


Mind you, the up-side of the colder days and nights are the beautiful Autumn colours. Baby Angel and I went power walking in the Botanical Gardens this morning. It was a glorious, crisp morning and we had our ipods ready for a good workout.
"Mum, is it ok if we don't use our ipods? Can we just talk?" she asked. "Did you ever think you'd be walking around these gardens with your daughter?"

The Botanic Gardens certainly hold many memories of childhood for me. It was a favourite place for a weekend outing with friends. We fed the ducks, played hide and seek amongst the giant roots of the Moreton Bay fig trees and visited little nooks and crannies like the Brownies' Toadstool which always fascinated me. Naturally we had to find it again this morning! We had a lovely morning and we did eventually put on our ipods for a 20 minute power walk around the rose gardens. We leaped around like loons to our respective 'walking music', she keeping strides ahead of me with her superior length legs, me jogging now and again to keep up. We grinned and gesticulated, choosing convoluted paths for the sake of the walk and racing around beds to meet up on the other side. I think we did plenty of communicating, even if it was to our own personal soundtracks! After all, my 'Drugproof Your Kids' lecturer assures us that communication and integrity are two of the key factors in raising happy kids!