A Winter Wonderland! (Maybe not). Saturday 2nd August 2025

Boy, did it snow. This is the heaviest snowfall in Armidale since the 1980's.

It started off fluffy, nice and pretty..

 It confused a Magpie.

 Then it didn't stop.

 We wouldn't have got out of the driveway.

I'm glad I am now retired as it would have been a nightmare trying to get nurses into town to work. 

Also getting them home from work. I imagine there were a lot of double shifts that weekend.

That's our red roof completely white.

The roads are all closed, people are stuck on highways.

THEN THE POWER WENT OUT!

We were lucky that ours was only off for several hours, but many people had no power for days.

There have been so many horror stories of older people stuck at home with no heating. 

THANK YOU to the poor essential energy people having to go out and do their best to fix things with impassable roads and in dreadful conditions. 

Hi my Mum's Dear Readers,

It's Miss Lizzy here to tell you how much I luvvved the snow!

It was sooo much fun.

At 4 o'clock, when we took Graham out for a play, 

he'd throw our toys and the toys disappeared into the snow!

I had to dig around to find it, snow flew around everywhere, hilarious!  

I got covered  in snow. Mum said I looked like a big snowball.

 

Teddy didn't like it, it was too close to his undercarriage.

 

Did you know that I think it is my job to monitor the goings on in the park next door?

 

When people visited the park to look at the snowy view 

I had to lope down the hill, barking, to let them know I was keeping an eye on them.

 

 

Then I found that the snow came up further than my leg pits and it was hard work getting back up the hill because I needed to jump through it.

 

I can eat snow, its a bit cold like ice cream, but tastes like water.
 

Until next time

Love and (cold) wet noses from

Miss Lizzy

 

I'll take the blog back now, thanks Miss Liz for your thoughts on the snow event.

You can see how heavy it was by how the tree branches are weighed down.

The trees that suffered the most were the pine trees, surprisingly for trees from the northern hemisphere huge trees just collapsed, in a concertina effect. What a mess and the whole town smelt like pine.

Wattles didn't fair well either, but the biggest damage was to the gums. Branches down everywhere. A lot of branches were just bent but when we had big winds a couple of weeks later huge limbs where crashing down. A month on its still bad, dying branches are everywhere.

Worse was damage to peoples roofs, gutters, collapsed sheds, the roads are a mess. Everything's a mess.It was just a total disruption to normal life.

Then Sunday morning all silence under a blanket of snow. (See first photo of the post as well).

It was gone by the end of the day and melted into great rivulets of water and slush.

 

 

And in the End.....

We are home and two doggies are very pleased to see us.

Although they had lost a lot of weight at the kennel. Teddy was extremely thin (he has cancer, see the growth on his head, we are letting nature take its course). The vet said that Miss Lizzy is still a butterball even though she lost 1kg. Running around all day and no treats was the cause. They have gained all the weight back now and Teddy is still going okay. 

 

The fuffies all made it home as well as the little carpet we bought in Egypt.

 This has been epic work recording this trip and when I get a moment I'll go back and do some editing and fix the typos and spelling mistakes. 

I've also made a small donation to Wikipedia for their assistance with facts.

Now I have a big backlog of posts! I'll try to get up to date before I go into hospital to get the dodgy hip fixed.

Next posts are concerts and trip to Melbourne. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather

All it does is rain. Not much summer this year.

And then we had hail.....

 Both V.Ws were damaged as well as the solar panels on the roof of the house.

Thank goodness for insurance, but we still had to pay the excess.

The roof of the deck now has holes but we were planning to replace it this year anyway.

~~~~~

The willow tree is also dying.

Here it is in 2025

 and below in 2017.

 It started dying in the drought and then was 

battered by the hurricane a few years ago and has never fully recovered. 

...And what we did after the wedding

We spent two days traveling home.

But first we took the short drive to Jervis Bay and Hyams Beach with its beautiful white sand.

https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/south-coast/jervis-bay-and-shoalhaven/hyams-beach

 

Then we had a stop at Fitzroy Falls.

https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/lookouts/fitzroy-falls-lookout

 

 

Then we spent the night in Bowral and spent the afternoon at my favourite Antique, old wares and craft centre. Dirty Janes.

 

https://www.dirtyjanes.com/dirty-janes-bowral/

I actually bought a pair of earrings.

You know when you see something and have an ahhhhhh moment.

One cent coins made into earrings!

https://www.ramint.gov.au/one-cent

 

I paid approximately 9000 times what they were originally worth. 

But I can say I don't care 2 cents worth!

Although we did see a couple of Harrods bears, one was $145.00. And it was play worn, not pristine with its ear swing tag attached like my 20 bears. I may have to find out what my bear collection is actually worth before I die and somebody chucks them into a garbage skip.

 

Heres my collection of Harrods Bears in my Craft Room.

Oh for goodness sake they have a wiki page, don't let them know it will go to their heads.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrods_Christmas_Bears

Then back to our trip home.

The second night we spent in the Hunter Valley.

We did think about going to Hunter Valley Gardens but  the weather was terrible so we visited the Smelly Cheese shop instead.

 

https://www.smellycheese.net.au/

 

So, next  I will bombard you with posts about finished quilts and eventually will get back on track with my anniversary posts. 

 

What a difference some rain makes!

 

 

Hi everyone,

Although the drought is not over and we are still on level 5 water restrictions.

We have had rain and everything looks so much greener!

 

However, the green grass, 

makes it so much easier to spot the dead trees.

 

Conifers and pines have not done well.

I'm still doing the following..

1/ turn shower on and get wet

2/turn shower off shampoo hair

3/ turn shower on to rinse hair 

4/ turn shower off again for second shampoo

etc. ect.

 

Below is a time line over the last several months... (some of which I've posted before).

 

Well, with the rain so came the weeds to cover the bare patches. 

There is a succulent issue all over the NSW Tablelands.

Which, I am reliably informed, is natures healer after a drought. 

It will nourish the soil and protect it from soil wash-aways  in heavy rain

and will die in the first frost.

Teddy's only a Tiny Teddy. 

He can't find his precious throw toy!

 

These weeds grow 30cm overnight!

I kid you not..

 

 

Graham bought a ride on mower.

The above pic, I took 20 minutes ago. 

Its taken him all day to mow the lawn.

But, the roses are loving it

and they all survived, although are a bit messy and need a prune.

 

Bonica, Scentimental and a David Austin rose (that I can't remember the name of) in a vase.