Fireworks clouds, wildflowers and kids leaving home...
Don't these clouds look like fireworks gone wrong? Actually, I can't say that, because in all the fireworks I've seen, I wouldn't have a clue if they'd gone wrong or not! Anyhow, when I looked up at these, that was the first thing I thought of.
I was staying with a friend on a farm, just out of Cadoux in the Wheatbelt of WA. Summer is fast approaching. The mornings are mostly still cool, but the heat makes itself known by about 9 am. The flies are out in their thousands, and the beautiful warm evenings, although the insects’ favourite time, lend themselves to wine on the patio.
All lovely thoughts, except it's harvest and no one has time for things like that! Maybe in January.
I've been on tour through the wheatbelt for Sapphire Falls, my latest novel. I've done a lot of kilometres, like about nearly 4000km! But it's brilliant to be out on the road, talking to people I wouldn't otherwise have met and promoting agriculture and women through my books.
It's been such a pleasure driving and seeing headers in the paddock. Harvest is well and truly underway. The problem is, there's been huge frosts through this part of the world. Frosts cause grains that are fit and viable to shrink to nothing. There is a lot of pain in parts of WA at the moment.
There is also a lot of beauty. Along the roadsides, there are wildflowers scattered amongst weeds (I'm pretty sure the dry weeds in this pic are soft broom grass - a bugger for getting into the wool of sheep.)
Salt lakes are notorious for having a crust that looks like it's solid underneath, but really, it's like an eggshell and under that crust is stinky, black, slimy mud. I couldn't get close enough to these old fence posts to get the photo I really wanted, but you get the idea of days gone by.
I was only home for four days before my baby — who is actually sixteen and not a baby at all — left for her second big adventure and first big job. We left Esperance at 3:30 am to drive to Kalgoorlie so she could catch a flight to Adelaide - hence the exhausted look on my face! She seemed to manage the hours quite well.
She's not back until Christmas - it's going to be a quiet household, although I'm still flat out on the edits of The Missing Pieces of Us (releasing in April of 2017) so maybe I won't miss her as much as I think I will. Or maybe that's wishful thinking!
When did your kids fly the next time for the first time?
Oh, and before I leave, please don't forget I have Christmas Surprise Packs available, but orders need to be in by the 28th of November so we can get them to you in time.
