Bathroom scales and a bath in the creek

A cooling breeze can be so deceptive.  Because the breeze was blowing things around inside the house, I thought it wouldn't be too hot to go for a walk just after lunch time.   From the top of the hell it looked nice and cool on the other side.

But when I got down there, there was no breeze on this side of the hill and along the creek banks. By then I was half way round the farm loop, so had to plough ahead.

But there was a distraction...something in the creek caught my eye.  Looked like a bathtub.  Really?  A bathtub.   I could only see it from one spot, and that was some distance away.

I walked past, trying to get another sighting of it, then decided I would just have to get down to the creek somehow.  I came to a spot where I thought I could scramble under the electric fence and slide down a fair way on my bottom.  Once I would have just dived in and done it but I'm a little more cautious these days, more aware of my lack of agility.  

Cell phone in pocket?  Check.  Coverage?  Check.  Description of where I am ready in case I have to be bailed out?  OK.  Good to go.

It took a while.  The sliding on bum in the loose dirt part went well.  But it did take a while plodding over very uneven ground through alligator weed that came up to my waist in places, testing each step with my walking pole.  I had to sit down and laugh when I finally saw what my bathtub was.

It's an old woolpak that must have been washed downstream during a flood and became lodged on an old tree stump.  I'm awfully glad there was a nice reflection or I might have become annoyed with all that effort for nothing.

Getting back up to the track wasn't as easy as going down.  Where I had simply slid down, it was hands and knees on the way back up the bank and pretty hard on them it was too. 

I had to rest a few times before I got home.  Gosh, it was hot.

I noticed how much the maize crop has grown.  When I downloaded my photos I realized I'd taken a photo of the maize a month ago today.  That's it in the first shot.  The colour of the leaves has really deepened and now the husks on the cobs are starting to darken.  Soon it will be ready.

Which reminds me, the cows are now grazing the turnip crop.  One day during the week when I got home I found my bathroom scales sitting out on the deck.  I idly wondered how they had got there but thought all will be revealed in due course, picked them up and put them away.  Not 5 minutes later my son came into the yard with two sacks on the back of the quad and said, "You've put them away already?"  I knew he meant the scales and when I put them back where he'd left them, I discovered he was using them to weight the turnips he had in each sack to calculate the crop return per hectare.  He seemed happy with the result and the cows obviously love their turnips.  

In this paddock you can see how they have chomped through them. The white tape keeping them from gobbling up the lot in one sitting is the electric fence. 

My little house on the right in the background seems a long way to walk to get home.  

Even when I'm closer, it still seems a long way!

It will be a while before I'm tempted to go for a walk in the mid-day sun again!