Thinking of others today

I have been shocked to hear of the terrible events happening in Australia at the moment - floods in Queensland and terrible fires in Victoria, with many people dead and huge numbers of lives wrecked with the homes that have been completely destroyed, indeed, whole communities of homes have been wiped out. In this country, we are seeing the coldest and snowiest weather for 20 years, whilst in Australia, some parts are suffering from the worst heatwaves in memory. It makes me stop and think - whatever struggles we are going through here, there is always, always someone with greater challenges to bear. We have so much to be thankful for in our lives at the moment.

The FGs are just enjoying chocolate swirls for breakfast, warmed over in the microwave - they are cinnamon buns without the cinnamon, with chocolate chips to replace it! The EFG and I spent a happy hour or two on Saturday afternoon trawling through an Australian website's recipes, and we came up with Lemonade Scones. We picked up the necessary ingredients when we went to the supermarket in the afternoon, and two batches have been made and enjoyed. The recipe is SO simple - just a cup of cream, a cup of lemonade and 3 cups SR flour - mix together lightly and then stamp out the scones and bake about 10 minutes at 170C in a fan oven. They rise delightfully! Photo to follow later when I find the camera. Each batch made about 16 - 20 mini scones, for very little cost - 40p for the cream, about 5p worth of lemonade and max 10p worth of flour - so very good value.

We had a death in the chicken community yesterday - one of the older girls was having difficulty breathing so we moved her to an isolation pen where she died within the hour. We think that cold weather had brought on some sort of respiratory illness, as there was no sign of any other illness; she had no sign of the tumour of which we had a hen die years ago, and we have also seen egg bound hens, and she didn't appear to be egg bound either, so we have to chalk it up to experience and let it go. The chickens are well thought of here, and respected as a part of the lifestyle we have, and their contribution to it, but we have little room for sentimentality with them.

Well, the schools are open and the FGs are raring to go. I have paperwork to organise, calls to make, housework to do and washing to hang, so we had better get going!