Warm hands

I've just spent a delightful 15 minutes washing up. My dishwasher, that I usually use every second day, is out of service as the hose came off the other night and flooded the kitchen. By the time I knew what had happened, H had already cleaned it all up. We phoned our insurance company and they sent around two "Disaster Recovery" experts. LOL They've left two air blowers for us to run over the weekend to dry out own floating timber floor and cupboards. Although H reckons we'll end up having to replace part of the floor and the kickboards on the cupboards. It's a big job.

In the meantime, I'm doing all washing up by hand. Polly, and a few of the other girls, know I love washing up. It slows me right down and focuses me in time and place. It has been pouring rain for the past three days - we had 35mm, then 45mm, then 67mm, this morning the rain gauge overflowed at 100mm and is already up to 50mm again. And it's cold. So I had a very comfortable and tender feeling standing there at my sink, up to my wrists in warm soapy water, looking out the window to a flooded backyard. The greyness of the rainy day made the lemons on our backyard tree stand out like golden candles on a dark and stormy night. But it's warm in here and I'm bundled up with a thick woollen jumper, long skirt and my lambswool slippers. I might look a bit strange, but I feel cosy.

I've washed a quilt and it is drying slowly on the back verandah. Hettie, our cat, is curled up in a padded basket, sound asleep. The dogs are asleep on their inside beds. But outside, it's flooding. Here is the creek in our back yard. It's gone from a trickle to this.

H found this little bird dead on our verandah. : (

All our spare containers are full of rain water and our two tanks are overflowing. I think we could have filled them both four times over, but it's nice to hear and see the rain after such a long and difficult drought. We just heard on the local news that people are being evacuated over at Noosa and the local dam is overflowing.

This is what I can see when I look out my kitchen window. The pigeon peas are bent almost to the ground and I'd be surprised if they survive this drenching. But here inside it's comfy, H is making coffee and I'm looking forward to washing up again after tea with my hands in the warm soapy water again.