Peaceful, quiet? Not all the time

I often tell you how peaceful it is here in our one lane, dead-end street. There's not much passing traffic except for the migrating birds that visit us on their way to who knows where. Apart from the work we do in our home to support the life we want to live, not much happens here. It's ordinary days lived by ordinary people. But last week all hell broke loose and we just sat back and observed.

Just beyond that picket fence is our usually quiet street.

After a few days of intermittent rain, on Monday night a tree came down at the end of our street (two doors down) and it took out the power pole supplying electricity to the street. Hanno woke up in the middle of the night and saw the Energex team set up out front trying to restore the power as quickly as they could. He got our torches out and when he came back to bed he told me what had happened. When I got up and looked outside, the men were working away in silence with shielded lights giving them light to work by but directed away from the houses. By sun up, the power pole was back up, trees cut down and the next couple of hours were taken up with the lines being rethreaded along the power poles and the connections to the houses checked. Our power pole suffered damage and we had to put in an insurance claim. We were told the power would be on again around 12 noon but ours didn't return until 2.30pm - just as the ice cream was starting to melt in the freezer, surely the measure of a prolonged power outage. It might even be the international standard. 😎

Fruit bread and butter pudding.

Then on Friday, Sunny came in to collect Jamie after work and asked why all the police were in the street. She had to drive past many armed police and thread through police cars to get to our place.  We had no idea what was happening but found out later from a neighbour that there had been a big drug raid, lead by the SWAT team, in a house a few doors down.  Gulp. 

A family meal. You can always tell where I'm sitting. It's where the big cup of black tea is.

All the while we continued doing our daily chores and apart from living without power for 14 hours and knowing these things were happening around us, we were not alarmed by the outside world moving closer to us in our street. We're in our haven here and we feel safe.

I've been knitting a fair bit and I'm pleased to have finished my year's worth of dishcloth knitting. I started another shawl after the dishcloths and that's progressing well. I'll be doing a knitting post very soon so I'll save the details for that. I've baked, cooked, watered plants, and sat awhile in the garden in the early morning and thought about our new season garden that we will plant in March.  It's not far away so I'd best start thinking about the seeds I want to plant. They need to be ready to go in the ground in eight weeks.

When I have some spare time I do an hour or two on my family history.  Cupboards have been cleaned out, the fridge tidied, decluttering is in full swing (again), we've been teaching ourselves how to groom Gracie, I've been sewing, mending and organising my sewing room. The morning chores start with the bed being made and the kitchen tidied and the hours progress slowly from there. Our main meal is eaten at lunch time and a nap taken is after lunch. We have the pleasure of Jamie's company until next week. He's been such a help to us and he makes us laugh. When he goes back to school in a couple of weeks time, I'm going to do a few more cupboards so we'll go into the year with most of our cupboards clean and organised.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And life goes on.