All was back to normal, my fence that the tree damaged was kind of straight again, but would never be the same. Sometime in the future I would have to look into that, but at the moment it kept the stray cattle, horses and pigs out, so I throw a blind eye.
One good thing about the tree having been blown over was that we would not be cold during the coming winter, as the Wattles are really hard, and burns for quite long. Jan luckily had a chain saw, and before long the tree was nicely sawn up, and the kids were heavily bribed to chop the thicker pieces up. It took some doing to get the two boys going, as they have not yet conformed to this kind of rough living, having been real city slickers in Denmark, where they of course grew up. Jan of course did his bit, as I said that they could take half if they help me to get mine to the required sizes, and I also jumped in to do my bit.
I was getting very tired lately, something alien to me, as I have enough energy for ten people as a rule, and it irritated me when I was on a roll doing something, and I had to stop for my energy having just evaporated
I had almost enough stones for my tortoise mosaic that I wanted to do on my back stoep, and decided to bring up some riversand with the wheelbarrow. Not an easy task, and I had to abandon it for a day to recuperate from one terrible fright.
Down at the river it was becoming really overgrown because of all the rain, and the young poplars and other trees were very dense, with the result that I had to almost cut open my path to where the sand was. It was a bitty scary, as the dense poplars did not let in any sunshine, and underneath this huge giants an eery green light was thrown, and I always felt like I was in another world, everything so quiet and calm.
I was struggling through some extra tough bushes, thinking that I would not be able to get the wheelbarrow up to the sand, and would have to go up to the house for a pail or something, when suddenly, right in front of me was two big brown eyes, and I froze like a bally lolly, my feet glued to the soft moss, and no sound coming from my wide open mouth. The other being however, gave one horrendous bellow and stormed, but luckily for me the dense bushes hampered his attack, giving me time to recover my muscle power, and do some healthy hurdle sprinting, not looking back to see my attacker, but hearing it crash through the growths.
I have done some sprinting in my life, and this time I even bettered my record from the time that Sheila's murderous cow Josie chased me up to my gate, and the hurdles I cleared quite astonished my kids who was watching this episode with much enjoyment!
It was the bally brown and white bull that had found his way along the river to our place, and was grazing away quite peacefully when I suddenly intruded on his stolen pleasures!Was a bitty stiff and sore the next day, so put the sand gathering on hold for a few days until both nerves and muscles had recovered!