There’s some things that I just love. I love the smell of the air without the pollution, I love the scenery, I love my cows and I love my letterbox.

Now why in the world would I love a letterbox? Because my letterbox is so different, and because it’s not the sort of letterbox that you could ever have if you lived in the city.

If you live in a city you have to conform. You can have a wild, weird or outlandish letterbox because it makes you look silly when every other letterbox in the street is normal.

But out here in the country you can do whatever you want. There isn’t a neighbour within half a mile of us. Almost no one drives down the road we live in, and so it’s not as if a wild outlandish letterbox would even be noticed.

Not that ours is wild or outlandish, but it’s just personal to us.

We painted it exactly as we want. You see we love chickens, we’ve got, currently, about 15 chickens and we can’t even eat all the eggs they provide us.

So we decide to have a really strange looking letterbox painted with the chicken on it. I designed a letterbox and built it and we painted the chickens on the letterbox.

It’s not the sort of post box that you’d see in the city, but it’s perfect the country. We love it.

I have lots of trees around my house and around my property which is great. I love having trees round, it’s somewhere to the birds to live and I just like to look at trees. But there is a downside to trees.

Because next to my front gate I had an old tree that was pretty much dead. And then I noticed that it was starting to lean over and I decided that it was probably time to have a look at it. So I did and I decided that it was dead enough that it had to come out because if it didn’t come out it would eventually fall over and wreck my gate.

But I had no idea how to get it out because it was massive. I have a chainsaw but this tree was way too big to cut down with a chainsaw. I really had no idea what to do about it.

But because I live in the country I have farmers around and the local farmer came past on his tractor at the exact same time I was standing there looking at the tree wondering what to do about it. Farmers are very inventive and he had an easy solution.

He had a long cable that he attached to the tree about 20 feet above the ground and then he just pulled it down with his tractor. It took a few seconds and the tree was down quite safely. That was good because I was worried about getting hurt trying to cut the tree down with a chainsaw.

I was very grateful and so I offered him the firewood but he said he had enough firewood, though a few of the branches chopped up might be nice.

I had no problem cutting up the branches with my chainsaw and so he got a pile of firewood for his troubles helping me pull the tree down.

But the trunk is still lying there and it’s a really big job cutting it up. That’s the downside of living in the country.

This time I can’t go with my family because they all have some concert thing to go to that I’m not particularly fond of so they can’t come and I get to go with sa friend.

We are planning to camp out. I have a great tent, canvas, water proof, big enough to be really comfortable and its forecast to rain, so I may need all of  that. I hope it doesn’t rain on us because rain isn’t what you need when your go camping.

I don’t like getting up early, I resist it when I can, but we have to go at 4 am Friday. It’s a 4 hour trip to where we are meeting up with some of the others, and we meet at 9.

But getting up early on Friday will be just fine, I’ve got something great to look forward to. And I really am looking forward to it heaps.

But my car is pretty old, I really hope the car makes it there ok. It’s not that it’s breaking down all the time or anything, in fact it goes really well. But it is old and I just keep my fingers crossed that it makes it there and makes it back.

Saturday is going to be a wonderful day. Nothing is planned at all, just a hang about day to do what you want to do. I plan to take some fishing gear along and do some fishing, in fact I bought a new rod this morning. I broke my old fishing rod a while ago.

My old  broken rod was one I made a long long time ago. I bought the fibreglass blank and all the runners and made it myself and I’ve used it and used it. I was pretty impressed with myself that I managed to make my own fishing rod, no experience.

I have no idea how it broke at all. I was just walking through a patch of trees and then I looked at it and the tip was broken off. What happened to it? Who knows. But it was a pretty sad day and I had used that rod so much.

I found out today that it wasn’t worth a lot  of money. That’s because I went to a shop and bought a new one and it wasn’t expensive. But it still  had sentimental value, after all I made that rod myself.

And I couldn’t believe. 50 bucks for a new fishing rod. They certainly aren’t expensive now. But the new one isn’t the one I made. I’d rather my old one back than a new one.

They’re probably really cheap now because they’re all made in China. Anyway that’s a bit about my  upcoming weekend. I’d like to catch a fish and I hope it doesn’t rain much.

I’ll let you know what it was like.

It’s all done, my weekend I mean. And was it a great weekend? I loved it, though  getting up quite so early was a little tiring. Way too early in the morning for me.

I got up at around 5 am, really way early for me. It was way dark and it felt like the middle of the night. Was it hard to get myself out of bed, but I got out  because I knew that I had a good weekend to look forward to so that made it worth it.

I picked up my friend and we got started early. He had a lot of stuff to load into the car and we took longer to get going than I thought was a good idea really. Because we were meeting  some other cars on the way  and the meeting was at 9am, so we had to get started and get there on  time.

It was raining by the time we got there which was sad. That was a shame as it has been such good weather lately, the one weekend I want good weather its raining on us. But that’s weather, you cant do anything about it can you, even if you want to?

We were all camping (not great in the rain) and so we had to get there and put up the tent. We were lucky that by the time we got there most of the rain had all stopped. There was still a little bit but nothing like the rain we had on the way. It’s not  nice putting up a tent in the rain. And it was a long drive there.

And it was a really slow trip becuase of all the new speed limits around.

But overall a great weekend. I got about 5 fish so I had fish to eat for dinner. What a treat. I’m  looking forward to the next holiday now.

I just love living in the country and I’m happy to say so to you.

One of the good things about the country is the birds. I love to have birds around me.

Out here there are just so many great birds. Dozens and dozens of  wonderful birds. It must be because they all like the trees around me because there’s always lotsw of birds and they sit in the branches of the trees and pick off the stuff with  their beaks and hold them in their claws and eat them one by one.

Although I do like birds they do make a mess of my many of trees. When they break off a small branch to  eat the pods they drop them on the ground and it looks like a battlefield under my trees, bits of branches everywhere.

They’re mostly parrots, and parrots have strong beaks so they can do all this. But on the positive side they have stunning colors and they all look great. I get them sitting around the veranda that goes all around my house, they sit on the railing and look at me inside. And I love to see them  there so I sit still and watch them. If I sit still they don’t go away at all.

There’s some damage to the trees like I said but it’s still great having them around and I love to see them.  I could shoo them away when they start damaging the trees and then I wouldn’t have all the damage but I’d rather let them come and sit on my veranda myself. If I shoo them away they might all leave for good.

Its got to be so much better out here in the country. I’ll bet theres no birds in the city. Too many people to scare them off and no trees for them to wreck. Well there’s probably some but not many.

As I say I like all animals, not just birds. Animals are great to have around, as good as birds. I love all of them.

I think it’s good for you having animals and birds around the house. It’s nature and nature is very important. It’s like life for everything else around us. So give me the birds and animals around me all the time and I love being around nature.  I’ve just had one of those parrots perch on the veranda right in front of me now.

Give me the country life any day, you won’t get me going back to live in the city any time soon.

It’s a very good boat. It’s on it’s own trailer and it’s easy to tow. And I think it’s one of the best things you can do it to get out on the water. I have a  sticker on my boat that says life is better in a boat, and I think it is really.

I took my family away last weekend. It was the school holidays so everyone had the time off. We decided that we didn’t want to stay home for the whole holidays so we decided to get away for a few days of boating. 4 days actually, which was nice. It was really great though it as raining and there was a really strong wind when we left, though  that all went away after a few hours. And  then the sun came out and it was really nice to be out.

It was a nice place to go to on our holiday. There was so many things for the kids to do. Kids need so much to do nowadays. So if you’ve got bored kids then you’ve got problems, if you’ve got bored kids then they hassle you constantly for something to do and it gets annoying.

Bored kids can be the worst thing you can do for your  holiday. They are unhappy and keep hassling you all the time to play with them, when all you want to do is to sit and relax and read your book. Kids hassling you doesn’t make for a good holiday.

But no problems on this weekend, bored kids weren’t a problem. There were so  many things for them to do, pool, table tennis, a huge jumping thingy that they loved. A swimming pool that was outdoors and heated, and  they loved to swim.

And there was a games room there and they played in there for hours. There was this huge television and every night there was kids movie for them to watch.

And it’s  amazing how something like a swimming pool can keep kids entertained for hours. I can swim for a little while then I get  bored.

And more about our boat. It was great for a few reasons. Firstly it was a great way to get the bags and bikes transported. The kids bikes are too big to take in the car but if you have a boat along  then you can just throw them all in the boat and they’re taken care of.

So the boat was great to have along. We did a couple of days in the boat. One was on the local  river just looking around about, a little time spent sitting on the bank having lunches and giving the kids a swim. More swimming! And we could sit there in the sun and read our books and enjoy it.

And we did a day on the lake nearby too. I bought one of those tyre tubes that you pull behind the boat and pulled the kids around the lake  on that. They loved it and wouldnt get off it. If you  have kids and love water youve got to have a boat of your own.

So a boat is a huge bonus on a holiday. Use it to take the bikes and bags and have the kids entertained along the way.

I’m really glad I took the boat on our holiday.

I really love my cows. They’re such  animals, almost a half ton in weight but ever so gentle. I’ve never seen an aggressive cow. Bulls perhaps, but not cows. Even my kids can pat them as long as they’re feeding them at the same time, the cows don’t necessarily like being patted  but they’ll stand there and be patted if they’re getting fed well. They just pull back a little when you try and pat them because they’re nervous.

The best time to pat cows is when you feed them hay. They just love their hay, and when the grass growth is getting slow because winter is coming you need to in crease their feed with hay or something else. I have hay to give them.

Now that means of course  that youre committed to feeding your cows each and every day. Once there’s no feed in the field then they need hay to eat each day without fail. So you can’t just go away for a few days and leave them or they starve to death. So you’re committed to it.

I feed them all  myself. I like my holidays though so when you go away you have to have something so that the cows are fed. I do this myself.

I have a really good system. I keep a 2 of my paddocks fenced off with the gate closed so that when one has some good grass in it I can keep it that way. The cows all eat my hay until I have to go away and then I can open their gate and let them in there and they have plenty of food for a week and I can go away knowing my cows aren’t starving to death.

And the cows aren’t silly either, they know that there is grass in there somewhere when they look through th e gate so once I open the gate they’re right in there as fast as they can go.

And then when the holiday is over I take the cows all back into the main paddock, close the gates and feed them their hay all over again.

I feed my cows right after my own breakfast. They know when I’m going to feed them and they’re right there sitting in front of the shed in the mornings when I come out to feed them all. They get their hay right in front of the shed for breakfast. Usually 1 1/2 bales of hay for them. But on a cold day I give them more.

I gave them 2 bales of hay this morning as it was cold. But it’s getting warmer and the grass is getting longer, it’s growing dast. And that’s good because my hay is getting short, I have a shed for hay and it’s pretty empty as of now.

My cows are happy now because they’re well fed. Feed your cows and they’ll love you.

It’s my way of telling the world about my life, right here. Writing is cathartic.

I really love it, though I’m not all convinced that I’m much good at it really. I have been into writing for many years, in  fact I remember when I was really young in primary school I wrote stories one after another. I wrote them then gave them to my preps teacher who read them all. I suspect she got a little bored with it all. I can’t believe  I wrote so many stories when I was young like that.

When I got older I did a degree in Arts but never concentrated on writing, and now I wish I had done so. If I had my time all over again I would take my time to study what I loved to do, writing,  and I still love it.

It’s an interesting question  about whether or not I could ever have become good enough at writing to make money from it. Who knows. But if I had the chance then I should have tried it, after all if you don’t try you never know if you can really do it. I should have tried it.

I’m quite convinced writing is a skill that can be learned by anyone. Of course not everyone can learn it because there’s other important things to learn as well. For example I think it’s essential that you love to do it yourself. That’s like anything at all. If you don’t love it you’re not going to keep at it long enough to learn the skill.

If you really like it then you’ll take the time you need to take to develop it till you’re really good at it. It really will take some time but I’m sure it can be done. You need to work every day but if you love doing it then that’s no problem. Every  day is fine.

So this website is where I plan to write some. It’s just fun and I’ll just talk about what I do with my life. I do  pretty boring things really, so I don’t think readers will find it so fascinating. But I don’t really care that much, I’m not writing it so that I can have a lot of readers here, I’m writing it because I like to write it here.

But if you’re reading it then you might be my  first reader, so thanks for reading my writing.

So the weather is a big part of life in the country and today the weather is superb.

Don’t you love days like today, I do? It’s just as I like it,  beautiful. Warm but not too hot  at all,I hate heat. There’s no wind and it’s just ideal. I love it like it is today. I’ve been out in the car and I’ve been feeling good. I drive along looking at the superb views and I love it here where I live. I see cows in the fields and happy  people.

But of course I’ve decided that it’s a perfect day but maybe not everyone would agree with me. Maybe for some people it’s just a bad day. Really a bad day. Maybe you’ve had some bad news or something isn’t working out for you at all or maybe you’re  sick.

Now of course thats myinterpretation. For many people today might be a really terrible day. Perhaps you’ve just had some really bad news for example, or just feel bad. Maybe you’re trying to do something that isnt working out. Maybe you just don’t feel well at all.

So I wonder what it is that makes it such a good  day for me and what it is that might make it such a bad day for you.  It’s not about the day itself is it? It’s the same day for me as it is for you too. I see the sunshine, maybe you don’t see it. I see the cows in the fields but maybe you don’t even notice them at all.

What is that makes a good day for me and a terrible day for you. Its me and you, its how we see it all from our own perspective. Its nothing about the day at all, its about how we see the day. So I see sunshine, I see the cows, I see the peoples and more.

Isn’t it just in our heads? Isn’t it our mind that tells us it’s a great day or a terrible day? Isn’t it irrespective of how the day really is? We filter our experiences of the day through our minds and we see if from our own perspective.

I even think it’s possible that if you and I have the same experience of the day we will see it completely differently. You come for a drive with me and we see different things the 2 of us.

You see the same cows as me, the same sunshine, the same people, but maybe you don’t even see them at all. Maybe you see something totally different. You mind registers the same things as mine does, and records it, but it filters all of it through the experience you’ve had in the past and mine does that, and that makes our experience of the days different.

Even if you have the same experience as I do you may  well see it totally differently, depending on how it’s filtered in your mind. You might drive through the same countryside as I do. You might see the same sun, the cows, the kids and so on, but your mind may not even register them at all. Your mind might just be seeing the downside to everything.

And that’s because your mind filters every thing according to past experience. What has happened to you in the past is all recorded in your own mind and it tempers every future experience for you. So even though you’re seeing the sun, cows and kids as I am seeing your past experiences are  different from mine and so your mind uses the  past to filter what you’ re seeing now.

That’s just my ramblings, sorry.

Eeveryone can choose where they live and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I’m lucky enough to live out in the country and I just love living in the country. I’ve lived out here for 3  years now. And I grew up in the city but I wouldn’t really want to go back to the city any more.

And there’s so much here in the country that you’ll never see  living in the city. Here’s an example. Cycling. I love to ride bikes and it keeps me fit which is so very important. But it’s good for so many other reasons. It gets me outdoors to places that are so good to be in.

And riding gets you out where you see so  many things that make it worthwhile. I love to see all of the sheep and cows in the paddocks. Actually I have my own cows and sheep and I love that and I even get calves.

There’s so many other advantages to living out here and cows and calves at my house is just one of them. It’s nature and I love to see nature.

Now it’s summer and it’s so very hot I can feel it right through my feet. There’s  been some hot weather and it’s getting on top of me, I don’t like the heat much. Of course it would still be hot  even if I lived in the city but here it’s still better. I see lots of nature, I see the seasons come and go and I see things like the grass start to grow  and stop and the leaves fall off the trees and start to grow again.

All of the leaves turn such great colors, and then they fall off and they look so good on the ground around the base of the tree, and the trees drop seeds and new baby  trees start to grow underneath them. I ge t to see the old and the young, all cycling like me.

Nature cycles just like I do, and I love to watch it all happening right through the year in front of me.

If I lived in a city I mightnt even have a garden at all. I mightn’t have a tree. I might have a lot of concrete though, I might have pavers and a BBQ, but I mightn’t have a tree or a blade of grass anywhere.

And unlike here I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change.

Personally I think it’s very sterile in the city and of course that’s just my view, not everyone thinks  that.

My family lives in the city and they love it. My brother is a doctor and he’s still single, so he likes the social life of the city. There’s things to do there that he’s into, and it suits him. But the city is not for me I have to say.

I grew up in the city and spent a lot of my life there. Then it was fine but it really feels now  as if I wasted a lot of time in the city, I wish I’d been born in the country instead. I feel a little like I wasted a lot of my life in the city, that’s sad isn’t  it?

I didn’t really waste that time of course but it feels that way. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live here but I doubt he would. He  likes the city a lot.

Give me the country any time, but my brother loves the city.