Mindful of yesterday’s forecast, I was happy to find the Homestead sans snow this morning but, just to be safe, I double-timed the chores. On completion, all was still fine – if you looked past the wind straight from the Antarctic – so I decided to push my luck..

Best I stockpile some firewood, I thought, looking skywards for a hint of timeframe. It was giving nothing away.

So I stopped to gather the windblown cabbage tree leaves into firestarter bundles, If anything, it was looking quite Springlike overhead by the time I finished.

In the fire pit garden, the first camellia had appeared. It agreed that, whilst the wind could cut you in two, it didn’t look much like snow.

By the time I’d finished relocating some recently discovered pea straw from the back of the vegetable garden to the lemon garden it was starting to look a little menacing (albeit from Noth Eas – the wrong direction).

Just time to jog-trot down to check the mailbox, I decided.

From where I deduced the weather had decided to go around us this time so I made use of the southerly by hanging the washing outside and then made like the chickens and opted for inside tasks.