The Best Neighbours!

There is a wonderful neighbourly story behind my image tonight of the woodpile and the wheel barrow. But first the background to my story.

I have just established that it is now 8 days since I have posted an image on my blipfoto journal. For me every ounce of energy I could muster has gone into caring for my wonderful partner CCN who many of you have met through blipfoto. Just over a week ago Catherine was admitted to hospital in Katoomba with Pneumonia. It came as a “bolt our of the blue” and we were both totally blindsided by this incredibly fast moving situation. As you may have seen on Saturday the 18th of August I posted a wonderful photo of CCN at our friends 90th birthday party. Catherine looked amazing. Over the next three days she went down hill at a rapid rate and on the Wednesday I knew something was drastically wrong.

By late that night things were critical and my friend was in for an incredibly intense battle over the next few days. I have literally lived at the hospital for most of that time. As you can imagine, the furthest thing from my mind was posting to my journal. I am happy to say that at 3.30pm this afternoon I drove home from the hospital with my wonderful parner sitting in the passenger seat. I can’t even start to tell you how good that felt. CCN is an amazing woman but even the medical staff were astonished at her recovery. I knew in my heart that there would be a ferocious fight - after all Catherine is made up of great Scottish genes. We know that over the next while we are going to have to build up her strength and will also making some major adjustments at home to help her, but I just thank God that we have been given that opportunity.

We have had the love and support of our family and friends over the past few days and that has given me in particular great strength because it has been a marathon effort, I make no bones about that.

Now to the woodpile. As I drove up the driveway to go the the hospital at 7.00am on Monday morning I realised that I would have very little dry wood for when Catherine came home because it had been raining all night. I decided I would call my neighbours, you know Archie and Vince’s Mum and Dad. I explained to Ado what had happened and asked him if he could call down and just load a wheelbarrow of wood for me and put it under the awning to dry. Imagine my surprise when I drove home tonight and found every single piece of wood that had been in the rain neatly stacked under the awning, they had also placed some inside and put extra pieces on the fire so the house was warm when I arrived home. And there’s more......when we walked into the living room this afternoon there was the most magnificent bunch of native flowers and a “Wedding Present” waiting for us from the best neighbours you could ask for.

We are blessed and I am blessed to have my wonderful partner sleeping soundly at home with me while I post my journal tonight.