The white chicken has decided to take over at our house. Every evening before dusk, she tootles up to the back verandah and pecks and then launches herself at the sliding doors. When they are opened, she steps daintily through the kitchen, chortling all the while, and into the laundry where she likes to perch on a multi-coloured nappy box. We've taken to setting the oil heater on low to keep her comfy - after all she has no chums to keep her warm at night. I'm thinking of calling her Rocket after the way she hurtles around the yard when you're trying to catch her.

S and friends have been busy last weekend constructing a new chook house. The frame has gone up - somewhat wonky, but stable - and the corrugated iron roof is painted. Someone has promised to bring a hen down to visit for company for Rocket - so we can save on heating bills! There'll be another working bee the coming weekend - anyone got a few spare hours? Only joshing!

The subdivision process is now complete - P. has added the new details to our letterbox in case anyone wants to send us mail...

Now we're waiting on a construction certificate from the council - more paperwork and more fees and charges. We've actually signed the contract with the builder now. Next step is removing even more trees - unfortunately. Don't worry, we'll be planting more after the house is finished. When the rain decides to have a break then we might start to think about excavating for the slab.

'Oh yes - we're fine! Haven't been washed away yet...' I burbled on the phone to my mother-in-law who was concerned about the recent storms and our wellbeing. Did she have a premonition I ask myself? Because that very morning, while we were out shopping, we received a urgent message from S. the gist of which was 'Don't come home!' It turned out we had a 'threatening tree' looming over the house - literally swaying in the wind, and inching ever closer to the eastern side of the house over the bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor.

This tree was a 22 metre high scribbly gum - a hefty specimen - and definitely not on our shortlist as a prospective house mate. The roots had already lifted up the boundary fence by a good few inches.

We decided to disobey S and make a mercy dash home - we had to resuce N's birthday cake and a few other essentials so we parked at the top of the driveway and I sat in the car with L. as P. bravely went inside. I kept my hand on the horn the whole time in case the tree decided to take a dive.

When he finally emerged, we tried turning the car around on the lawn as we didn't want to go close to the house. Not a good idea - 3 seconds later we were heavily bogged. The lawn was as soft as fudge after all the digging that S. has been doing and the rain and all. I called Mum to see if she could come and get us as we couldn't stay there. While we waited, P. trudged around in the mud and rain and eventually dug us out and used some old drain grates for traction - meanwhile L. watching shouting out 'Help, we're stuck in the mud' with great glee.

I called Mum on her mobile and told her to turn around. We squelched our way up the driveway in the mud-splattered car and carried ourselves and a trunk full of groceries to Mum's little house two suburbs over and piled in. S and her 3 kids joined us soon after.

We rang the SES every few hours to plead our case to save the house before the tree fell. They arrived just in time in the evening of the next day and S. watched in awe as our hero the tree man swung from a crane and leaped from branch to branch, cutting branches and so streamlining the tree and leaving only the trunk which they then removed in sections. The SES boss told S. it was very likely that our scribbly gum would be handed over to his sculptor friend who was working on some garden totems for Bob Hawke - fancy that eh?!

N.'s birthday cake (which I'd made with loving care) somehow survived the near disaster and she had a fun-filled party at Lollipops - this one is a number 6 cake with an underwater sea theme... which happily matched the decor in the party room we hired! The only 'hiccup' was when L. tried to choke himself on some green apple licorice - luckily my reflexes were quick and I turned him upside down and knocked him smartly on the back. He just coughed it up calmly and then proceeded to ask for more cake.

On a lighter note, we had a great party in the park for L. on Sunday celebrating his 2nd birthday. We met in Putney Park, near the giant sand pit with the huge climbing frame. There was something for everyone - views of the boat studded river, sun and shade areas, slippery slides in all sizes and plenty of space to run around. I vote it my favourite park so far. The merry-go-round cake went down a treat - in the end I used a playdoh cookie cutter to create the little horses. The top section was made with shortbread and I found the trimmings from the 'Fix' shop which has sweet treats from all over the globe. The whole cake was on a turntable so it turned around - L. and all the other kids had a great time giving it a whirl. Cake pictured right...

We've started building - well - virtually, that is... I've been constructing the house in a free 3D modelling program called Google Sketchup. At the moment I'm having troubling getting all the windows in - and there are quite a few! I decided to skip ahead to a preview of sunlight and shadows on the house only to discover the program was defaulting to northern latitudes (what did I expect, I mean America is the centre of the world after all). This meant that the sun was on the wrong side of the house. So I selected the entire house and tried to spin the whole on an axis, but this took 10 minutes to happen and then the house would appear upside down on the screen. P. decided to have a go and being the computer whizz that he is, managed to find a way to download a Google map of our suburb and actually place the house model on the map - in the exact spot! Now the sun is in the right place and we can even choose different days and seasons to see what the shadows will look like - I just need to get the roof on now... I'll give you a geezer at it once I've done that - OK?

Last Friday should've been a black Friday. I noticed the full moon rising as I made my way up the long dark driveway in the evening. S. and I went for a power walk around the block and it took a long time to warm up in the chilly night air. We went to bed refreshed and tired... only to be woken up just before midnight by an ungodly scream. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding, convinced it was the sound of a small child being beaten. I shook P. awake and told him I was ready to call the police on the neighbours. He calmly advised we take a look outside - he thought the noise was coming from down the back. So we wrapped up and took a torch down to the garden. I saw a possum scamper up a tree as we crept down to the chookhouse. All was quiet down there... until I heard a rustling in the trees at the side of the hen run - another possum perhaps?

The rustling continued and I called to P. but by the time he arrived on the scene with the torch, the creature had streaked through the grass near the back fence and disappeared. The chooks were locked up so I didn't think to check on them....

In the morning I wandered down to feed the chooks - with a tasty bucketful of treats - day old rice, some bread crusts from the kids, some forgotten sushi rolls. Feathers were strewn around the door to the hen run - that's odd, I thought. I opened the wire door to an eerie silence, no rustle of feathers, no squawks, nothing. In fact I couldn't see any chickens at all. At least not in the roosting house. I glanced down towards the bottom of the run and saw a few scattered bodies. They didn't move when I called out. I went closer and counted four of them - three black and one white. So where were the other two...? I had a quick look around the back yard but couldn't see them. I could only hope they were hiding out somewhere, still alive. I searched around and found the hole that the creature - I'm guessing a fox - got in. It must've found a weak spot where the chicken wire was nailed to the wood and pulled at it - maybe even over a few nights. I noticed the fence at the end of the hen run was sagging and quite low off the ground - that must've been where the rustling was coming from as it climbed the fence. We had heard there were foxes in the area, but thought the hens were safe at night once we locked them in. The screams I heard must have been the victory killing cry of the fox.

I went down about an hour later to have another look around - after ringing P. and my mum for moral support - I felt quite shaken after coming upon the grisly scene in the chookhouse. I'm glad the kids weren't around when I found the bodies. I tried to message S. but she didn't answer.

A black hen came tottering out of the roosting house - shaking like a leaf in a storm. Then it dawned on me - they must've been hiding behind the old water heater in the corner. Sure enough I could see the last white hen cowering behind it when I peered around the back. I reached out and shooed it out. Its neck feathers were stained a dark red and it had trouble holding its head up. Obviously the fox had got to it before it managed to run away. Scooping them up carefully, I took them up to the house and put them in our temporary broody hen cage. L. got quite upset when he saw the wounded white hen. I tried to explain to him about the fox. I then gathered L. up and took them all to the vet down the road. The vet gave the white hen stitches but couldn't do much for the black one which had various puncture wounds. It was touch and go with both of them, we would just have to wait and see. She agreed heartily with L. and me that we didn't want 'any more foxes'!

Well, I can now report that the white hen is still going strong, but sadly the black hen didn't make it through the night. I took the kids in to say goodbye to her this morning - her eyes were closed as if she was sleeping peacefully. We will bury her tonight with her other former feathered friends. S. is now busily planning a new super secure hen house to be situated by the infant fruit orchard in the front yard. Our friend M. is a handywoman and has already built a great chook shed for her own brood complete with stained glass windows!