March at Stanton is quiet, warm and moving slowly along a known path. the weeks between the hot month of February and the cooling Autumn of April go quickly without much to report.

Grass is growing prolifically everywhere and most things around the house have a green tinge it seems. Sam’s bones do as well, the one or two he remembers and thus finds while on a tour of the garden go down a treat.

Growing new grass, dead heading roses, and planting bulbs are the jobs to do but the main activity at Stanton is doing nothing at all for the time being as winter has been thought about already.

Reading is a pleasurable pastime now particularly Richard Broome’s new book Aboriginal Australians now in our library. It is a modern reminder to think of others who walked the Back River before us.

The English here had beer of sorts but not like the Cascade First Harvest now at the Cascade Visitors Centre in Hobart.

A pleasant 20km drive to the Bushy Park Valley brings the smell of hops into the car as you drive past fields being stripped of the precious vine.

Hop tractor drivers always wave to you as they trundle past along the main road to the hop drying rooms with trolleys swaying like huge green wigs. Smelling and driving is not against the law in Bushy Park.

Helen now resides on a hill overlooking the hop estates and it is quite a fabulous view from what is now a Stanton branch office.

Time to make the most of the light and do some mowing with a new Victa utility mower. “How’s the serenity”, the house asks.