Michelangelo When Will You Be Done

This is what I kept telling myself while doing the Second Commandment lol. The quote is from an old movie called The Agony and The Ecstasy about my favourite Sculptor Michelangelo. I have also read the book.

The line is when Michelangelo (Charlton Heston you'll get the connection in a minute) was working on one of his incredible creations The Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison) kept coming in and asking him this question.

The Charlton Heston connection is that he played Moses of course in the movie The Bible. In this sampler there are 2 really long Commandments that go on and on - The Second and the Fourth Commandments. Thankfully these are the only two. All the rest are short in comparison. I am about to do the Third one which is 3 rows long.

I have really been enjoying working on the floral border. It is really lovely and such a change from continually working over one. But I suppose when you think of it The Agony and The Ecstasy also applies to this sampler as well.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been plagued with Bushfires. The first lot were a few weeks ago in Leura and Katoomba when I was staying with my Father. My poor DH who is in the Rural Fire Service was called out quite a few times to help put these fires out.

What is really upsetting is that all of these fires and there were a lot of them at the time scattered all over these 2 towns were deliberately lit. Two of the fires were very close to where I live. One was down the end of the Street and the other a Street away. The Police think that there were a few morons lighting these fires. The caught a 19 and a 14 year old and they are now before the Courts. The 19 year old will most probably go to jail.

Last Monday they struck again in Katoomba. Down at Echo Point. If you scroll down to a previous post on 7 May you will see photos of Echo Point in all it's glory. In the photo above you can see one really lucky house. The fire came right up to it. This house was selling earlier in the year for around 3 million dollars I think and then further in the distance you can see Katoomba Skyway. There is a Cable Car that comes from one side of the Valley to the other.

The fire came right up to the road

This is a 5 Star Hotel called Lilianfels. Thankfully the RFS and the NSW Fire Brigade were able to stop the fire jumping across the road and destroying this Hotel and the one next to it called Echoes. Another beautiful hotel.

This is the back of Lilianfels. You can literally go out the gate, cross the road and then go and get lost in the wilderness lol.

This would have to be one of the most luckiest people in Katoomba. I don't know if you can see it, but at the top of the hill, there is a house and the fire surrounded it.
Through the wonderful efforts of all involved, they only lost one shed. Which is totally amazing. There was supposed to be a very strong Southerly blow in and thankfully the winds that were supposed to be with it, didn't arrive. The next day the weather was wet and misty which helped to put the fire out. We had a couple of helicopters dropping loads of water onto the fire which also helped. But a lot of the times when there are fires up here and they burn down the face of cliffs they are really hard to put out as there are caves and overhanging rocks which protect the fires making them hard to put out.

In other exciting news my second DS and his lovely girlfriend got engaged on Friday night. So we have had a exciting week lol. They are planning on getting married probably in January 2013.

It is raining here again today. But I believe that the really hot weather is coming on the weekend. I like the warm weather, but not when it gets sticky. One good thing about living in the Mountains is that we don't get the Humidity and thankfully we are able to sleep at night.

Before I go, thank you for stopping by. I hope that you have a lovely weekend.