PJ Day

Its an excellent Sunday when you stay in your pj’s all day… sure, I did ‘stuff’ but without style. (Unless pink polka dots are style)

I eventually got dressed this evening because we took ourselves out to the movies! (Guardians of the Galaxy 2)(A bit of wicked fun)

Yesterday I harvested all of my pumpkins… all three of them! Sigh. Quite a disappointing result for how many plants I tried to grow! Oh well… three is better than none!

Of course – there was a time for a little vegetable ‘art’

Bedtime for me!
Hope you have (or have had) a blissfully relaxing Sunday too!

Cheers

Perks of Country Life

We said goodbye to our car today. The young couple and their girls turned up this morning to complete the transaction and take the vehicle with them.
What a surprise when the oldest of their girls (Miss 3) presented us with this box of farm fresh produce!!!
Lamb chops, pork, mince and two dozen quail eggs!!!

And the coolest part was the awesome decorations by the girls – Heidi was responsible for creating the big flower, the dinosaur (I had to check with the artist to see if it was a giraffe or dinosaur) and the very appropriate car. Frieda, her little sister, did the smaller flower! (They were too adorable!!)

I am already googling what to do with quail eggs! They are so cute!

It was a really really lovely thing to do – very unexpected. And here I was thinking car related transactions were boring!!

Hope your day had something amazingly positive too!

Cheers!

Hounslow Heath Track

Hello!
I am so tired! 6am is NOT my optimal starting time!!
I won’t be doing justice to todays adventure, so I am mostly going to throw a few photos at you from todays hike that I managed to get post processed.

Cousins! Paul, Beau & Fiona!

Our cousins invited us to go with them to Cradle Mt today to see the Fagus – Tasmania’s only native deciduous tree, Deciduous Beech (Nothofagus gunnii
Its autumn colours are almost in full swing and its really lovely to see.

We walked the Hounslow Heath Track which was really beautiful

The track was a quagmire – roots, rocks and mud puddles!! So much fun!

You spend the first hour trying to keep your feet dry. Then when the battle is totally lost, you feel liberated and slosh through any and all puddles, mud, streams & creeks without a care in the world. (And snug in the knowledge the car has been packed with clean clothes & a towel)(See? We are learning!)

This Currawong stalked us for a while – thought it could get some food! Such cool and clever birds! (And a little freaky looking haha)

We did a lot of puddle jumping today – yep, thats the track!

So many beautiful pandani everywhere

Time for me to get some sleep!
Have a wonderful day!

Cheers

Happy Hikers!! (Thanks Fiona for taking the photo!)

Two Ticks

Views from the Twisted Lakes Track

Another day and the camera had no work to do! Just posting a few images from my birthday hike that were taken along the Twisted Lakes Track (great name huh?)

Well… two major ticks off my list today.
First up, we accidentally sold the car!!
Seriously – we were going to sell it, but delayed when we did the Overland Track as it was so much cheaper and more convenient to car shuttle while we had the two cars to get us to the start of the hike and back home again from the end.

Then, with one thing and another, we just didn’t get back onto cleaning it back up and advertising it.

Yesterday a friend called me and said her friends car was cactus and repairing was not worth the cost and needed something new.
Fabulous. So a lady called and arranged to come and see it this morning. I got up early to wash and vacuum it – haha – it’d gotten a bit shabby with all the driving lately.

Nice couple. They asked to take it to a local mechanic for a check over, so we said sure – here are the keys, see you later. (So funny – in the country where people know people you tend to trust a lot more)

They got back and I said they could think about it as we hadn’t got our act together to advertise it so they didn’t have to make hasty decisions. They kinda looked at each other and said they wanted to talk price and paperwork!! Decision made apparently!!

So relieved to have that off my mind. Just one less thing and we owed my parents  what the couple are paying us for the car, as my lovely folk helped us out to get the new car, as we really have overstretched ourselves a ‘little’ this year!
Oh well… we are normally less extravagant but sometimes you just got to get out there and do stuff as the opportunity arises!

So – the second tick was to actually get a flight out of Tasmania to Melbourne so I can catch my flight to the USA!! (Fairly important I suppose!!!)
So thats done. Because my international flight is early morning, I need to get the the mainland the day before. Still debating about sitting at the airport all night with my luggage or get a hotel room. I am leaning towards the saving money side and convincing myself I have oodles of time to sleep on the plane! haha. Budget, people Budget!!!!! 😀

OK – time for bed. I have to get up absurdly early tomorrow (note -anything before 9am is what I class as early) as cousins are picking us up and we are all doing a hike up at Cradle (you know – just for something different)
Actually the hike will be about 2/3 a different track
Its also supposed to rain and the warmest it will get is about 11C (51F)
I have a lot of warm things packed and a separate bag with dry clothes to change into – learning my lesson from the last hike!

Cheers!!

Wednesday

Hello!
My biggest achievement today was not messing up the parts of the house I cleaned yesterday!!
I did have a three hour long cuppa & catch up with a friend that was overdue, so that was pretty nice and relaxing!
Chilly tonight!
Hope your week is going along swimmingly!

Cheers!

Garden Colour

 

Right now its raining – a lot.
Its really lovely to be inside with the fire going feeling all cosy with the sound of the rain on the roof!

 

I put my domestic hat on today and did a good number of boring inside tasks.
I managed to go through most of the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen and found a lot of items that I never use to put out of the house and into the upcoming garage sale pile.

We don’t get a lot of autumn colours around here – the bulk of our trees are evergreen. Its really nice when I do find some colours!

Still getting the odd strawberry appearing. Sometimes I am lucky to find one before something else takes a bite out of it!

The hothouse chillies are not showing signs of slowing down!

I planted my passionfruit into the corner of the hothouse. I am not sure its the right thing to do but since I had no luck with them outside, I figured I would see if I could pamper one enough to get some fruit.

It was left in the pot too long but hoping with the feeding I am giving it, it will start looking a bit greener and happier soon.

So incredibly late in the season – but this self seeded jam melon has four little melons on it! I am just leaving it alone to see what happens.

The lovely protea still puts out a flower or two!

Hope your day has been peaceful.

Cheers

 

 

Quiet Day

The highway out the front was uncharacteristically quiet today.
Unfortunately two trucks came to grief only a paddock’s distance away from our place!

Both drivers happily survived, although one man was reported to be in a critical condition in hospital.
It took them a fair while to get him out of his truck.
But the highway was completely blocked for over 7 hours today!

So it was actually rather lovely and peaceful at Norwich House today – just glad that (so far) no-one paid with their life for it.
The main damaged truck was full of potatoes that were spread all over the highway! (I saw from media’s photos)
I really don’t think our little highway is built for the volume of traffic it gets and the speed limits it has. There are few options for diversion for the big trucks, a lot of which had to sit on the highway all day waiting for it to be cleared. Other routes aren’t very suitable for high volumes of trucks using them – but today there was little choice.

I woke up with a fair amount of aching body-parts.
I couldn’t leave the property due to the accident (well… I would have had trouble returning) so I lazed about at home.
Found some celery and pulled up a couple of carrots – added them to some other things and slow cooked a beef soup/stew. Was pretty tasty and there is plenty leftover for tomorrow night!

Hope your weeks starts well!

Cheers!

A Distinct Lack Of View

Every bit of me is tired tonight!
After I made Jeff walk the boring beach (haha – sure he enjoyed but no mountains to slog up) he really wanted to do a ‘real’ walk… so we went back to Roland to climb the other side.

We went up the track we avoided last time (you know, because it kinda went straight up)
Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt!!
I cannot seem to capture how steep this track was… and it went on and on.
And on.
And when we got to a cross path Jeff insisted that it was going to now level out.
We got this:

Yeah that’s the path and it is NOT level!

I think it was another hour of still going up but with the added bonus of rocks/boulders to haul my backside up and over.
Can I add it was really wet weather too?? And foggy.

So we were going to do all this and fail to get rewarded with a view!
Did I mention it was wet?

I couldn’t have been wetter if I had jumped in a river!

Eventually I fell into a mud puddle and got Hangry (It was past 2pm and we hadn’t stopped for lunch)
I used up my quota of creative swear words but I would have to say it was a mongrel of a climb. When we return to Roland, I know I won’t be taking that path up!! (On the up side, I am pretty sure my bottom is a LOT skinnier today!!)

Everything is spooky and cool in the mist though, so it was pretty – even with limited visibility.

The mountain that you can’t actually see that we were climbing was Mt Van Dyke. Its alongside Mt Roland.

We had a small water crossing…

We finally reached the crossroad part where we were last week, where we could sit and eat – and then blissfully go DOWN!

I could better appreciate how beautiful the mist made the scenery look!

Well… I am off to face-plant my bed.
If you don’t see me here tomorrow its because I didn’t bother moving for 24 hours! (that or I COULDN’T move for 24 hours)

Cheers!

Wood, Fire & Vegetables

Hello!
What are the weekend plans?
We dabbled in a few around the yard tasks – we put the bore on into the tanks as they were getting rather low with the lack of rain recently. Its nice to have that option instead of in the past having to resort to sponge baths!! 😀

I had a lovely time burning off some of our rubbish – the paper bin was reasonably full so that got sorted

Ruby’s old fence had been sitting there a while – no time to really make a start on building up the kindling with it

We didn’t get a lot done, but it was a nice start to a fairly time consuming job

Hopefully we will be able to sell a bit of this as well – people do pay for bundles of pre-cut kindling!

A few dahlias here and there are still making a bit of a show which is nice

I picked the rest of the apples – no point feeding them all to the possums the greedy beggars!

Still a bunch of tomatoes coming along, not to mention the zucchini’s which keep appearing at a steady rate!

Happily I also got out some bags and bits and pieces that I intend taking to Texas – or thinking of taking to Texas! So its a mild start!

Hope your weekends are fabulous!

West Coast Beach

I actually have a spectacular amount of work to somehow get through between now and leaving the country.
Why I am prancing about on another beach adding countless images to my backlog of photos to be post-processed I really don’t know.
Oh well… I never claimed to be bright!

We drove over to the west side of Tasmania today to take a walk down from West Point along the fairly rugged coastline.
It wasn’t even windy (much) but the waves were large and constantly pounding the sand. It was pretty fabulous.

I was in total awe of the kelp! It was MASSIVE!!

And there was a lot of it

I totally wanted to back the car up as close as I could and just fill the back with it!! However, I didn’t even broach that subject with Jeff. Car is still new to him and we aren’t even allowed to sweat on the seats (Yes -we have towels to sit on when we finish our walks. haha)

We were loving the rocky landscapes, the dunes and the stretches of sand.

Up in the dunes we found a number of midden sites – created by thousands of generations of Aboriginal people who lived there. Its amazing to still clearly see these areas.

We found a fabulous bunch of rocks that were practically rainbow coloured! It was hard to believe they were natural.

Well… thats a few of the many images I took today. It was a beautiful walk – and nice to go somewhere a bit different, even though I think Jeff was disappointed we didn’t walk up a mountain for 5 hours!!

Tomorrow I totally have to start working through my ‘To Do’ list for Texas! Really!!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Cheers