July 2017 – Page 2 – Head in the Clouds

Wood, Seaweed & Other Weeds

Midweek already! I thought today was a beautiful day! Jeff, however, grumbled and thought that despite the sun, it was cold and windy and therefore not enjoyable!
Still… we got outside to get some stuff done.

I had to empty the trailer of my seaweed collection. We wanted to take our bins to the tip as they were pretty full – plus all our recyclables and other rubbish that needed to go.
I can’t even remember how long it is since we last went. Probably at least 4 months.

I even managed to distribute a bit of the seaweed into my weeded garden beds!

All beds got a bit of a ‘do over’ with the weeding before I smothered them

Hopefully that last lonely lettuce will produce a few more leaves

Even the lemon ‘tree’ got some. (one day it might grow. Its been the same size for five years!!)

I got side tracked into digging up a bunch of docks… oh how I hate them! They are so hard to get out – they have a long tap root and it holds on like nothing else!! I often break them in the effort of digging them out which is REALLY irritating… I do dig down quite deep too!

There are more in the garden I must get back to. If they are young I can get them out more easily.
And NEVER let them seed! Nightmare. (although seeds blow in from next doors paddock so its not something that will end soon!)

Since we are getting alarmingly low on wood, Jeff got out the chainsaw, axes and block splitter and got a lot of our rubbishy wood down to usable size. Its a good thing really… we really needed to make a start on cleaning up all this. Eventually we will do a bigger burn (sadly I wasn’t allowed to today… bit windy!!)

Some of the really big stumps are too big to handle or cut, so I might think about using them as seats here and there in the garden. Not sure yet.

Often I had a little fan club following me today. Its ok… I am not fooled into thinking they love me and want my company. Pretty sure they are after scraps!

Day lilies are poking through!

Random potatoes. Just self seeded plants that I left alone to do their thing

Still some nice chillies in the hothouse

These looked too nice to chop up and put into dinner, so I planted them

Then I figured I should get onto my extended herb patch again and work towards finishing what I started!

By that point I was getting chilled and called it a day – you know, to lock the chooks up, come inside, put the fire on, shower, do dinner, knit something, wash dishes & post process some wedding photos! (oh – and blog) 🙂
I like my cosy evenings very much!

Cheers!

Afternoon Walk

Hello! How is everyones week starting??
I realised I am getting way too comfortable inside and thought today, rain, hail or shine I needed to walk off all the lasagne and home baked bread from this last week!! (Not to mention the cheese, bikkies & hot chocolate)(and the cake I baked)(I won’t go on)

The day started out with torrential rain – so I put on a slow cooked beef curry and by the time I was out the door, the weather had brightened considerably!

Oh but did I feel it on the first hill!! Haha – serves me right.

I had the beach to myself, but I suspect someone else was down here earlier…

A lot of new water/sand patterns after all the rain

The tide was on its way in…

I wore my gaiters today… glad I did. Got muddy up in the hills

I headed up inland – the afternoon light was lovely.

But the track was boggy and at times just a running waterfall

There was some creative hop, skip & jumping and I didn’t even fall over!

At times I just made a new path!
Anyway, I was glad to get out – beautiful fresh air, some much needed exercise and just the enjoyment of my favourite beach!

Cheers!

Kitchen Idea

Seems like all of the Norwich House Staff are getting a bit lax these days.
The chooks actually managed three eggs today, although why I was excited about this is a mystery as we have 10 girls – 30% laying is nothing to do a song and dance over.
AND while I was away we have had MICE move in!! What were those boys doing? The furry one in particular really needs to pull his socks up.

I want to get my food into better storage containers – and my younger chef sister, Michelle, gave me a really great suggestion.
Lots of restaurants get their supplies in large lidded buckets/containers that often get thrown away.
So I walked the main street of Wynyard this afternoon and came away with two large sized containers (free) from one of the local take-away shops. Another cafe told me they had just given theirs away but to return at the end of the week as there hopefully would be some more!

Ok – so… they are not the last word in decor, but they were free. And right now I am more than happy with free!
The less food in easy access to mice the better.
Oh the joys of an old country home!

Hope your day was mouse-free!

Cheers!

Proud Sister

Hello – I am skipping any stories of me today (mostly because it involved being on the computer or in the kitchen or other mundane things)
One of my sisters, Rosemary, had a much more interesting day.

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra holds a daily Last Post Ceremony to commemorate the fallen, lay wreaths and pay tribute to a particular soldier.

Rosemary, a Wing Commander in the Royal Australian Air Force, was the officer who presented the story of Private John Townshend Glennie, a young man who lost his life in 1935, aged only 34.

The War Memorial streams these live so I was able to take a peek and be the proud sister that I am! You can have a look too if you like here Although I suggest you fast forward at least the first 4 minutes which is the burning flame.
(Apart from the ceremony, there is a persistent noisy cockatoo that happily screeched his way through the ceremony. Rosemary said she was trying not to take any notice of him – they are funny birds!)

Rosemary has often done the ANZAC ceremony at our parents retirement village.
For those not familiar, ANZAC stands for the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps who fought at Gallipoli in World War 1. The day of remembrance is the 25th of April, and in my mind, the most important day of the year for us. The story is worth knowing and we are incredibly proud of this sad history.

The day now broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations.

After the service, we all come out to see the wreath laid and observe a minute of silence

Max (one of the villagers that served) and Rosemary

Explanations about the medals and ribbons to the younger generation (Nephew and niece, Riley and Georgia)

I hope everybody elses day was less domestic than mine!

Cheers!

Weeding, Clearing and Accidental Celery.

Look at that! Totally an outside day.
And it was Saturday. I didn’t know that until halfway through the day!! Somehow lost track.

The garden along the back veranda was looking pretty bad. The tomato plant at the corner really had seen better days. The tomatoes were spoiling before ripening, so – time to go!

I did find a bonus plant! I have no idea how this celery ended up in this spot… but its doing well enough to be able to almost pick and use some of its stems! How great is that??

Everything is just looking winter-shabby

The grass needs attending too, but its too wet for that at the moment

I think the back veranda itself may need a bit of a rub and a scrub too…

Such a sneaky plant to get along this far right at the back door under my nose and I didn’t even notice!

The herb garden extension was also a bit of a disaster area.

Please note – the patch that I made with the newspaper lining, compost and hay layers is STILL weed free!!

Bane of my garden… these stupid buried 44 gallon drums filled with concrete! Can’t weed into them properly.

I was happy with my progress… but it got a bit late in the day and it was cooling off fast. Time to bail out and bring up more firewood.

I am noting little bulbs starting to pop up here and there. Its a long way to spring, but its still lovely to see (Above are tulips)

All the early garlic is up and looking really good!

I am very displeased with one of my chickens!!! I had three of these little lettuce left and she came in and gutsed them all!!! There is a wing-clipping coming up!

Pretty purple carrot seeds

Now… if celery randomly appears in the main vegetable patch I will have a pretty good idea why!!

Sweet winter rose is now blooming!

Hope your weekends are awesome!!

Cheers

Lessons

This afternoon Fiona dropped in for our much talked about crochet lessons. (We talk about it when we hike!) Another cousin, Phil, also dropped in, so there was a good deal of chatting, a few cuppas and luckily I had just baked a tea cake! All very social!
We eventually got on to the crochet – Fiona did really well. Its a matter of getting all your fingers in the right places as well as learning the stitches… tension will come with practice.
We got far enough through the lesson that she could see how the pattern was working (We were doing one of the granny squares that you keep adding and adding to until you have a knee rug (or a bed spread if you are REALLY keen!))

This morning I finished off the ceremony part of the wedding photos:

Next lot of photos to post process are the family shots… and there was a LOT of family, so that might take until Christmas (Just kidding – hopefully)

I have got to get these done so I can play with my travel photos!!!

Cheers

A non-incognito photo of Fiona having a fun afternoon hanging out with the Millars!

What’s on my Needles?

Gloomy days seem nicer in front of the fire with my crochet hook or knitting needles… today was one of those days.
Its currently pouring so there is a good chance tomorrow might fall along the same lines!
I have a number of partly finished jobs on the go!

I had forgotten I had started this one!

This was the one I was doing at the airports and on the aeroplanes between here and Texas – still haven’t gotten back to it!

New yarn so I had to start it to see what it looked like!

Plus some cosy-cuffs

I finished the mate to the colourful one tonight… but they all need sewing up.
I think I have that black & colourful one sold to a friend. Better get stitching soon!
Hope everyone has had a peaceful day

Cheers

Frugal

I mentioned a few posts back about super-budgeting.
It bugs me how the hot water part of the electricity bill is separate from the ‘normal’ power. We have solar panels which helps, but not with the water side of things. Getting a solar hot water system really isn’t cost effective for us – just doing the basic math… we probably use about $400 per year’s worth of hot water… so a few thousand dollars to install a system would take too long to pay off. So we didn’t even really look at it.
So… recently taken to heating up my washing up water on the fire to do the dishes!!
I do my dishes by hand anyway – and its really not that difficult to leave a pot of water on the fire, so its ready when I am to do the washing up.

The frosts are starting to set in lately and the tomato plants at the back door are starting to feel the effect. I thought I should take a bunch of laterals (suckers) and see if I can get them producing roots for a nice early spring start to get a bunch of cherry tomato plants going!
If you have not grown new tomato plants from laterals… click here to see my post about how to do it. So easy to get free plants!

The latest Photo Challenge is just wrapping up… well, that is all the albums are ready for photos but we are waiting on stragglers to submit images so we can move along with the voting! So nothing different to normal!
Anyway, I spent most of the day with the wedding photos, so below are the last few days subjects with my submissions!
The voting is tough as usual… so many great photos and cool subject interpretations!

Cheers!

Pikelet Recipe

Just in case someone wanted to know how to make up a batch of pikelets, here is the recipe I use:

1 cup self raising flour – sifted

pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup sour milk (add a teaspoon vinegar to fresh milk or do what I do and just use normal milk!!)

1 dessert spoon of melted butter

Mix all ingredients into a smooth mixture. Dollop spoonfuls of batter on a heated non stick fry pan – flip and cook until golden

Serve hot with butter and your choice of jam etc… or just butter!
They are good cold too.

Wonderful for afternoon tea… but not so smart to eat almost a whole batch at 10pm… just so you know 😀

Gardening At Ruby’s

Two days in a row – sunny skies!
It rained heavily all night and I was sure I was going to be sitting inside by the fire, crocheting & post processing photos!
Nup!
Figured I would go get a new gardening view and catch up with Ruby…
I caught her at the clothesline!

Margaret & Ruby’s family from Western Australia made a surprise visit (Margie knew… Ruby didn’t!) which thrilled her!
Margaret’s washing machine had a slight breakdown so Ruby to the rescue and getting some of the laundry done while the other machine was being fixed!

I decided to tackle the side fence which was really worrying Ruby – the grassy weeds had gotten a bit too enthusiastic

Fast forward three and a half hours…

I don’t want to whinge too much but wow – am I ever sore tonight!! And my cuticles are ruined!!
Those grassy things hang on like you wouldn’t believe! I am not a lightweight, but I was at times putting all my weight behind those clumps and they wouldn’t shift!
Too hard to dig into because they are intertwined with the jasmine or whatever the climbing plant is… so it was lolling about in the mud (yes I got rained on for a while haha) trying to separate the bits and pull them out!!