Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt

Well… that winter padding is not going to fall off on its own. Time to get hiking again.
Joined Jeff on his hike around the Oldina area – not far from us.
Mostly it is unattractive logging areas, but has lots of great (if somewhat steep and wonky) tracks with a bit of natural bushland left.

I am suspecting this might be foxglove… If so, I am keen to get it for the garden!! Its classed as a weed although its so beautiful to see on the side of the road in bloom.
A lot of the logged areas are so unkempt when it comes to weeds and their management. And the whole area is a nightmare of rubbish that people come up and dump there.
Still… there is a lot of beauty there too.

I had the camera tucked away in my bag for the ugly areas and the tricky tracks. Some seem to be almost vertical!!

After a while we got to a blissfully easy road with gorgeous bushlands and the river.

There was some great fungi about too – I was regretting not having my macro lens!!

The occasional leaf
And one of my favourite things – scribbly bark on some fallen trees!
This is caused by the larvae of the scribbly gum moth. I love natural art!

There is not much artistic about the countless areas and articles of rubbish we came across.
This smashed glass however did offer me a little interest with the shapes and colours.

A large eucalyptus tree had fallen here… someone has been clearing up the wood. (free firewood?)
A man fern was also cut and left – we were considering seeing if we could find a way to get the car down to this point as the man fern will grow.

Speaking of man ferns (or tree ferns if you prefer)
Check out this insanely huge (and presumably old) beauty!

Towering above all the others – it really had a presence about it.
But not until I walked around and got to the bank I could see the actual scale of this fern

Would you like some scale??
Here is Jeff:

We’ve never seen one that big before.
And at a growth rate of about a centimetre per year, I’d calculate a good 400 years on this Earth.
The vine you can see growing up it is actually a blackberry – another weed. Next time we go we will take gloves and snippy things to remove it.
Oh – and here’s another Jeff photo – just for his folks!! (haha – Hi Judy)

After we said goodbye to the monster man fern, we went off the nice road to a more challenging road that went, ok… it didn’t go straight up, but it did feel like it a bit.

The recent rains make things muddy, sticky and slippery!!
And when you’ve just about got your breath back, you come out into a vastly different area again!!

All in all it was a really beautiful walk – I am sure it did me good!! (I sweated a lot and boy I can tell its been a while since my last hike!)
Hope you all had a lovely day too!
Cheers!

Hello!
We started the weekend well with clear sunny blue skies.
I was dumb enough to put washing out. Haha – They got dried a reasonable way before I had to rescue it!

Pallet resting place for pumpkins…

Look at this horror!!
Lets look a little closer –

Time to rip EVERYTHING out!!
This whole area I am keen to revamp. I am just not sure how.
First I will get out all the main weeds and plants, then remove the concrete edging and rocks that surrounded the strawberry patch etc. Get a nice big blank slate.

Can anyone give me a hint why I get so many self seeded tomatoes each season??

The tomato laterals I am trying to get to grow aren’t doing much, but I found these in the strawberry patch so thought I would rescue them and pop them in the hothouse and see how they respond.
I buried them deep and mostly on their sides to see if they would put down more roots and then watered them in with some of my newly collected worm wee

Hopefully they will sit up ok.

I didn’t get through it all of course. But it was a pretty good start. The other side is a bit more horrible with the sorrel and slows me down digging up the strawberry plants.
Jeff did a lot of mowing and whippersnippering and I barrowed the grass clippings to places in need.

I want to bring in new stock when it comes to the strawberries… maybe use a few of the old. I put an ad on the local facebook community page offering 10 plants for $3
So far I have requests for 80 plants! Yipes. Better get moving tomorrow morning and sort out what I have before rashly saying yes to any more!

Once everything is gone I think I’ll make a start by collecting some cardboard and covering the whole area to start to kill the grass and weeds – with the blank slate I should be able to envision the area more clearly.
Mostly I want flowers, but I am dead-keen on a rocky herb spiral and I need to get my strawberry patch back in here as well as they really love that position.
Perhaps some quality time with a tape measure, pencil and paper??

Hope your weekend has started great too!
Cheers!

I knew I cleared the dining room table for a reason…
Pip happily snoopervising the creation of another tension tray.

Then he got bored – (I love cat-yawns!)

And then he wanted to play with the sticks

Eventually I completed another tension tray.

It rained on and off… not as bad as yesterday.
So I finished the vacuuming since Jeff was awake.
Ran about the yard in between rain squalls and fed the chooks – under supervision, as the sparrows are just cleaning us out of wheat!
Moved one of the half pallets up to the back veranda and set it up so I can store my pumpkins on it (will let it dry out first).
Went to top up on firewood and saw about 5 chooks calmly marching down the track near the shed… on the ‘non-chicken’ side of the yard! Busted!!
Had to herd their feathery butts back and sort the fence out.
Lastly today I took some eggs and veggies to Shirley and had a nice cuppa and some cake, along with a chat.
Brrrr… seems cold tonight!
Have a great weekend!!
Cheers!

Hello!!
I was pretty mundane today. Yesterday I took a rest because happily it was raining. Went and saw the doc and got good news, as all my bloods came back spot on!! Yay!! So I can keep steadily doing what I am doing and recheck in three months.
Today was another one of those pour one minute, sunshine madly the next days. So I got in and did a bit of housework.
A real bright spot in the day was getting a parcel in the mail!! What an awesome book!! My friend, Marty, who I help with moderating his gardening page, sent it to me! I really enjoyed sitting down this afternoon with a hot choc in front of the fire to start browsing through it.
See? I’ve already tabbed a few pages!! 🙂

Did I mention dropping into a garage sale in the pouring rain and wind earlier in the week?
I picked up these wicker drawer sets for the upstairs room. They aren’t too shabby and were only $10 each.
Nice for guests who stay upstairs to have somewhere to put their things.

Pip has spent a vast amount of the day sleeping in toasty towels, getting up for snacks then coming back to irritate me until I provide him with a freshly warmed one.

Imagine if we had kids!!! They’d be impossible haha.
That is one spoiled Siamese Cat.

I finished another crochet project – Its only a little blanket. My Texan friends daughter is about to have a baby boy. I thought this would be colourful and cheerful for a little boy.

Anyway, here’s hoping the weather perks up a bit tomorrow. I think we have about two weeks or so before the tree guys return to create another mess. I’d like to get some more gardening done in the meantime!
Cheers!!

Twitch – that long ropey grass!! Rotten stuff that you can’t get rid of. It sometimes makes me question my love of organic haha
Anyway, I was working on the second garlic patch today while the young fellow who took us up on the offer of the free pile of wood came and collected it. He insisted he didn’t need help loading the vehicle – I guess he thought since he was getting free wood he shouldn’t impose on my time! Nice guy. I was going to use the chipper but that would have spat chips all over him so I found another job instead (Its good when you have a solid list to work from!!)

I decided to use this patch as the second garlic bed. The state of the other plot in the Duck Yard Garden put me off – its going to be a lot of work in sticky mud so I took the easier route. (for now)

Looking oodles better.
Jeff was pruning the apple trees and saved me these great branches. I’ll do something with them! But the complete Muffin decided to prune the rest of the Guelder-rose (the one I am using for the tension trays and huggle fence?) and threw all the clippings down ‘The Hole’
‘The Hole’ now has a few feet of water in it so popping a ladder in it to go fetch isn’t an attractive option.
Sigh.

Chickens!! I saw the duck yard garden gate swing open in the wind – I hadn’t snicked the bolt home properly. I was busy and then forgot… then thought ‘oops’ – very quiet on the chook-front!
Yep… all nine of them in the duck yard garden kicking the last of the bale of hay apart!! Happily they hadn’t gotten into any of the Huggle Monsters!
Naturally they raced off in five different directions when I was trying to herd them back out. Little snot-faces!! 🙂

I did eventually get back to the chipper.

This time I decided to start lining the outside of the first garlic patch so I can keep the weeds down.
Its a work in progress.

The newspaper should help as well. And I can hear it raining out there so that will start settling it into place.

Little bits of progress. I’ll be interested what it is all going to look like by spring!! (No pressure) 🙂
Cheers!

Hi There!
And another beautiful winters day today!
Check out my worms!! While I can’t discern a worms expression I get the feeling they are happy.

The last pile is dwindling! I saved and chopped suitable lengths for the chipper and future craft-like projects. The rest went on the fire.

Jeff got out the chainsaw and cut up the long chunky bits into manageable sizes and stacked it.

This pile is the ‘awkward’ pile. We were going to burn it but I put a note on the local facebook noticeboard for anyone who wanted it to collect it – free. That offer was snapped up pretty quick – a lady is coming to get it all (I hope) midday tomorrow.

And now we are about ready to call back the tree-guys!!

The manky-no-thought-put-into-it compost pile has been rediscovered! Smart chook must have had a bit of a lovely feast in there!

I also found this massively tough hydrangea!! Under all that wood and still got little buds! The least I could do was relocate it!

My other goal today was to get a spot cleared for one of the garlic plots. Its really time for them to go in.

Ugh – the ground was heavy to work in and those stakes did NOT want to come up. I broke a few which was annoying considering I was literally digging them out!
Took ages to untie the nylons… muttering at myself about tying quick release knots in future.
I grabbed a few tomatoes that look like they might ripen and gave the rest to the chooks.

I found a couple of sprouting potatoes which I put in the hothouse to see how they go… Oops… I just remembered I forgot to water them!!

So many big fat worms in here too!!

Anyway, I got it all cleared out and weeded – sort of (twitch eurgh) and covered with a generous dusting of blood and bone. In the next few days I’ll add the lime then will be right to start planting.
Will sort a second plot ASAP… as one cannot have too much garlic.

Last night I had a lovely time buying soap supplies!! I got moulds, fragrances and colours. I had to hit ebay though to get the caustic soda.
I seriously can’t wait! A few more things to secure before I can have another go myself. I got some really interesting fragrances and I can’t wait to sniff them!! They talk about the scents like they are describing wines so it was pretty entertaining!

Thats all from Tassie for tonight!
Hope your weekend is going along splendidly!
Cheers…

G’day – Friday is done! Jeff got out and started clearing up the last of the branches. He also set fire to the big log which he has been dying to do for ages!! I felt a bit nervous about that!

The wind started out ok, blowing in the right direction… then of course changed its mind. Not so much changed direction as decided to do little swirly vortexes right where we were! No matter where you stood, you got smoked!! In the end it was just no fun and we moved on to other things.

Jeff wanted to recreate a bench seat we saw on one of the gardening shows

Eventually we will finish them off and add some proper macrocarpa timber for the bench part when that gets done – and of course find a place to set it up, make it level etc etc

I decided to prune as I wanted to continue on the woven fence… but then got a bit side-tracked –

A while back a lady on one of my gardening pages posted some tension trays she had made! A bit of youtubing showed me how it was done.
I thought I would give it a go this afternoon.

I had to use a little string on the first one as it was threatening to spring out. I’d love to collect some willow for this.

The second one went better!

Three more ‘potentials’
I thought if I make soap for market sales then they would be a lovely tray to present my wares on!

Part way through my industrious homesteading, I heard Little Moo bellowing away and happily destroying a chair in his paddock. I think the poor little chap is lonely and bored.

I called him over and treated him to some dodgy apples!
He was very keen!

That tongue!! He is so licky haha

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend planned!
Enjoy!
Cheers 🙂

Hello!
Fabulous day today!
I had two goals this year – things just for my own self indulgent interest. (Clearly that tiny goal list doesn’t include all the insane house and yard goals)
I’ve been wanting to make soap for years… years and years!!
I am so lucky to have a local friend who has been making soap for a long time, who has decided to start running workshops to teach the skill.

Sharon invited me and a couple of other ladies to act as guinea pigs for her first teaching day.

Fresh goats milk right from Sharons farm! Part of the ingredients used.
Actually it would have been good to get a photo of her goats which at some points were dancing about on top of the BBQ!! Soap making AND free entertainment!

It was so good to physically go through the process and get taught some background and basics – but we were all itching to get in there and start mixing!

We watched Sharon do a basic batch then we all got to make two batches of our own.

Choosing colours and scents was a really fun part of the proceedings.

I really liked the effects of mixing up colours and making patterns on the soap

In goes the goats milk!

Mixing three colours into the loaf mould. (It will have to be cut into pieces tomorrow morning so I need to try to juggle Jeff’s dentist appointment and getting back out to Sharons place)

I am looking forward to seeing these cut!

Sharon provided us with a beautiful platter of nibblies… including home made goats feta!! Oh my! I need to ask her about the possibility of purchasing this! Soooooo good!!

The laundry was packed with trays of new soap! It was all so colourful and cheerful looking.

I’ve got my own little budget set aside for the ‘me’ things this year so I am rather keen to get online and to op-shops to start shopping for my supplies so I can continue on and have a go making soap myself.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to pick up my selection of soaps and get some snaps of the products out of their moulds. Exciting!
Hope your day was great too!
Cheers!