September 2016 – Page 2 – Head in the Clouds

Cradle Mt – In Brief!

Source Images: DSC_1444.JPG (Av: F11.0; Tv: 1/500 sec.; ISO: 320; FL: 20.0 mm) DSC_1445.JPG () DSC_1446.JPG (Av: F10.0; Tv: 1/400 sec.) DSC_1447.JPG (Av: F9.0; Tv: 1/320 sec.) DSC_1443.JPG (Av: F10.0; Tv: 1/400 sec.) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Not raining!

Well… I am dead on my feet today, so speed blogging with a couple of snaps from our Tuesday Adventure. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ will have to return next week when I am in some semblance of order!

Today was about 5 hours driving and 5 hours hiking – I am totally ready to face-plant my bed!

But we had the best day!

Source Images: DSC_1375.JPG (Av: F7.1; Tv: 1/200 sec.; ISO: 800; FL: 20.0 mm) DSC_1376.JPG (Av: F6.3; Tv: 1/160 sec.) DSC_1377.JPG (Av: F5.6; Tv: 1/125 sec.) DSC_1378.JPG (Av: F5.6; Tv: 1/125 sec.) DSC_1374.JPG (Av: F6.3; Tv: 1/160 sec.) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — The mossy forests at Cradle Mt

Only a couple of days left with my baby sister and her family, so we drove over to Cradle Mt National Park to see the sights, do some walks and indulge in a gourmet picnic (ok – it was ham and cheese sandwiches, but I upgraded it to gourmet because of the home made relish and the banana/raspberry loaf)

The weather was forecast as cold and raining – but we got cool and not raining… so yay us! 🙂

There were wombats out everywhere – ambling along munching on the vegetation

This one walked straight at me, sniffed my foot and just kept going (I hadn’t walked far by that point so sniffing my foot then didn’t make it keel over and gag or anything)

We also saw a wallaby just having a little lay down by the car park.

We did two short walks before having our picnic lunch, then did the three hour walk around Dove Lake. I love the way the boardwalks weave in and out of an ever changing environment – a mystery around every corner!

Anyway – bedtime for me! Tomorrow we have two beaches, a lighthouse, a tulip farm and a mission to find Valhalla Ice Cream!

No rest for the wicked!

Cheers!

Potatoes Are In The Ground

Such a super gorgeous day today – it fills you with enthusiasm to get in and do ‘stuff’

So I dashed down the street to get my blood and bone – and also a box of dodgy bananas as I wanted to bake a banana/raspberry loaf for my sister and her family who got back in this evening.

I had to be careful to stand down wind when I sprinkled this… I can only imagine how not nice an accidental mouthful would be…

I dug in the B&B and set up a few stakes and sticks to mark my rows.

Pip spent a quality five minutes with me in the garden schmoozling everything with his face before getting bored and whinging to go back inside.

I don’t know how other potato planters go about it, but I dig holes row by row, drop my potatoes in but not cover them. That’s so I can see how to evenly plant the next row, and more importantly, not trample the ones I have already put in! Oh, and because I am ~~stingy~~ frugal, I cut my potatoes in half.

Digging new holes in line with the previous lot

About halfway through my plot, I ran out of the seed potato that I bought, so the next step was to raid the pantry. These last potatoes from the previous season seemed keen to do some growing so I just used them, rather than going and buying more. Remember? Frugal.

I have the row marked where I started planting these so I will be interested to compare my potatoes to the bought seed potatoes.

Pointless trying to take a photo while the sun is covering half the plot, so here is my shadow waving happily because the potatoes are in!

In other exciting news I found some nice sturdy tomato seedlings today – indulged in two Black Russian and one Tomato Rouge. These will go into the hothouse and once big enough I will be taking their laterals to grow a heap more in the main patch.

After planting my potatoes, I went and dug & weeded Ruby’s potato patch, then came home & washed off a ton of dirt, made the lasagne, Michelle & co turned up, had dinner, baked a cake, cut up two weeks of cat dinners for Pip (lamb – spoiled cat), put bread on to bake for brekkie and did umpteen dishes.

I think I am ready for bed!

Cheers!

Cooking and Cleaning – An Exciting Sunday!!

Didn’t pick up my Blood & Bone today, so the garden was pretty much left alone – except for a bit of foraging.

The leek and potato (and bacon) soup turned out fine – just had some chicken stock, a can of evaporated milk and some parsley – and fresh baked bread as a side! Hit the spot tonight.

I also have tomorrow nights dinner on the stove, cooking ‘part one’ of a vegetarian lasagne.

Actually feeling a bit chuffed that the majority of the ingredients that are now simmering away on the stovetop are from my garden.

I had zucchini frozen, and some corn, carrots were fresh, as was the celery and chilli. I had to buy a capsicum & onion … I wanted a couple of eggplants as well, but none in the supermarket, so did extra carrot and zucchini.

I did have to revert to tinned tomatoes but the herbs are very fresh!

I find if I make the vegetable sauce mix the day before, the flavour is much better. I will put the whole thing together tomorrow afternoon, as my sister and her family are due back tomorrow evening – in time for dinner!

In between cooking, I attended to the housework. The many beach visits, rock & shell collecting, a constant fire & Jeff whittling wood had the floor looking a bit manky! A spruce up was in order.

Yesterday afternoon was really quite lovely. As well as doing garden stuff, we slipped back down the Calder road to go back to the little forest for a walk about

Everything was still damp and gloomy among the pine trees

Source Images: DSC_1129.JPG (Av: F3.2; Tv: 1/50 sec.; ISO: 1000; FL: 28.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — A horror film in waiting

Looking up it wasn’t bad…

Looking down was cool too…

Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be kind enough to let me get my potatoes in!

Cheers!

A different scene compared to the last soggy day we were here!

More Digging

The weather held off pretty well today – even ended up quite sunny! So, back into the garden for us!

I have been itching to get the spuds & snow peas in, so dragged Jeff from his comfy seat on the back veranda to give me a hand.

I relocated a few pieces of rebar to along the vegetable garden fence, as its my new snow-pea location. Weeded and dug in some of that compost and got the seeds in (Seeds I had collected from last season)

I had to relocate a few plants to make way for my potato patch. A few nice parsely plants & a couple of rhubarb plants that I thought I had killed – magically come back to life and actually looking pretty good. Hope they don’t mind the move.

Rhubarb, parsley and a LOT of future weeding!

I chucked (gently) this one into the carrot patch

There was also a lot of leek, but I just pulled them up. I have grand plans for soup tomorrow night.

Digging – pre parsley/leek/rhubarb removal

We have dug this garden over many many many times and I am still being surprised by the crazy things I will find in this garden!

Like this weird bit of rubbish –

Its not exactly small… so how has it remained in the garden for 5 years?? Does someone come and plant stuff when I’m not looking?

And holy cats, what about this monster potato????

I am prepared to admit, you will never find ALL your potatoes. But how do you miss something this size???

I have replanted it to see how many new potatoes it will produce!

I love our red soil! Its all ready to go – but I want to dig in some blood and bone before actually planting the potatoes. It was hard not to put them in though, and finish the job!

I still have a LOT of work ahead of me!!

I think I am going to have to pot up some of that amazing parsley!

Between our garden and Ruby’s, I am going to have to put out the call for some ‘working guests’ !! 🙂

Hopefully my network of travelling friends know of someone that wants to hang out in Tasmania for a while and earn their keep!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

Cheers

Seedy Day

Hanging plant that Margie gave me flowering for the first time!

Right!! I slothed the day away yesterday, so today I was determined to pull on the gardening clothes and get some stuff planted!

Apart from all my collected seeds, I rummaged about for leftovers from last season as I am not confident my saved zucchini & cucumber seeds will germinate.

Lets see… I planted normal and yellow zucchini, mini rock melons, cucumber, basil (a lot), heirloom capsicum (a lot – from saved seed so fingers crossed they do the right thing), chilli, eggplant, pumpkin and some test corn.

I am testing some corn because I saved this from our harvest last season – I have never saved corn seed before and I don’t know if I had a hybrid or not. So I want to see if this germinates before planting stacks of duds and wasting time!

Heirloom capsicum… do you think I have enough?? It was Sooooo Goooood!!

Then – for a change of scenery, I convinced Jeff to accompany me down to Ruby’s to put in her Christmas Peas (ie, the peas that go on the plate for Christmas Dinner)

Ruby’s plum tree has burst into blossom!!!

I had covered this area in seaweed grass and it has done a pretty good job of keeping the weeds down. We weeded and raked aside most of the seaweed before digging the plot

We used some of Ruby’s Birthday Compost to dig into the area where the peas are to be planted then set up the rebar for them to climb on.

Happily Ruby was well stocked with pea seeds!

We were then taken inside for dinner – pumpkin soup and garlic bread and boy, did that hit the spot!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Cheers!

Beef Soup

I came across a recipe for beef soup a short while ago and we really liked it… so I thought I might share it here, since nothing I did today was super exciting to write about. (Ok, we enjoyed my parents visiting one last time before they had to head home on the boat tonight, 🙁 , with lunch and generally catching up in front of the cosy fire which was lovely!)

We had had ‘carnivore night’ and BBQed up a silly amount of steak for two people, thus – leftovers. I had never made a beef soup before so I went searching for a recipe that matched what I had left in the garden.

The one I found was at taste.com.au called “All in one beef soup” It really teeters on a stew and was very satisfying.

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil (or whatever oil 🙂 )

500g (1 pound) lean beef – cheap cuts ok – coarsely chopped

2 carrots, peeled, finely chopped

2 celery sticks finely chopped

1 large brown onion finely chopped

2 garlic cloves crushed (I did more and just chopped them. We like garlic)

2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups of water

1/3 cup pearl barley rinsed (I don’t have that so I added some spiral noodles in last 20 minutes or so of cooking)

2 dried bay leaves (I didn’t bother with them)

3 large tomatoes chopped (not tomato season so I put in a 400g can tinned tomatoes in instead)

300g sweet potato peeled cut into 1cm pieces (I didn’t have this either)

Anyway…. I had carrots.

And by accident I seem to have celery

I also added a chilli for excitement factor.

If you are not like us using the pre-BBQed beef, you need to heat some oil in a large saucepan and brown your beef. Take it out and set it aside.

Add some more oil and stir in the carrot, celery & onion for 8 minutes or until softened.

Then stir in garlic & rosemary (and chilli) until aromatic.

Return beef to pot and add in your stock, water, barley (if you are using it) and bay leaves (ditto)

Cover and bring to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for an hour and a half.

Add tomatoes (and sweet potato if you are doing that or the spiral pasta noodles if you are using those) Cook until noodles/potato ready.

I also probably sprinkled in some garlic salt at some point. I can’t remember, but I usually do!

I should have garnished it with some rosemary or parsley for the photo!!

This was a serious winner in Norwich House, and has been added to my repertoire of “Meals I Can Cook”

Hope everyone had a lovely day!

Cheers

The House Turns Quiet!

My sister Michelle and her family drove off east this morning and will head south for a few days before coming back up here prior to taking the boat back to the mainland.

Its weirdly quiet!! 🙂

I planned to plant some seeds and muck about in the garden but it was a hideous day and the rain continues to steadily fall even now – so I pretty much did nothing useful at all.

I suspect my cos lettuce ready for replanting

Oddly for the season, a lot of chillies are ripening!

Rogue potato in the new garden where I planted bulbs – byproduct of my compost! Not sure there is enough space for it to do anything decent, but I will leave it and see what happens.

Garlic coming along nicely. NEEDS mulching

Seeds from a giant pumpkin. Will give growing one another go this season.

And its lovely to see my tulips starting to come out – and be battered by the rain! Poor things.

Have a wonderful day!

Cheers!

Ruby Tuesday – A Party To Remember!

Sitting in her fancy chair ready to dish out a record number of hugs!

Wow – well it was an amazing afternoon! The lady of the moment was incredible how she just kept on keeping on. We estimated by the amount of name tags written out that there were about 150 people or so that crammed into that little church hall – all to see Ruby!

People coming in and the table filling up with food!

The ladies from the Church Guild did a magnificent job with the food! It was plentiful, beautiful and there was such a variety!

Grandson, Simon & his wife Marsha organised the cake, via a friend. It was so bold and cheerful, with both the nurse & garden theme – both an equally big part of Ruby’s life!

There was a constant line up to get a ‘Ruby-Hug’ a chat and to wish her many happy returns

Even the very small had a bit of time with Ruby!

My parents, Sister Michelle & her family organised the signing book – Michelle and Tony did the creative part of putting it together, my parents funded it! It turned out beautifully with lots of people signing which will be a great memory of the day (proper photo of book to come later!)

I don’t think Ruby knows about the guestbook yet, so it will be fun to see them present it to her.

A very proud looking Margie with her two sons, Jason and Simon

Hilariously, with the USB full of photos of Ruby, early days and now, was put into a projector that no adult could work. After about an hour some bright spark went and grabbed a 13-year-old. Riley – Ruby’s Great Grandson – who had it up and running within 3 minutes! Cracked me up!

A most exciting part of the afternoon was Ruby opening her letter from the Queen!!

Margaret read out the message for the guests and Ruby, proud as punch, held her card aloft for us all to see!

There were a few short speeches from Ruby’s grandsons and adopted son on behalf of the family of her second marriage (how I became lucky enough to join this family) which were lovely.

Ruby’s minister, Louise says a few words (when Ruby stopped saying hers! haha)

I couldn’t believe how Ruby just kept up with it all!!

Can you believe that even after going for about 4 hours at this party – she went home to put her feet up and then went out to another dinner with about 50 people and didn’t get home until 10pm!!!

She said she was a bit tired after all that, but she was determined to put her “Best Foot Forward, and even if it falls off, well… I’ll worry about that tomorrow” Said with a typical Ruby-Grin.

We saw her a couple of days later and she is still full of crazy energy – dragged us all over the house to see cards strung up everywhere and more flowers than before!

It makes me so happy that she had the most wonderful day.

She said to me “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined such a party”

Cheers!

Saving The Ocean

pipe-1

Ok – so we go to Black River Beach – full of amazing shells and driftwood and check out my souvenir!!

Seriously?? Do you know how useful this size polypipe is and how expensive?? It was mostly buried in the sand, so I rescued it! (Not to mention saved the ocean from more human rubbish!!)

Jeff had only a small amount of that long-suffering husband look on his face and only expressed a few (justifiable) doubts about fitting it into the car (Love my husband)

The look on the rest of the families faces was quite entertaining as I dragged it up to the picnic area that we had set up.

Mother: “Whats that?”

Me: “Mine!!”

pipe-3 — Dad on one end encouraging the sand filled pipe to bend

pipe-4 — Husband feeding it around on the other side

Luckily Mum and Dad had brought along their car, so we kicked out Rosemary and Emma of our car and into theirs for the drive home!

Its going to be really useful in the garden – stay tuned! 🙂

On a MUCH sadder and less weird note… I lost all my photos of Black River Beach today that I had planned to post here. I was mucking about trying to remember the buttons for the self timer to get a whole family photo and cleverly reformatted the memory card!!!! I am totally miffed at myself, and went through some agony trying to download a card recovery program or two that were not playing the game. So before a full-blown tanty ensued, I have given up, told you about my polypipe (Thank-you to Rosemary for those photos) and tried to move on. 🙂

Anyway – the important thing was I didn’t kill the family photos so here we all are on the beach together having a simply splendid day!

Hope yours was just as fabulous!

Cheers!

family

A Few More Kilo’s of Rocks

After spending the morning at the Penguin Markets (Undercover when it poured rain quite hard) we went down to our rock beach of choice just outside the town.

Happily all my family are just as excited about collecting rocks and sea glass as we are and a number of excellent hours were spent – with only a brief period huddled under some sheltering trees while it rained.