Rachel and I were up at a very civilised hour to do a bit of a drive around the city of Burnie (which is about 25 minutes down the road from us) to get a feel for the area, as Rachel is still investigating her property investment idea.
As we were filling in time near a property we were going to view, we went for a short walk, only to come across this waterfall and walk! We have lived here 5 years now and were totally clueless this existed at the other end of a park I drive past every time we duck into Burnie (granted not that often, but still…)
This flower grew in mass up the hill
We spent a very pleasant half an hour or so wandering down the pathway to the gardens
Edge of the bush area – a mass of forget-me-nots under the trees
Down at the other end of the park (the bit I knew about) showed off some gorgeous flowers…. not least the yellow iris that I now want to add to my collection!
Again – middle of the day not optimal for photos but here are a couple of the many roses that were growing in the park
See? Blue sky!
We wandered back up to the residential area and enjoyed just loafing about on the grass chatting and enjoying sea views.
Its nice to literally stop and smell the roses sometimes!
There was a small calamity in the house as we ran out of plum jam (A staple at breakfast!) I took a container of frozen plums out to thaw so I could fix the situation. Happily I process (cook, de-pip & mooley (squish to pulp) ) the plums before freezing so I dont have a lot of extra work to do when I am ready to make something.
So six pounds of plum pulp became several jars of jam
We picked up our friend Rachel tonight at the airport… she took quite the liking to my banana/raspberry loaf, so as a good host, I made one up.
Sooooo gooooood!
Then I thought I might as well make a cake for the chickens, as I hadn’t done that for a while…
Will give the chooks a few slices tomorrow!
(Spoiled chickens much??)
On a roll… so I baked some bread too – have to do something with all that plum jam I guess
Somewhere in all that I premade a tomato/vegetable sauce mix so when Rachel got in, we just had to cook the pasta to complete dinner. Glad I did as her plane was a bit late. I think we were eating dinner at about 10pm, then chit chatted forever which is why I am now blogging at nearly 2am!
Of course there was some garden stuff to do – mostly watering today.
Love the little increases in size each day!!Lots of self seeded tomatoes popping up in the hothouse. Will re home soonZucchini and basil… second wave. Also need new homesHothouse cucumbers – pleased with their progressCelery going to seed! Useful!!
Ok – better get a wriggle on towards bed! Going to be hard to get up mildly early tomorrow!!
What’s happening on the weekend around the world?? I am hoping for some beach time!
Last night our friend Rachel called and asked to come and stay for a few days – from tomorrow! Sure!! Excellent!!
But it did mean leaving my beloved garden for a day and attending to some housework to scrub the place up a bit.
The nice thing about spring when you have some visitors, its easy to brighten up the place with flowers.
Tedious as I find housework, I did have a lovely time picking flowers and filling every available vase and vase-shaped pot in the house.
Yes I lived in Japan – No I did not attend flower arranging classes. Result? Iris explosion!
Most of these iris were drooped over the lawn and since Jeff was mowing (again!!) today, I thought I would pick all the awkward ones and enjoy them inside.
This is slightly more zen…I bought this sweet little vase/bowl in Japan. The turtle at the bottom with his strategic holes makes arranging flowers easierDaisy ballTiny bunny vase – given to me by a lovely Japanese friend
My one dollar bargain at the local markets!!Tiny Japanese cream jugSaki Bottle! (clearly Japanese)A while ago I saw this chook-jug and couldn’t resist. Makes a decent vaseAnother favourite Japanese vase – stands or hangs on the wallSpindly Granny-Bonnet
Even after picking so many flowers – it doesn’t make a dint in the garden at all! Awesome time of year!
Hope you had a lovely day
Cheers
Pips reaction to the lack of fire most evenings recently.
I had a very family orientated day… accidentally catching up with various cousins, which was really lovely.
So I must admit, I am very under-prepared for ‘Ruby Tuesday’ I’ll get a nice photo of Ruby sometime during the week, since I failed to do that today for you today!! 🙂
I did get a little bit of much needed weeding done in her carrot/beetroot & bean garden yesterday
I dug half the plot, Ruby did the rest and planted it all! I just sorted out the weeds she couldn’t see, now she can see where the rows areZucchini planted – and well sheltered
As you know, I enjoy sitting down with Ruby having a cuppa and listening to stories. We sometimes go off on wild tangents to where we started – but that’s the nice thing – different memories get triggered when we talk about this and that.
I asked Ruby what invention had the biggest impact on her in her amazing 100 years. Very quickly and decisively she answered “Electricity”
She thought it made life for the farmers – especially the dairy ones – so much easier. Machines were developed and made that took so much of the load off peoples shoulders.
All the work that had to go into making a cup of coffee if you didn’t have a fire going – where we walk into the kitchen and flip a switch!!
Entertainment changed from standing around a piano for a singalong to sitting by the radio – or in front of the Giggle-Box as Ruby still insists on calling the television!!
Eventually inventions followed electricity – like the iron and the refrigerator. Bliss to have ice cream in the house!
Can you imagine in one lifetime going from no electricity to a world where we sit at a computer and talk to people we have never even met by the internet??
Can you imagine how you might cope if suddenly all that was taken from us? How many of us would adapt and survive or know what to do?
I’d like to think we could, but I would sure miss the worldwide connections – and ice cream!!!
I thought I would ask if there are any questions that people had for Ruby to add them in the comments – it might be interesting to get some different ones to make her ponder upon!
Anyway – here’s hoping our weather does something nice tomorrow… got plans that include not being inside!
Hello! Monday!! It was such a scrappy running about kind of day. At least it wasn’t raining & the wind wasn’t too bad either!
I did spend a bit of time at Ruby’s this afternoon getting some of the weeding done – but I will save that for Ruby Tuesday 🙂
Jeff made a great start on removing the grass from the new garden area!
The blue box is housing a collection of weird things that he has been digging up. I must take a proper look at what he has found so far.
And look!! So excited to see a baby tomato!
Tonight we trotted ourselves down to Fossil Bluff to see if we could see the super moon. The clouds obscured the initial rising, but it did come out at one point for us.
Switching to my wide angle – see? Lots of clouds!I enjoyed watching the moonlight on the water…
Did you get to see the super moon in your part of the world??
G’day… There goes another weekend! They just zip by don’t they?
It rained a reasonable amount today – but not with the enthusiasm of yesterday, so we could at least go out for a bit without getting completely saturated!
First Marigold!!! Made me laugh because its such a scrappy little thing!
This completely unimpressive photo is my ‘before’ photo. In about a month I am really hoping there will be so much green with tall corn and massive zucchinis etc. It just looks a bit underwhelming right now!!
Just a little bit of weeding left to do in the duck yard!! haha
And look who I caught in action!! Screecher, our oldest chook has discovered she can fly to the top of the pallet fence and take a stroll on the wild side!! (Wing clipping night has to be soon!!)
The chicken plummet…Capture of non-remorseful chook!! Couldn’t hold camera, chicken and focus!! Oh well!
Anyway, this post was meant to be about pizza.
We enjoy pizza… we used to buy it when we lived in the city. But when we moved to Tasmania and I didn’t go back to ‘normal formal paid 9-5’ work, I learned to do lots of things that meant avoiding spending excess $$
Making pizza’s was one of those things.
Its actually pretty hard to go back to the bought pizzas once you make your own unless you are going out to the fancy-pants gourmet pizza places.
If you don’t make your own bases… here is the recipe for mine. Its pretty easy & straight forward.
In a small bowl, put one tablespoon of dry yeast, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a cup of lukewarm water.
Mix and leave until it froths up nicely.
In a large bowl sift 2 & 1/2 cups of plain flour, and add one teaspoon of sea salt flakes (I often use normal salt) and a tablespoon of olive oil (again, vegetable oil quite acceptable)
Add yeast mix to the flour and mix in – using well floured hands and bench, start to knead into dough. Takes a few minutes to get it to the nice smooth elastic consistency.
Place in clean bowl and cover with damp cloth
This whole mixture now has to be left to rise, so perfect opportunity to go down to the supermarket to go shopping and forget the icing sugar for the cake you baked the day before (yeah I know… sigh)
Aaaanyway… skipping forward
I like to break this into 3 lumps, although the original recipe says 4
Roll out to vaguely pizza shape
Add toppings as you desire… we usually have same one every time because we are boring and we like it.
Home made tomato relish as sauce baselittle cheese, onion and capsicumIn my world, a pizza is not complete without pineapple
Topped with chicken pieces and sprinkled with cheese, we have our favourite pizza!!
Do you make pizza? Is pineapple important? What toppings are essential??
Who knows… maybe we will branch out one day.
Enjoy whats left of your weekend and hope Monday is kind to you!
Hello! Here ends another week – what have people got up their sleeves for the weekend?
I thought I would get a few more plants in the ground – both in the hothouse and the outside gardens.
First I had to make some space in the hothouse by removing the huge flowering broccoli! The chickens enjoyed munching on them very much!
Space!Hard to see but there are 6 tiny chilli plants and one rock melon (far right)All three of the cucumbers that I planted a while back are doing really wellI planted a further 8 of the heirloom beefsteak tomatoes I have been raising from seed into a plot next to the corn in the duck yard gardenAll tucked in for the night
I also had a 7th apple cucumber seedling that was very undersized in the punnet I bought a while back. The others went into the main vegie patch, but I nurtured the runt of the litter in the hothouse for a few weeks. Today it also went into the duck yard vegie patch
About 10 corn didn’t germinate in the first plot I planted, so I replaced them with some new seed today. The rest are sitting up so you can now tell where they are in the plot fairly easily. You can also see all the pesty weeds popping up!! There has been no seaweed on the beach for a while so mulching will have to wait!!
An ‘overall’ of the main patch.
This afternoon we decided to start moving the rocks that Cousin Jeff kindly dropped off to us. I sensibly used a wheel barrow and took the slightly longer route to the new garden area. Jeff on the other hand…
Increase in rocksThis pile has certainly decreased in size
Using high-tech rope, stakes and tent pegs, we outlined the edge of the garden
At least the ground is still soft enough to be able to cut out the turf fairly easilyProgress
Jeff went missing – he was taking away my turf and didn’t return. I found him immersed in a new project of regrassing the area under the man-ferns!
Jigsaw puzzle with blocks of grass
Anyway – back to the real job for me…
Trench dug – time for rocks
I really should have quit there – but it was too tempting to just have a go at starting the garden wall.
Ok – so a did a bit more than just start it!
I really had to finish there as besides my back telling me I wasn’t being kind to it, I still had to cover up all the new seedlings and do general ‘Garden Closing Time Stuff’
I will probably leave a small walkway so I can enter the garden without having to scale the wall (yes I am exaggerating… it won’t be that high!) I would like to use newspaper and hay to kill the grass and backfill with topsoil and compost. I am aiming at a bigger herb garden.
We didn’t get inside until about 7.30pm. So it was a late shower/dinner etc. My electric blanket is on and beckoning me! (although I need to put Pip to bed and put some bread on to bake for breakfast)
Hope everyone’s week has ended on a positive note!
Hello!! Yesterday I promised flowers! So today instead of rabbiting on about which plants I fed blood and bone to, and my intense watering schedule – I am adding a bit of colour to my post tonight.
I had a very enjoyable hour, buzzing about looking carefully at what was blooming around the yard!
Lets start with the Granny Bonnet
This was so tiny – here is a photo with my grotty gardening hands cluttering up the shot so you can see the scale
Random sweet pea flower I only just noticed I had!
Mere days after mowing, the capeweed and buttercups spring up everwhere
And it looks like some raspberries are in the making
Flower intermission:
Jeff spent all day burning stuff! He cleared heaps of weeds, rubbish, prunings etc from under the macrocarpas. (The massive trees on our property) The chooks were enthusiastic about ‘helping’ and probably got a little smoked.
Anyway – Flowers
The reason we are supposed to fold or hang our clothesSo you are not wearing your outfits completely crumpled!Fuschia. Natures ballerinasForgetmenotHot lips? Butterfly bush??Another teeny tiny flowerHope nobody was put off their brekkie looking at my lack of manicure (Scale photo 🙂 )I have no idea what this one is. It grows as a vine. I call it a black cockatoo flower as the colours match those birds perfectly
Pretty ground coverThese are small but mega-cheerful!
Hope you have enjoyed a virtual stroll about our spring garden!
