January 2017 – Page 3 – Head in the Clouds

Monday – Hiking Plans

Hello – How is the start of your new week going??
Last night Jeff and I went out to see the new Star Wars film! We very much enjoyed ourselves! It has been a while since we went to the movies!

Yesterday I spent a little time in the hothouse tying back the jungle

Its now a little easier to walk around in there and the tomatoes aren’t lying in the dirt!

Today I donned my GP’s for the first time in many years and took them for a walk

Jeff and I did the Anniversary Bay walk and came back over the hills – that nice big circuit takes us about 2 and a half hours.

We actually have a goal for early 2017, which is to do the 6 day hike across Cradle Mt and finish up at Lake St Claire.

(Check here if you want a quick refresher on my previous post on Cradle Mt National Park)

From all reports that I have heard, it is a magnificent walk. You carry all your gear – food, tents etc and hoof it across the mountains.
Hence a bit of concentrated work on our fitness levels!!
We are hoping to be organised to do this sometime in March.
We are gathering our gear – seeing what we have and what we need. I want to try to make some dehydrated meals and practice cooking them on the gas burners that we will take with us.
Going to be quite the adventure!

Todays walk was quite crowded! We met four people (four!!!) walking and there were about half a dozen young people skinny dipping on the beach!! We were actually walking a fair distance away from them, when a loud and proud male voice shouted out “We are all naked!!!”
Hilarious! So I shouted out “Whoo Hoo” and gave them the thumbs up, while Jeff amused himself by considering calling out “SHARK!!” just to see what would happen! lol
Ahhhh – if you’ve never been skinny dipping out in nature, put it on your bucket list. Very liberating feeling 😀

It was a beautiful afternoon for a walk. Soon we will get out the big packs and start putting some weight in them to see how we go!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend and a great start to the new week

Cheers!

Driving down to Sisters beach and came across a couple putting bales of hay out for sale! We really needed some as the chook coop needs a freshen up! None of the local produce shops have hay right now so this was pretty handy!

Slow Saturday

Well, thats Saturday gone! I must say I was a bit half-hearted about it.
I finally got myself together and went down to Ruby’s to put in a couple of hours weeding… only to find she had almost half done the patch that I was intending to clean up for her!!

Sometimes I can’t believe she is 100! Apparently she had a really good day yesterday and got out on her milk crate and went weeding-mad!
This was the patch the other day – (taken from the other side)

Not wanting to let the side down, I got stuck into the rest.

I had to hose myself off before I was fit to go into the house to have a cuppa! Hot, sweaty and grubby!

Anyway, back home I muddled about the yard, picked some stuff and did the watering

I ate a little purple carrot! 🙂

Remember the weedy then bare duck yard from last year?

Well… I think the progress is beautiful!

Back to the main vegie patch –

Busy little area – needs a weeding of course, but there are runner beans both sides, zucchini in the middle and some rogue tomatoes that I have just left to do whatever they please

Could this be the year that the runner beans go up and over the arch?? I live in hope.

Something is nibbling off the carrot tops!

Tomato patch slowly slowly getting there

Some of my marigolds have actually perked up and done well!

So much parsley gone to seed. Its going to take over the garden I bet!

Onto the hothouse! Its so lush and busy in there! I need to spend some time tying up all the crazy plants that are growing out of control!

One of the tomato plants that is just sprawling everywhere!

Flowers on my heirloom capsicum! Excited much??

Basil and a couple of new self seeded beetroots!

And then a bit of colour that makes me happy –

Well… that’s a bit of a circuit around the garden! Time for bed.
Hope your weekends are awesome!

Cheers!

Beach Walk & a Lot of Weeding!

I had to be up early this morning to get to an appointment before 9am. This was good for me because my sleeping habits lately have become ridiculous!
My appointment woke me right up – bikini wax!! haha – more effective than coffee I can assure you, but perhaps not as economical??
Anyway… moving right along…

So, since I was bright eyed and bushy tailed (well maybe not bushy tailed anymore)(yeah I said I was moving right along 🙂 ) I thought a good long walk along Sisters beach would be a grand thing to do. The tides were right this morning and the sun was beating down, so off I went.

I did a lot of paddling about

I thought they were all mildly love heart shaped… or maybe my brain was addled from the early morning trauma.

I love the tea tree stained water that runs into the ocean from the stream

Its a popular area for families with little kids to come and swim/paddle

Well… there was work at home to be done, so I left the sparkling shores, came back and changed into my gardening clothes.
The main vegie patch hasn’t been properly weeded for ages (seriously… WHAT do I do with my time??) So that was my aim… to really get a good portion of that knocked over!

And boy oh boy did I need a good scrubbing tonight!!
Feels good to get rid of so many of those weeds… still a lot there but I am pleased with how its looking already!
Hope your weeks ends fantastically!

Cheers!

Ice Cream – Good

Hello!

I am pleased to report that each of my ice cream flavours tasted great! I did strawberry, raspberry & plum. The raspberry was my favourite.
I got them all out of the freezer this afternoon when Jeff woke up, got a couple of spoons and we spent some happy moments taste testing.

I also ate my beetroot with tonights salad and am relieved to report that it also tasted great (possibly not in the same league as the raspberry ice cream but hey…) It was fantastic to add another element to the salads. I think tomorrow the first tomato may be ready to use, so I can’t wait for that!!

I made a few more additions to my Texas Fund today. I friend popped over and bought $15 worth of berries and other vegies. I also went into the local handcraft shop where my calendars were being sold and picked up my earnings there.
So – seems like in total I am comfortably over a thousand dollars so far in the kitty to get myself to the States!! Not bad!

Thats all from me tonight! Hope everyone’s week is going along splendidly!

Cheers

Behemoth of the Garden

Kitchen day – time to put the pinny on!!

Hello! How is everyone’s week trundling along?
I thought I would take a weeding break and tackle a few kitchen things.
First things first – need to show off my beetroot!

I figured it was about time to dig it out of its cosy home in the hothouse and see if it would cook up alright

It cut rather nicely and I have been cooking it tonight. I probably need to taste it properly when its cool to give you a verdict on whether I left it too insanely long.

As I type I am waiting for some cooked and pureed strawberries to cool off. I want to make some ice cream before hitting the hay

Making step one – the vanilla ice cream with plums cooking behind

I picked a few plums and cooked them up too – wanted to try a different flavour in the ice cream.

When they had cooled I picked out the pips by hand then ‘mooleyed’ all the skin etc out so I was left with pulp

Also cooked up a pot of raspberries then sieved all the seeds out.

What I don’t use in the ice cream I will pop into the dehydrator to make fruit leather.

We made some the other day but I am yet to scrape it all off the trays! They got a bit stuck. I will use some baking paper for the next lot!! Still… tastes good!

Well – I suppose my strawberry mix might have cooled down enough to finish up this ice cream caper. (Its only 11.30pm 😀 )

Hope your day was great!

Cheers

Todays pickings! We ate most of those potatoes!! Same with the lettuce and basil. One of the Black Russian tomatoes is showing colour. Can’t wait to get into that! Another cucumber, oodles of snow peas and all those luscious raspberries!

Ruby Tuesday – Mowing & Weeding

Hello! Thought it was about time I updated you with Ruby and her garden a little bit! I have really neglected things with all that has been happening recently, so it was good to get back in and start sorting out weeds (never ending!)

Ruby’s big paddock out the side of her house was pretty weedy and unkempt, so Jeff came along with me today to tidy that up a bit

My aim in life is to have a hydrangea bush go this mad. Its magnificent!

My job today was to tackle that oxalis and other random weeds in the patch where Ruby’s beetroot, carrots and dwarf beans are

It seriously takes forever!

I was pretty filthy by the end of the day!

Glad I dropped off all that seaweed grass the other week. I can now mulch as I weed – slow them down somewhat!

Ruby wandered out partway through my job today. She was apologising for having a Nanna-Nap instead of being outside helping! Bless her cotton socks!! 😀
She stayed out with me for a short while. Her foot is a LOT better these days. It gave her grief almost all of last year. Good to see that has eased up a bit.
She has chairs strategically set up around the garden so she can plonk herself down when she needs to. And she can also do a bit more weeding while she sits there too!

Mind you she is there for about a minute before she is up and off again ferreting about for things – this time it was scissors and string to tie up a tomato

“What are you doing?” says Ruby, not too deaf to hear the click click of my camera? “Taking photos of the Old Girl??”
I tell her I have to get action shots for my readers and she chuckles away!

There is lots of food happening. Like with most everywhere else this season – things are late. Ruby’s peas are almost done. She has had a lovely time picking and podding. As you saw above, her runner beans have just started producing. There are a few potatoes, small carrots, cucumber, lettuce and a few ripe tomatoes (she is such a show-off!!)

I also redug and planted some parsnip seeds. Ruby has done it twice already and nothing came up!! We are not sure if its the seeds or weather, so we are just giving it another go.

We are all eagerly awaiting the plums! I hope there will be enough for me to pinch a few to make my plum Worcestershire sauce! I have run out and I am sad about that. They also make superb jam!

Jeff had finished up so it was time to come in for a drink and a chat. We opted for cold drinks today instead of a cuppa!
We really hadn’t seen Ruby since before Christmas when Jeff went on nights and I caught a cold!
She was telling us funny stories about one of her brothers, Col. He was a bit of a larrikin when he was young. Around the Christmas Holidays all the young people would get together at a swimming spot in the river. This particular day they swam across and noticed Col hadn’t followed. Apparently they saw bubbles and figured he was under them, so a rescue got underway!!!
Luckily his sister (Ruby) had just done her nurse training and was able to do all the right things. Meanwhile one of the other friends went haring back to their home to blurt out to Ruby’s parents “Call the doctor – Col’s drowned!” Eep!! As Ruby said – not much point really, as being in the country, you have to mostly help yourself as the doctor was a tidy distance away.
Before Ruby’s mother could have a complete heart attack the call went out that he wasn’t drowned, as they dragged him up to the house. He still had to go to the doctors!

Then, fully recovered, Col and friends wanted to get up to mischief and play tricks on New Years. That entailed daubing the local grocery shop with some spots of whitewash!! Apparently that was the second year that had done that and the second time earned them some buckshot in the backsides!!!

Ruby had heard of these shenanigans up at the hospital that she worked at and took it upon herself to write a very stern letter to her brother to tell him to pull his socks up! She went as far as getting a fellow nurse to address the letter so her mother wouldn’t recognise her writing as usually her letters were read to all the family.
Ruby’s family had suffered through the death of her sister, Sylvie, who had been ill with some complicated form of epilepsy, and young Syd went off to war and was the first casualty from Tasmania.
Ruby wanted to remind Col to be mindful and careful as their parents didn’t want to have to suffer through any more losses!

But she did add with pride that Col grew up to be a very good person.

Anyway – time to take my slightly aching arms to bed – not sure if it was the brick moving from yesterday or the 5 hours of weeding today!!

Cheers!

Free Bricks

Hello!
Not too much exciting to report from Norwich House today… we did get back across town to a friends place to relieve him of a nice big pile of bricks! It took three trips (one had been done a couple of weeks ago) and today we went twice to finish the job. Poor little trailer was huffing and puffing.
Still – free is good and I reckon we will be able to make use of these in the part of the yard that we are (very slowly) landscaping.
It was a bit agonising though – driving past all the awesome beach and river swimming spots seeing people out everywhere enjoying a dip or a paddle – thinking why are we hauling bricks when today feels like summer??? 😀

So far ALL the sweet peas in my new garden area are a dark purple!!

So – who makes new year resolutions or goals?? I am pretty bad at it. By the time I think of something good its usually June and by then my momentum has gone.
I figured trying to fund myself to Texas and then both myself and Jeff to Japan this year all on $$ from my vegetable garden was challenge enough without adding more goals.
Then I read Mavis’s list from One Hundred Dollars a Month and I felt a bit slack (Actually truth be told I needed a little lie-down after reading her ambitions!!) hee hee
Anyway, so I thought I should rethink the whole 2017 goal list and see if I can come up with some more interesting things! It will probably do me good. I am a terrible procrastinator (or very good – depends on your viewpoint) and I am a classic for getting into about 15 projects, start each one and then “oooooo – look at that shiny thing over there” and get embroiled in something else to not finish.
I’ll work on it 🙂

Strawberry ice cream, blueberry ice cream

Not that the terrible late night kitchen lighting helps make this look appetising, but maybe tomorrow when they are frozen properly and in proper light they will look more scrumptious!

Anyway -short and sweet. Trying to curb my nocturnal habits a little. We were so late with dinner tonight (9pm!!)
Easy to stay out late in the garden when the weather is nice!

Hope your day is grand!
Cheers!

2017 – Day One

A grand start to the new year when I peeked into the hothouse and saw colour on the tomatoes! I am very excited. Its been too long since I tasted a real tomato.

Jeff decided to sort out the scruffy lawn…

While I went back to my happy place

I don’t usually pick consecutive days, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to rain or not – was overcast most of the day. I learned that you don’t pick berries when its raining or just rained. The fruit goes mouldy really quickly!