Gardening With Ruby

Rubys Quote Today “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t garden when you are 100, because you’ve seen it done!”

Hello! The weather stayed quite nice today so I popped down to dig a plot and weed some stuff at Ruby’s!
When I got there she was cat-napping in the sunroom, so I said hi and told her I was going to work in one of the gardens.

I noticed she had been out and about weeding and spotted a basket full of strawberry plants and an empty strawberry bed.

I wasn’t long into my weeding when I heard the back door slam and Ruby coming up the garden path.
She was in a bit of a tizz because she had forgotten the one thing she really needed help with was topping up the raised garden bed and replanting the strawberries.
“Sure, no worries Ruby… I’m on it.”
Nope… by hook or by crook she was not going to let me carry those bags of compost from the shed by myself. I needed help!!
There was no way I was going to talk her out of that one and I was having kittens thinking about her tottering about helping me carry bloody great bags of compost to the strawberry patch!

I managed to convince her that we could put the bags in the wheelbarrow and she was happy to pick up and pass me handfuls of the straw – I ducked in and got the bags of compost as quick as I could before Ruby could!!

It was then a team effort spreading out the straw and topping it up with the compost & breaking it up over the plot. Basically the soil had sunk and needed to be built up a bit.

I separated the strawberry plants out and Ruby planted them in her garden bed.

Until the weather dries out we are hoping they will mostly look after themselves.

Ruby went off to put her feet up for a bit and I got back into the plot I was weeding

Up the other end of this garden is a lot of little parsley plants that I will weed next time and perhaps relocate.

Also on my ‘soon to do’ list is to get a trailer load of mushroom compost and top up her hothouse soil. Ruby has cleared out the hothouse so its ready for action soon!

Then of course to top off the afternoon work, its time to go in for a cuppa and a bit of a chin-wag.
We were talking about the demise of service. Back in the early days you went to a shop and asked for what you needed. A young boy would visit houses in the morning and get a list of groceries needed and they would be delivered in the afternoon.

Signs of spring

In a small town where people left doors unlocked, Margies husband Des, when he was the butchers boy delivering the meat, he would walk into a house if no-one was there and put the meat into the fridge!
We self serve petrol, we now self checkout in supermarkets and my pet hate – photo booths to self serve and print photos! I would happily pay more for someone with the skills to take my files and print them properly but there is just not that option available.
I guess we are coming a little bit of a full circle that we now order online and have things delivered – perhaps that takes away a little bit more of the personal touch? Or delivers us from the necessity of having to deal with parking & crowds?

 

Anyway, its always fun to have a bit of a chat and compare past and present with Ruby & Margie (We had some lovely bikkies to eat too!)(home made cookies)

Cheers!

Mostly Lazy Sunday

I had a lovely sleep in. Didn’t do so much today (not counting the 2 hour hike and the few barrow loads of wood I brought up to the back veranda)

The day was totally sunny until I got dressed to do a walk! Then it went dark and poured!
So I said I didn’t care, packed my raincoat and went anyway

By the time I met Fiona at the top of the Sisters Beach turnoff we had blue skies again!

So glad we got out! I hadn’t done a walk since the snow day and I was feeling it today walking up those hills!

Lots of rain recently so lots of new sand patterns

It was great to get out and let my brain wander along planning my spring garden. I run a small facebook page for beginner gardeners and I was thinking of the things I want to start sharing now that we are stampeding up to spring. (Its more to get people over the fear of starting a garden and knowing where to begin and a place they can ask any questions without feeling silly.) I just think the more people able to grow a few things for themselves the better!

This photo doesn’t show it, but by the time we had almost gotten around our course, the weather was about to finally catch up to us… in the end we only got a few sprinkles of rain – but it did cool down considerably!

Was nice to be home and snugged up by the fire, working on my crochet and watching bad movies with Jeff!! (Seriously – I am choosing tomorrow nights entertainment!!)

Cheers!

Protea bud

Square Eyes

I can’t make up my mind whether Pip is off to a poetry review or plotting to kill me.

Hello! I dipped into the archive Pip photos because I had no other new photos or news to share today! Plus these make me smile. Cats do ‘relaxed’ so well!

I spent a lot of hours today in front of the computer with the wedding photos.
You know… when they say wedding photos are forever I didn’t think that applied to the photographer!! 

I got most of the formal ones sorted out. I was hoping to get further today but I was slowed down by a fair bit of retouching work (and I am not so great at it so that eats up a lot of time)
Things like creating grass instead of a grubby unkempt ground, removing ugly signs and in a number of cases – swapping heads!! Seriously! There were some wedding party members who were terrible blinkers!!
With a party of 11 its hard to get everybody doing the right thing at the same time.
My biggest advice? Elope! Just kidding.

It was dark, cold and gloomy today so really it was the perfect day to work indoors on this.
I just feel like I am going a little stir crazy right now!

Time for me to follow Pip’s fabulous example and put myself to bed.

Hope your weekends are great!

Cheers!

 

Burning Off – Cleaning Up

Ahhhh – a man and his chook!!
Poor Squirt isn’t feeling so well and has been spending her nights inside the house in a cat carrier stuffed with hay. I hope she perks up soon – she is definitely Jeff’s favourite.

Today was sunny and only moderately windy… so we went down the back and burned off a fair bit of rubbish (household & yard)

This area is an easy dumping ground for weeds & prunings etc.

I love fire.

We have been here nearly 6 years now… and still we find ‘treasures’
Like this spoon. Just sitting there under the macrocarpas like it has been there forever. How have I not seen it before now? Maybe a crow dropped it off.

In among the big old trees are lots of leftover ornaments from previous owners.

Maybe once I have my new herb garden extension done I’ll use them up there, just for the fun of it.

These two look like they have been at the pub for way too long!

Random wombat

Actually she looks kind of cute there

These birds are a little freaky…

Not complete without a couple of cherubs

The frog is there to stay. The tree has grown around it, so that is Mr Frogs forever home.

Anyway, I had a lovely time burning ‘stuff’ A lot more needs to be cleaned up, but we got rid of a lot of the weeds that had dried out and other scrappy sticks etc that were littered around the place. And it kept me warm.

The girls were very excited to dig under the area I cleared. I am sure there was a bug-buffet under there!

Moving right along to the hothouse!

I really think the tomato plants had seen their best days behind them

I feel a lot better about this. Now I can start planning on what to grow in here. I know its too early to go mad… but I am sure the next month or so will disappear fast enough.

The passionfruit I moved to the hothouse is doing fine. Its even putting out new baby leaves.

I love passionfruit and really hope I have done the right thing by putting it in here. Time will tell I suppose.

I have a lot of whitefly in the hothouse. I think I breathed in a lot today!!
I have read up a little on what to do. Vacuuming was one suggestion!!!
(Trying to picture Jeffs face when he catches me in the hothouse with the Dyson!! haha)

There was some interesting ground cover doing quite well in the hothouse… I liked it but have no idea what it was – so I moved it outside. We shall see if it survives.

And, to top off a reasonably productive day, I finally finished off my batch of BBQ sauce! Winning!

Cheers!

 

Cake.

I felt the banana-raspberry loaf had been missing from my life for a while. So baked one this morning.

I have had a couple of slices so far… trying to not guts it all in one day.

Pip acted as resident Snoopervisor – switching between keeping an eye on me and an eye out my grotty window for birds.

While the cake was finishing baking I went out back to my dwindling grocery store and picked a few things to make dinner with

I think that is about the last of my carrots

I wanted to make a slow cooked stew – we still have plenty of beef in the freezer.

So glad I took time to cook up several containers of tomatoes over the summer season. They have been fabulous to chuck in stews and spaghetti meals etc.

I think the only non home grown ingredient in my stew tonight was the onion (ok, and the chicken stock)
I also found a bag of frozen corn kernels that I threw in as well which made a really nice addition.

Sadly I ate alone – Jeff just couldn’t keep his eyes open when he got up this afternoon and headed back to bed. Night shift does weird things to you.  But – by the time he gets his share the flavour will be even better, and (if I do say so myself) it was pretty good to begin with!

Nothing like a hearty stew of home grown ingredients in winter while you sit by the fire!

Hope your midweek is excellent!

Cheers

Pip after an exhausting day cooking.

Apron & Ugg Boots

Hello!
It was a fairly dark and dismal day out there on the North West Coast of Tasmania… I made the sensible choice and stayed inside with the fire going, ugg boots on and a kitchen plan.

I still have plenty of produce in the freezer and its a good time of year to work through cooking it so I will have some room in there for next seasons produce.
Thought I could stock up on some raspberry jam first!

Couple of pounds of fruit, same of sugar and a bit of lemon juice – fresh of course as I raided Ruby’s tree on the way out yesterday!

How do you jam makers test your jam for readiness? I put a bit on a cold plate into the fridge for a bit, then see if it is still too runny or not.

Of course – its mandatory to have some fresh baked bread to test it out on…

At 10pm at night the trick is to only have the one slice!

I also cooked part one of my BBQ sauce, but will finish that off tomorrow, along with a banana raspberry loaf and a slow cooked beef stew.

Hope your day was delicious too

Cheers!

Tiny vase from Japan – even in winter there still always seems to be something nice in the garden.

Chicken Coop Cleanup

Hello!! That’s Monday done and dusted! (more dusted I think)
I started with my winter rose photo instead of chook poo just in case some of you were having breakfast or a cuppa… so fair warning…

It wasn’t a bad day – the sun was mostly out. A good day to balance a few more wedding photo processing before getting my gardening clothes on to go and sort out the chicken coop, which was getting fairly manky.

Blah!
On with the gloves!

I gave the big compost a bit of a turning then dumped all the chook-poo-hay on top.

It can now do its thing – lots of worms in there. Hopefully all usable by mid-late spring.

Look! I can balance hay AND take selfies!

So much nicer!

I figured a decent handful of herbs festooned around the coop wouldn’t go astray… plenty of rosemary (for remembrance? They can remember about laying more eggs) and a bit of basil-mint.

(and fennel)

I poked it in all over the place, including the nesting boxes

The coop smelled awesome when I went back to close the girls in for the night!
Glad that job is done.

I then had a good scrub up in the shower and went down to catch up with Ruby for a cuppa where we swapped snow stories!
Where as I loved my day in the snow, she didn’t have the same sense of joy when she lived in Waratah nursing and sloshing through the half melted snow in winter to visit patients around town!

Hope everyone has a great start to the week!

Cheers!

The sun came out at the wrong moment for this snap… didn’t feel right about moving Ruby about for a photo when she was so comfy where she was!!

We Were Nearly Cold!

Well – we were right at the end of the penny-section in the firewood department!
In the nick of time, Cousin Jeff arranged a couple of loads of wood to be dropped off.

Jeff and I got in and stacked it all up this afternoon as it stopped raining for a while. Warmed us up properly before we even put any of it in the fire!

I have also come up with a new plan to store/stack our firewood – which involves some pallets, star pickets & some canvas from an old tent we can’t use… It looks perfectly reasonable in my head, but from the look on Jeff’s face I am not sure he is totally convinced.
Anyway – that will be a summer project!

One more egg!! We got 4 the other day, so things are looking up.
Then I couldn’t help take some random-aim – chook-face photos

My last lettuce that was ravaged by one of the chickens is putting out some new leaves. This makes me happy.

The few frosts we have had haven’t killed my parsley or beetroot.

The last outside tomato is slowly dying off… but not before we get a few more handfuls of tomatoes!

In winter its still nice to be able to put your own tomatoes, corn (from the freezer), potato (Stored), beetroot (Pickled) etc on the plate for dinner!

Hope your weekend has been fabulous!

Cheers!

There is a chicken at the end of my rainbow…

Snow Hiking!

It was time to get further out into the great outdoors!
Jeff asked me yesterday if I’d like to go up to Cradle Mt to see what it looked like in the snow!
The weather was looking positive, so I jumped on board with the idea, then rang our cousin, Fiona who also keenly joined in the snow party!

We seriously could not have had a better day – sky was clear blue and the snow powdery and beautiful!

We headed up the Horse Track, and back via Marion’s Lookout. A scenic route that had us on the go for about six hours.

It didn’t take us long to have to start shedding the layers… in fact, Fiona was hiking in a singlet top there for a while!

I had gone as far down the clothes scale as I could without hiking in my bra! It really was that hot earlier on in the day!

This is me looking very cool (and not so cold) hiking up the Horse Track

In reality – I fell down a lot!! Some of those drifts were pretty deep and had us floundering about a fair bit!

Today I was head in the blue skies and feet in the snow…

The view at Crater Peak was, as usual, fabulous. We ate lunch up here!

Trudging along towards Cradle to get onto the Overland track, and back via Marion’s Lookout… we were the first along some of the areas – the poles helped our direction but still didn’t help up stay on the track!

I think the snow patterns are as pretty as the sand ones!

Tastes good too…

(Yes – we know this is a no-no, but we weren’t in any sort of hypothermia danger at that point!!)

Beautiful views over past Barn Bluff!
We met a Canadian couple who just set off on doing the Overland Track today! They had a brilliant day to start. I hope they have a wonderful adventure… I am still not 100% convinced I want to do that in the snow.
(We need to get a lot more suitable gear before that happens anyway!)

There is a creek under that snow at the bottom!

By this point the sun was getting lower in the sky and we were putting more clothes back on

It was a bit of a slow descent down Marion’s… mostly because at that point lots more people had been on the track in that area so the packed snow had become icy. However… the trail through the snowy trees was a delight!

Time for a quick ‘Jeff & Lisa’ snap (Thanks Fiona!) where you can see by the colours we were racing the setting sun. Brrrrr

Plenty of fat wombats were out having their breakfast by the time we got back to the Ronnie Creek car park

We got back to the car a bit later than we wanted to (Not that you can jog off the mountain in ice and snow to hurry) but we then endured a slightly terrifying drive home over a LOT of black ice! Jeff did an amazing job. We seriously turned out of the car park, up the first hill when the car proceeded to go sideways and backwards!!!
I would have given up then and there and funded a hotel room somehow, but Jeff carefully & skillfully traversed the narrow slippery roads out of Cradle. It was the slowest drive out we have ever done! Was quite the relief to hit the major roads!

So there you have it – fun, excitement beauty and terror all in one day!

Cheers!

Heading across the top towards Marion’s Peak

(PS – I have now added another 230 images to my post processing issues!!) 😀

Ice Cream

Sorry – just one dodgy photo for you tonight of my cherry ice cream… which we are still unsure if it IS actually cherry – it could possibly be blackberry. This is what happens when you don’t label freezer containers. Its dark purple fruit and it tastes good!
(The cherry season was pretty poor last year – what we bought really didn’t have a lot of flavour so I am not surprised we can’t tell exactly what we are eating!)

Anyway – we are planning on a bit of an adventure tomorrow, so stay tuned. (All weather depending etc, but fingers crossed!)

Have a wonderful day!

Cheers