August 2017 – Page 2 – Head in the Clouds

Christmas Pea Preparation

Hello!
We finally got quite a lovely day today, so I trotted over to Ruby’s to start organising her spot for the Christmas peas! This is very important to her! Fresh picked peas on the dinner plate at Christmas time is essential!

Lots of fiddly little weeds to take care of first!
You can see where Ruby has been digging away – planted the whole side of the plot out with spring onions!

Ruby kept coming out to chat, then saying she was leaving to ‘not be a nuisance’ but inevitably I would catch her pulling up weeds having a lovely time in the sunshine!

She stashes plenty of chairs and seats around her garden so she can rest AND weed at the same time!

We had a little garden helper too – Ruby is taking care of this little fellow for family at the moment. He had a great time digging holes with me today!

He cracked me up by pulling up a clump of weeds and vigorously shaking the dirt off it! That kind of help is most welcome! (Pulling up the spring onions, not so much… hee hee)

I didn’t get the full plot weeded, but my main aim was to get enough done to put up the rebar and dig the rows over ready for whenever Ruby wants to plant her peas, which she likes to do herself.

Lots of flowers are starting to bloom around Ruby’s yard.

Ruby has also offered me a couple of plots to use for myself. (eep – my own garden is not nearly up to scratch yet! haha) But I was thinking I would love to put a lot of onions in – not sure if thats too late or not. I find onion a bit space hungry and they take ages… so maybe a plot of onions??

Even Margie was out doing some yard work! I have never seen her on the mower before! Good to see she was all rugged up – was still cold despite the sun!

Shock-Horror I didn’t stop for a cuppa today, although I would have loved it! I was dashing home as Jeff and I had enough sunlight left in the day to get a lap of Anniversary Bay in (Plus the tides were low). I’ll save my cuppa for a rainy day!

Here’s hoping for a few more sunny days so we can get a few more hours in the gardens!
Hope your weekends are going splendidly!

Cheers

Fluffy New Neighbours & Nearly Spring Flowers

What an adorable little face! We have three lambs next door – cute little bleatings drift over the fence at random times of the day. I love their little leg-warmers. They need them. NOT nice out there tonight.

Anyway, they make me smile as they wobble about and then go for a drink with their tails madly wagging!

As mentioned – utterly miserable out there.
I thought I better do something to brighten the day for the chooks – so I baked them a cake. Lots of weird things added from the fridge/pantry/scraps.

My wheat sprouts that are sitting under the leaky skylight are growing well

So I yanked off a handful of those too

A perfect chook picnic basket.

My oh my wasn’t it a hit!

I went back later and nothing was left!

So – whats on the growing front??
I checked out the duck yard… no sweet peas showing but I did find the snow pea shoots! (This means I need to get back into the garden as soon as its not feral weather to plant the rest of my snow peas!)

The lettuce is growing fabulously… the marigold germination rate is a bit sparse so far

I was also a bit excited to see some of the rocket sprouting so quickly!

Because I was outside, I took a few other not-quite-spring flower photos. Its nice to concentrate on the pretty things and breathe the (very) fresh air!
Enjoy
Cheers!

Not sure of the name but its a scent that catapults me straight back to childhood!

Petrified Forest National Park – Part Two

Not much to add to the story of the journey through the Petrified Forest by Wendy and myself.
Just a few more images to enjoy!

As the weather has eroded the landscape, this fabulous chunk of petrified wood has been left its own pedestal!

Lucky it was too big for my backpack… I really liked this piece! 😀

We stopped briefly at the Agate Bridge… I think we were both a little underwhelmed! haha – not saying that its not an amazing tree of petrified wood… Again I was imagining an actual bridge made out of agate! 😀 I suppose after all the other coloured and spectacular views this one didn’t hold our interest quite as much!

At the end of the drive there is a museum and walk around the desert plants & giant logs…

I really loved all the spiky plants!!

Look at the size of that dandelion!! Is that normal?

I think we could have spent hours more here… however there was the Grand Canyon to get to!

Onward!
Cheers!

Petrified Forest National Park – Part One

Hello! Things are a bit slow and (dare I say) slightly boring around Norwich House the last couple of days. Definitely getting things done, but not exciting things!
Happily I have just about finished my post processing on the wedding photos, a few tail ends to tidy up before posting the files back to Texas, so I have made a little start on my actual holiday photos!!

The one request my husband made for me to bring home, was a piece of petrified wood! (ok, and alien bumper stickers from Roswell… haha).
Imagine my delight when, on the drive up to the Grand Canyon, Wendy and I stumbled across an entire petrified forest!!!!
Detour!

Because this was day two of driving (correction – Wendy driving, me being the moral support and entertainment division) we limited ourselves to 2 hours of exploring.

Four hours later we finally extracted ourselves from this spectacular and unexpected landscape.
It was so beautiful!

The road through was 42km (26 miles) with lots of viewing point stops and the opportunity for a walk or two.

Initially we were greeted with pallets of red, pinks, oranges with smatterings of green.

We made a brief stop off to see ‘Newspaper Rock’
There are around 650 petroglyphs covering a series of rock faces in a small area that you overlook from a viewing platform.

The markings were made by ancestral Puebloan people over a number of generations, between 650 – 2,000 years ago! Amazing!
So many little details cover the rocks.

I like this one – I think of an elderly person with a bad back and a walking stick…

I imagine this is a huge eye broken off from a large statue/painting. Well…actually I couldn’t find much about this so I am just making it up in my head! Its cool though.

So, from warm colours to artwork, then abruptly the landscape changed colour!

Incredible layers of blue, white and rust showing a timeline of events. The red layers (top) show where the rivers ran at that time. The blue and red layers were laid down in the rivers floodplain and the white ash layers record volcanic eruptions and are used to determine the rocks exact age!

We finally found some petrified wood, by the way!! I think in my head when I thought ‘petrified forest’ I had vague images of silently standing stone trees (upright of course)

Clearly that was not the case although I quite liked my romantic notions. (I watch too many fantasy/sci-fi programs!)

But it was fantastic to start seeing more of the ‘trunks’ and pieces of the petrified wood that would have been in river beds a ridiculously long time ago. (We are talking 255 million years ago that these trees were living, if you can wrap your brain around that!!)

We drove on a bit further, played tourist…

Met a crow…

And then took time for a walk down into the Blue Mesa – one mile down to get really among it all

We came across some track workers – would have been hot work but what an office to spend your day in!!

We started coming across various chunks of petrified wood along the pathway

Some were totally backpack sized!! haha (no, of course I didn’t but I did tell Wendy it was like walking through the valley of temptation!)

We really enjoyed our (hot hot hot) walk down here

Close up the surface of the hills are just a baked clay!

So easy to see an ancient waterway where the wood was washed down and buried… now exposed again for us to admire!

Anyway, I will throw some more images your way tomorrow!
Hope you enjoyed the look at this most beautiful place!

Cheers!

Sunday

Was all prepared to be a sloth today, but Fiona rang suggesting a walk. Since I hadn’t been for a week I couldn’t justify a ‘no’ !!
It was pretty brisk out there, but we mostly didn’t get rained on and we felt good after our hike – even though our legs hurt a bit!

Back home I got into my original planned task which was turning those beetroots into pickles.

They were smaller than my normal ones, but one can’t be too fussy at this time of year hey?
Anyway, they filled a large coffee jar so I am happy again!

Remember my winter tomato lateral project?

Well… today finally I found one starting a root!

They are really slow to develop – again, can’t expect much in winter. Mostly its a gamble and if I manage to get a few early tomatoes going then I will be happy. If not… back to some seeds in pots in a few weeks!

Hope you have had a lovely day

Cheers

Grouchy Weather & A Bit Of Garden Stuff

Hello – I’d just like to start this post with a very big thank-you to so many of you who dropped me a line with kind words of sympathy for our little Squirt… They were very much appreciated. I haven’t done my usual thing of answering every note as there is only so much time I can spend on thinking of her before the waterworks start again.
All your messages were so lovely!
Jeff got a lot of lovely messages via a Chicken Page he is part of and as some of you also pointed out, it was a situation that others were unaware of, so hopefully by sharing our little tragedy, others may avoid it.

I meant to write a blog last night, but the weather was howling and miserable (bit like me really!!) and we lost power – so I sat up with my head torch knitting & reading.

I picked up some asparagus crowns… only three because at $7 each I was almost in cardiac arrest!! I have never had asparagus before. I am told you need patience but they then last forever!

I am also told they can run a bit so I thought they could make a home in my round raised garden bed.

They look a bit lonely!

Two days ago – I was pleased to see green specks in here that are my baby lettuce.

Today they have gone even crazier!

I also planted some rocket today – I never have gotten around to putting it in the garden before so I thought it was high time to get onto it!

I also brought my potting table back into the hothouse. I have found if the pots of new seedlings are up off the ground, less chance of being found by slugs and snails.

This was the barrel that the kelp juice was in… This was completely empty two days ago and has now filled up on just roof runoff – no guttering. So we really have had a fair bit of rain in the last short while!

I am pleased with my garlic. Seems most of the regular garlic has taken hold and the purple garlic really looks great

Other little signs of spring are appearing everywhere

It has been quite cold – more rain than not, although we get brief spurts of sunshine which is nice. Not good weather to really get into a decent garden job. Forecast is for some pretty wild and woolly weather this week!
I see more cooking and more photo processing coming my way!

Cheers

The ‘on’ phase of our on again, off again weather!

Not a good day…

I have to write this post early as I don’t think I can bear to come back later tonight to relive it.

We lost Squirt today. We are devastated – not because she had a relapse, but such a stupid pointless thing.
She was so happy to be out. I stepped out down the street for a short while. Jeff was doing yard work. She wanted to be on the other side of the fence where the other chickens were. Jeff let her in, made sure she was doing ok, then went to get a rake.

Thats all it took. The other chickens killed her! (Or so close to it that poor Jeff had to finish the job). We feel sad and angry at ourselves that we let her down. Not that we could have known. She had been with them before in her weak as a kitten stage with no trouble.
Jeff feels so guilty, like it was his fault – but its not like he threw her in there and left her for hours. It was minutes!! I feel guilty because I left the place and wasn’t here to… I don’t know what!!?? Mostly not being here and Jeff being by himself discovering the poor little girl & blaming himself.

Needless to say there have been a lot of tears and ‘what if’s’ this afternoon
After all that we did to get her well – we were so proud of that and she was having such a happy morning outside! It’s hard to believe she is gone just like that.

Apparently with chickens after they have been separated for more than three days you need to re introduce them as you would a new chicken. I hate crappy lessons you learn too late and the heart wrenchingly hard way.
I know she was ‘only a chicken’ but you know how we feel about them.

She is buried deep in the hothouse with a little stone and plum blossom on the sad, fresh turned earth.

Thanks for listening xx

Odd Jobs/Smelly Jobs

Hello and welcome to the middle of the week!
I enjoyed the sometimes sun and view as I sat out the back and ‘podded’ my runner bean seeds

Easy job to do but also easy to put off!

Anyway – now I have more runner bean seeds than you can point a stick at. I’ll plant some, sell some (hopefully) and give a lot away.

Because it was a reasonably sunny day with a breeze… I risked putting a load of laundry out on the line.
And it didn’t rain… well, not until I had my hands in stinky kelp water then down it came!!!! I swear the weather does that on purpose!

I put them undercover and they got mostly dry outside and are now finishing off in front of the fire.

Oh yeah – stinky kelp juice!!
You are supposed to soak it for about 2 weeks not, um… however many months its been!

I got a good number of bottles filled with the liquid and then tipped the remaining seaweed sludge over the base of a few plants. It looks what I can only imagine dinosaur vomit would look like…

I’ll let you know later in the season if the blueberries appreciated it!

Then there was kindling box top up time…

And since the weather has warmed a little, trying to grow some wheat sprouts as treats for the chooks.
*** Squirt was out for a lot longer today. She was very impatient to be out of her box this morning. Good sign.
She ate a lot and even ran away when I tried to pick her up! Impressive. I would not have bet in favour of her survival 5 days ago!
I did catch her as after a while she was just tired!! She told me off about it but into her cat box she went for a rest. Mind you, she ‘talks’ every time she wants to be spoon fed some more porridge! I have created a monster!***

I made rash promises to a friend to make him some hot sauce. So I went and picked all the chilli’s that were left in the hothouse.

I found a recipe that I will adapt somewhat.
What’s the worst that can happen??? (Its not like I will be tasting it haha)

How about that!! A red capsicum in winter. Not sure what it will taste like…

Anyway, thats a wrap up for Wednesday! Hope your week is going along fantastically!
Cheers!

Squirt Update

Miss Squirt had a pretty good day today.
I got up early (7am – don’t judge, haha) to stoke the fire back up again so the house would be warm when Jeff came in off his nightshift.
Hopped back into bed and about 20 minutes later someone is making chook-chook noises.
So I got back up to see if Squirt wanted some breakfast.
Did she ever! Ate quite a lot of her porridge (which also has molasses in it and some tuna…mmmmm) Good start to the day.

Later when I got up properly, there was a reasonable amount of sun out so I thought she could try to stretch her legs while I cleaned out her box again.

Pip insisted on coming outside too but then sat behind the gumboots and took zero interest in chicken-rehabilitation.

Meanwhile Miss Hairdo was really enjoying herself scratching about the strawberry patch

I fed her some lettuce but it was a bit beyond her to shake it into pieces small enough, but when I shredded it into little bits, she really gulped it down.
She also got some bread treats which she loves!

Her poo is a bit better formed (you wanted to know didn’t you?) but its a little hard to tell with her as, um, well, she wasn’t named Squirt because she was little… (That was Jeff!! Nurses!)

So… she is not out of the woods but I am happy she has a much better appetite. She cares about cleaning porridge off her beak – another good sign.
She is now snugged down in her cat box, head under wing in front of the fire.

Time for me to get to bed too!

Have a great day!
Cheers!

Winter Produce

Hello! Not a bad day out there today, but I did spend most of it in the kitchen cleaning up my clutter & making strawberry ice cream!

I just make an old fashioned vanilla ice cream then swirl the whizzed up cooked strawberries through it! Roll on dessert tomorrow night!

I was out of potatoes in the pantry – so off to the shed to seek my backup stock.

Of course at this time of year they are all desperately trying to grow. So I knocked off the shoots and brought a box full inside. Hoping my next potato harvest will be more of the bigger potatoes compared to this titchy lot!

And – calamity – I ran out of pickled beetroot. Time to go foraging.

That will be a tomorrow job.

Three eggs… Looking forward to stocking up on a few more chickens when we return from Japan! (Squirt had a slow day. Just when I think she has about had it, she starts making chook-noises that I interpreted to “Feed me” – so I did. A lot.)

Close to my last tomatoes. This is sad. I mean, I am rapt that I have actual fresh picked tomatoes in August, but sad that soon I have a long wait until I get to taste tomatoes again.

Spent some time watering in the hot house. Seeds (of course) have not done anything yet. On Ruby’s advice I usually leave a watering can in the hothouse so I am not watering seeds or seedlings with ice cold water.

And the plum trees have started showing their first blossoms! That makes me so happy!

Cheers!