Month: August 2017

Sunday Stroll

Wattle starting to fluff up everywhere!

Fiona was keen on a walk today – Jeff got his exercise on the stationary trainer upstairs where he wasn’t in the wind or cold!! Smart boy!
Actually, it wasn’t too bad as we were walking – kept us warm and we didn’t get rained on

We went in the opposite direction today – Fiona wanted to see the views coming from the other direction. Made a nice change. However – you are confronted with an awful lot of steps to start the whole walk… but we both agreed that overall, going ‘backwards’ around our loop is actually a lot easier.

So – here you go. The lay of the land.
Sister’s Beach. The community spreads  back inland a bit as well.
Here you can see where we live in comparison as you can just see the faint outline of Table Cape which we live just a bit inland from.
You can also see where we park our car – its a big area that lots of people with boats come to as that is where the boat ramp is… and where we normally start our walk from.

It was a nice treat to come down all those inland hills for a change! Mind you… that’s a whole lot of other muscles that are complaining about it now!

***Squirt Update
I have been feeding her frequently off the spoon to try to get her energy back up. She will eat enthusiastically then tire quickly. But I found going back every half hour she is ready for more.
Jeff cleaned her box and put her with the other girls for a short time – it was heartening to see her try to dash for the bread scraps and eat them up. So she is still trying her little heart out. Then she fell over a stick onto her beak in a little bundle of feathers!! Time to pick her up, give her another feed and put her back in front of the fire.
She may or may not make it, but she will be the best palliated chook ever.***

Hope your Sunday is/was wonderful!

Cheers

 

Sweet Chilli Sauce Day

Hello!
We are definitely back in winter. So glad I took the opportunity to get outside when I did.
I have a small list of things to drag out of the freezer and cook.
Today it was to make a batch of sweet chilli sauce.
In fact, I decided on a double batch

Even though my chillies were already cut and deseeded, the prep time took me a couple of hours!
It takes an eon to peel all that garlic (about 200gms)

Or maybe I am just slow!
Finally got all the garlic peeled, ginger also peeled and whizzed up the lot so I could get it into the pot to start cooking.

It eventually became hard to spend any time in the kitchen! Even though it smells good, it is literally eye-watering! (I must admit my sinuses are super clear this evening!!! haha)

It probably took a couple of hours simmering. I will know tomorrow if I did it too long or not long enough!
If you are interested in the recipe, click here.

I took some warm mash down to the girls, who were pretty pleased about it.

Squirt still not doing great… but she did eat a bit today and I let her wander about the shed while I cleaned out her cat box. She seemed keen on the bread scraps I gave her, but she tires out quickly.
She is sleeping in by the fire (no – not too close!!)

I noticed my ‘afterthought’ garlic is looking sturdy!

And three weeks ago I put some laterals on the kitchen window sill –

I think today they are looking quite good, although no sign of roots forming yet. Perhaps I should give them a drop of kelp juice! (Maybe after their day with the sweet chilli sauce fumes I might be greeted at breakfast with some ready to pick tomatoes…. who knows!)

Tomorrow I might do nothing…
Hope your day was great too!

Cheers!

Chook B&B

Sitting in my lounge room hand feeding warm porridge to a chicken!
Poor Squirt… thought she was doing great the other day. But yesterday she was in the yard being very listless.
We don’t know if she will come good, but she has every chance. We figured she was better off inside in the warm and didn’t let her out today. The weather has turned cold and now its terribly windy out there!
Pip is fine with the arrangement as long as she doesn’t make loud chook-noises! Then he hides behind the couch!
My big brave cat!!

Cheers!

Planting

Is this winter still? Its so beautiful during the day that its terribly tempting to start all the spring planting now! But I have been here long enough to know we still have some miserable weather ahead of us and a few frosts yet.

I did a little… I planted a tray of cos lettuce seeds and a tray of marigold seeds. They can live in the hothouse and hopefully germinate.

Along the back fence of the duck yard I put in sweet pea seeds…

Then along another fence a few snow pea seeds

I found a large bag of snow peas!! I’ll have to think of a few areas to put them in and then hope to offload them via my roadside stall!

I dragged Pip out today! He has been so lazy lately. Was funny at his dinner time tonight – hoovered up all his dinner in one sitting (not usual) so I gave him second and third helpings ALL which went straight down the hatch, so I topped it off with some of his biscuits. Clearly the fresh air and sunshine did him good.
(Just hoping he doesn’t do the cat-thing and spew it all up somewhere for me to step in)

I got back into more weeding – its not hard to dig into, but the soil is gluggy so its slow going.

Weeds gone in that area so I dumped a whole lot of seaweed grass on top to slow their return

I also had enough to cover one of the future potato plots.
Time to get the trailer back to the beach to refill!

Hope your day was lovely too!

Cheers!

Duck Yard Plans

First day of the last month of winter! Yay! And it certainly wasn’t an indoor day!

because I suck at finishing any jobs I start… I cheerfully abandoned the remaining weeding in the herb garden and turned my attention to the duck yard.
The weeds have been kept significantly back with the leftover seaweed on top, but there were still a few barrow loads worth of weeds to dig up.

The chooks were thrilled someone was digging up worms especially for them!

There was a constant pack of little stickybeaks diving in grabbing worms as I dug out weeds

Docks. The bane of my life in the garden and probably why I am feeling more muscles than I should right now!

You can dig down so far and get a really good grip but they still won’t budge.

One of the few that I didn’t mostly break off

There is still a bit of weeding left to go, but by this time I had had enough for one day. I staked some areas to estimate where I was planting things this season.

I plan to line the wider pathways with marigolds, and there is space by the entrance to put in some zucchini. Not sure about the pumkins yet.

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt within the next week to get my marigold seeds and see if I can get some started now.
I am enjoying the planning process, especially knowing that spring is so close now!
Hope your day was great!

Cheers

The start of the cherry-plums!