Month: December 2019

Hello! Another proper summers day – needed sunscreen and everything!
We did a lot of cleaning up today. Jeff mowed and whippersnipped.
Pip snoopervised

I’ll see if someone wants to collect some of these rounds of timber. We just need to get rid of the stuff we can’t use.
No burning for a good long while (I’d say we are under fire bans now and for good reason)
(As an aside I just read that an area in Victoria half the size of Belgium, is being evacuated because of extreme fire risk!!)

I didn’t get a proper ‘before’ photo with all the bits of wood and branches etc… but its much better now. Cleared and mowed.

We also hauled all the timber away from the front where the most recent tree fell.

While Jeff was mowing, I was running about moving stuff. Its a bit of a process moving the raspberry netting to work under AND keep chooks out.

For whatever reason, we’ve had too many piles of branches that have been stripped, ready to cut into fireplace lengths… so I moved and consolidated areas.

Raked up bits so Jeff could mow and tidy up more easily.
(But yes, still a long way to go.)

I’d planned for a while to get new firewood storage areas happening. Will need some more steel droppers to do the sides, but this is a vast improvement. Will be able to start stacking as soon as the next lot of trees come down.

Even the veggie patch got a good trim!

Well – its late and I need to go wash some dirt off!
Hope you’ve had a lovely weekend!
Cheers!

(Yay – harvested an onion to put into the zucchini slice tonight!)

Ew. Hobbit Feet.

Anyway… another super warm gorgeous SUMMER’S day.
The wind kicked up a bit so I went around and hand watered today.

I dug up the self seeded potatoes that are growing in a pumpkin patch. Really nice size too!

I dragged Jeff from his comfy chair to help me pick snow peas and raspberries. They both take so long so the extra set of hands and eyes was useful!

Earlier I turned my friends raspberries into jam. Had about 4lb’s of fruit

I also got all nostalgic about my childhood Sunday Roast Dinners and went out and picked some of that mint and made up some mint sauce.

I even have the old herb cutter from the second drawer from the family home. (I spotted it in the garage sale that my parents had when they moved and I snaffled it!!)

Sorry – I am not so great at food photos. And meat stuff before its cooked maybe not so appetising 😀
However – dinner tonight was fabulous. (If I do say so myself.)
I got some chicken thigh fillets and dolloped them with the pesto I made yesterday, then wrapped them up in bacon and baked.

On the side was steamed new potatoes (butter and my garlic salt) and a big fresh salad!
Oh – loving the first taste of new potatoes again! Sigh. Bliss.

And – I squeezed in making a batch of soap too 🙂 (Of course)

Hope you’ve had a great day too!
Cheers

G’day… 🙂
First of all, a quick soap update! Snap of the pattern I did dropping the colours in. I really like it but my hands itch to get in and do some manual swirling haha

Thats a kilo and a half of raspberries!
I went to my friends place yesterday and wow – their berry patch is HUGE.
What is pictured above is scarcely a third of what was picked!
Plan to turn it into Jam… maybe tomorrow?

Today I picked the first of the baby carrots. My method of thinning – wait until they are edible 🙂
I also went bandicooting for some new potatoes! Can’t wait to steam them up!

Christmas afternoon I did some mulching. And transplanted some new lettuce seedlings.

That self seeded tomato is getting so big and sprawly – oh well. I don’t need that space so it can do what it likes for now! (See why we didn’t have kids? No disciplinary skills)

The feverfew is also running riot. But a pretty riot.

The corn… sigh. Its hanging in there but all over the place when it comes to size/development. Debating on putting in another small patch as a backup.

I found this tomato plant in the carrot patch so I transplanted it. Now it looks sad! Reckon it will perk up soon.

This tomato patch now has lots of silverbeet and self seeded tomatoes.
Lots more transplanting to do at some point soon.

This was the sad looking lateral that I popped in – its really come along well considering how pathetic it looked back at the start!

I want to pull up all the onion and leek.
I think they are all pretty ready. Plus I need that plot!

Silverbeet!! Wow. Seems like everything that the birds pruned, sprung back brilliantly!

These tomatoes have done well too… they were barely an inch high when planted out!

Yay – zucchini

Potato patch

Rhubarb

Carrots and beetroot

Meanwhile, back in the hothouse – lots more self seeded tomatoes trying to take over the basil patch

Growing well – but no colour 🙁
Happily found a number of Russian Black tomatoes started

The cucumber seem like they are taking forever to get going this season!

Yellow capsicum babies

Lots of decent sized passionfruit – courtesy of Tentacular

I did a bit of weeding and watering today. Wind was too strong to put the sprinklers on. The water just got blown away!!

Foraging for sweet treats –

I raided the basil patch again and made up another batch of pesto!!

Hope you are all having a nice relaxing time between Christmas and New Year!
Cheers!

Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone had a wonderful day, whatever you did!

The above bowl of raspberries and strawberries was my contribution to Christmas dinner over with Ruby and Margie. Pretty funny – I didn’t actually know I was expected over there until last minute.
I must have missed the conversation that included those plans!

We had a lovely dinner. Roasted turkey roll and a million baked veggies. Yum.
Jeff has been on nightshift up at the hospital, so we saved him a plate!
After I rolled home I did some gardening and made some soap.
(As one does on Christmas Day)

So many snow peas! They are going mad right now!

I pulled up the last of the purple garlic too.

Check out the fabulous present I got from my sister Rosemary:

Soap dishes! Prototypes for me to test out and display my soap on!
Rosemary had taken up ceramics recently and I love the things she is making! I think they are beautiful!!

One of my friends little girls baked us these adorable snowmen biscuits to say thanks for all the fresh food!!
We barter stuff during the year and they also buy a lot of my excess tomatoes.
These tasted so good and the little girls were so adorable – a bit shy handing them over but really pleased as I was pretty excited to be given home baked goods!!

Nothing much planned for tomorrow.
I have a ton of raspberries picked at another friends place to do something with and I am eyeing off the basil that has grown back well… More pesto!

Enjoy your holiday time!
Cheers

Hello!
We had an excellent overnight away!
We didn’t leave too early – but it was a really enjoyable drive.
Stopped in Scottsdale where I spotted this wonderful blanket of pink, flowing over a fence!
Jeff got a coffee and we got directions to a park so we could sit and have a sandwich before seeking our fortunes in sapphires.

We missed the turnoff completely – got to Weldborough and had to backtrack. When we saw the road we realised why we missed it. The road sign (tiny) was only visible (just) if you were heading the opposite way!
I suppose everyone else in the civilised world has a GPS in their car haha.

Anyway, we found the Weld River and got in and started sifting and panning. I immediately found a couple of sapphire chips in my pan, so that bolstered our enthusiasm!

After a while we decided to go further up stream to try our luck there. We just walked in the water – it was lovely and warm.
A few fish – good sized trout I suspect – were seen. One came up to Jeff so close he was able to grab its tail!!

It was peaceful and beautiful in the river.
Really enjoyed our afternoon!

So… what did we find?

How pretty are these?

Here is some scale – which will only be useful to those of you familiar with our coinage haha

So – later in the afternoon we grabbed our gear and walked back to the car – changed into dry clothes on the side of the road and drove back to the pub in Weldborough for dinner.

Such a great little spot!
I don’t usually post food photos – usually because I’ve guffed most of it down before I think of a snap – but this is what we indulged in post fossicking…

Steak sandwich for me and a Moroccan chicken curry for Jeff!

Turns out the pub lets people camp for free behind the establishment! Even a block of loo’s and a shower available!! Hows that?
Much better than driving back out in the bush somewhere.
In true Millar Style… it started to rain just as we were setting up!

Its a bit of a squash in our hiking tent… well, I don’t find it too bad but Jeff has more trouble. What kills me is that I can’t seem to stay comfortable on the mattresses for more than 20 minutes before legs ache and I have to turn! Is this an age thing?? haha
Looking forward to crawling into a comfy bed tonight thats for sure!

The next morning was cold-ish. We decided not to spend the day in the water getting cold but scoped out another path to where we might be able to return to next time.
The track was pretty narrow but had a few parking/camping possibilities.

The foxglove was out everywhere. Very pretty but a real problem here as its an invasive weed.

We figured as well if we got up early enough we could certainly do a day trip, come out and sift/pan and return the same evening. Its about 3.5 hours drive each way.

We enjoyed a slow drive back, stopped at a couple of places and managed to return home to a pleased Pip and in time to do some last second supermarket shopping before tomorrow!

Hope you’ve all got a lovely day planned!
I think I shall gather strawberries and raspberries tomorrow!

Cheers

Pretty good spot for a market hey?
The weather played nice but I was daft enough to forget sunscreen and a hat!!! Yup. A touch sunburnt!
Jeff turned up with my hat later in the morning (25 Bonus Husband Points right there)

Plenty of stalls out… customers would come and go in waves – sometimes it would look almost empty, then there would be a rush of people walking by.
I sold pretty much equivalent to the other markets which was great. Just took a lot longer. I was there from 7am and packed up at 1pm. So double the amount of time.
I’d def. go again, but would wait until there was some event like mothers day/valentines day etc. Plus I need to replenish my soap stock! (yay)

Anyway – tomorrow. We have plans to go away overnight to a location a bit further east of us to hunt for sapphires! We plan to return Christmas Eve – Jeff has to work Christmas Day night and boxing day night… so this should be a nice getaway… if somewhat nerdy!

So – better get myself into bed as we are up early – again. (Sigh… don’t want this to be habit forming!)

Chat when we return!
Cheers!

So – the winds are back.
I was packing soap into some containers and looked out the window & saw this gum tree fall – happily into our front garden AND missing the trailer.
More firewood… sigh.

This was fun! More cedar and saffron fragranced soap – I experimented with dropping the coloured mix into the base mix rather than mixing and blending like I usually do! I like the effect. I think if the base mix was a little thinner then the colour would have dropped in further.

This one I really like – White Ginger and Amber!!
Such a lovely fragrance. I like the natural subtle colour too. There was some natural clay (supposedly yellow?) on sale. So I got some just to see. It suits the fragrance really well.
Pity you cant have a sniff!!

I made some more applejack peel soap – smells so scrumptious!

I found some chocolate moulds at the op shop for a huge 50 cents! These little dinosaurs are so cute. Once they cure a bit I will embed them in the top of a bigger bar of soap. Just for fun!

I didn’t unmould the lavender/peppermint one today. Just seemed a bit soft. But I love the smell… keep having a sniff when I walk by just to make sure I love it as much as I did ten minutes prior.

Anyway, I have a stupid early start tomorrow so best get a wriggle on.
First time with the soaps at the foreshore market so will be interesting to see how they go!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers

(First zucchini and a swag of snow peas!)

Hello!!
I’ve really done nothing remotely bloggable lately!
Mostly just watering, random weeding, river hiking, cooking, washing up and soap making.
We’ve been enjoying summer weather – although the wind returned and right now its raining a lot. But not cold.
Mainland Australia is now writhing in a massive heatwave – many places in the mid 40’s (try 113F)
Fires are still raging 🙁

As you can see above – I baked some of those choc-chip bikkies.
I’ve been really good and not gutsing them – but I am enjoying eating them along with fresh raspberries! Really nice combo!

Tomorrow I need to get my stuff ready – weather still looking hopeful to have that market down by the beach on Sunday.
I made another two batches of soap today. One cedar and saffron and tried a new method of mixing the colours in – later tomorrow after cutting the loaf will show if that worked or not.
Also experimented with mixing lavender with peppermint. 🙂

Hope everyones Christmas preparations are on track and you are enjoying the moment and not stressing too much!

Cheers!

Hi there!
I eventually got off my backside last night and put the cat to bed 🙂 I always feel mean moving him!

So… latest garden news?
I started on this mess –

And so far its gone from big mess to smaller mess.

It didn’t progress any further today.
I got up at 7am and let the chooks out… then because it looked so nice outside, I stayed up and was weeding the corn patch by about 8am.
Right now my parents are choking and spluttering in disbelief.
Honest and for true 🙂
(Yah… not known as an early morning person in my family)

One side of the herb spiral is really going great! Going to have to work on the other side sometimes soon!

Nearly time for chamomile tea!!

Picking plenty of rocket, basil and lettuce – we are having lovely big salads most nights.

The basil has sprung back quickly since I made the pesto. I reckon I’ll get another batch out of them soon!

The one remaining cabbage in the hothouse that I hadn’t gotten around to pulling out and have basically ignored… seems to be looking rather healthy!
I wonder if it will heart up or go to seed? I think the latter but just waiting and seeing what will happen!

I hung the garlic in the shed today. I saw an idea on facebook about using a dish draining rack to hang garlic. I found this wire rack at an op-shop today for a dollar!! I’ve managed to fit it all in – a bit crowded but I reckon they’ll be ok!

My lazy day soaps… a batch of eucalyptus soap

And some Frangipani – although the colours are very unnatural!! 🙂
More like candy

Our power was out all day today. Such a pest. A power pole was being replaced.
So, no phone, no internet, no water, no cooking…
No soapmaking (wah wah wah)
I did get to and make up a couple of shelves with some planks found in the shed and some book boxes. Its been a ‘gunna’ job for ages and glad I have gotten around to it.
Much more efficient storing it while its curing and as a bonus they look rather pretty!

Once the power came back on I did a lot of watering. Naturally tonight its raining.
I think the rain is hardwired into our bore.
I take water from the bore and as a result… the heavens open!!
No complicated rain dances necessary!!

Have a great day all!
Cheers!

Hello!
Welcome to a new week!
Yesterday was rather nice. Gentle steady rain and no wind.
My aim of ‘doing nothing’ was mostly achieved… apart from the 6km river hike and the two batches of soap… but thats all fun so its not like chores or anything!
When I got back from the hike I was a bit soggy so went out and picked snow peas and raspberries in the rain before drying off properly.

And I am being lazy now – I don’t want to get up and get the camera to download photos. Plus Pip is curled up sleeping on my lap in a blanket so I don’t want to disturb His Majesty 🙂

Today I was weeding the new garden area to try to get that last part finished and ready for the last bed to be made and put into place.
Then Jeff and I went for a kayak up the river for a couple of hours or so. My arms are telling me about it right now but it was lovely out there.
We battled the wind a bit going up but was easier coming back with the tide in our favour.

I cut the new soap and unmoulded the other batch – will sort some snaps tomorrow so I can share that with you.
I am hoping for a nice day on Sunday – if so, I’ll put up a stall.

Have a great day everyone!
Cheers

(PS Raspberries were great mmmmm)