Month: January 2021

Hi!
Wow… the wind kept up howling all last night and only calmed down a bit this evening.
Into the bargain it totally poured all day.
Eventually I got off my lazy bottom and went outside, got the ladder and cleared the gutters that were kinda overflowing.
Our chooks are daft… I went down to lock them up and they were all out still partying in the rain! They looked like they had been swimming! (and yes, they do have several places to go to get out of the wind and rain.)
We lost a couple of branches from the pear tree – laden with pears. Sob.

So much for summer!!

Not sure if I shared the cut of the cedar and saffron soap, so there it is above, just in case

We had a workshop last weekend…

Some of the samples of the groups soaps (Plus my demo soap)

Its fun working with people and seeing what ideas they come up with

Last week was a bit humid (weird for here) so some of the soaps we had to leave a bit longer before unmoulding

The sheep and cow soaps are cute tho!

I bought a slab mould and got totally over excited and ambitious to make something in it.

Oopsie… the coloured mixtures thickened up too quickly and they didn’t blend how I imagined. I used cardboard tubes (ok – loo rolls) to pour the coloured bits in. then flooded the rest with a plain white batch.
Was a bit of ‘fun’ removing the tubes as the coloured soap mix wanted to come back up too!

The bottom.

Anyway, it all came out of the mould nicely and turned out a bit better than what I assumed it would.
I had to do the long cuts with a knife…I didn’t muff it too much but reckon I should get or make myself a bigger capacity wire cutter as its so much easier and more precise.
My knife cuts just usually look like I was drunk.

Yet to be tidied up, but not a bad end result.
I am going to experiment with one of the top ones and scrape back the bulby messy top bit and see if that looks better.

Left as it is, they look like they have a weird growth 🙂

The leftover coloured mixture I just scraped into my dragonfly moulds

I’ve been watching a fair bit of soaping stuff on youtube.
Maybe I’ll try something else tomorrow!

Yesterday I made up a batch of the Gardeners hand scrub, Eucalyptus and beach sand … really popular that one. If I was smart and dedicated I’d make a whole lot more of it…. hmmmm

Hope you’ve got a great weekend planned!
Cheers!

Hello!
Wow… its been blowing a relentless gale all day!! Now at midnight and it hasn’t let up in the slightest!
The photo above doesn’t really show the trees swaying!

First up, sad news on the chook front. We lost Dora, one of the three cheeky Isa Browns 🙁 Tuesday was a very sad day.
She suddenly got unwell… we thought maybe egg bound so did all the ‘things’ like the warm epsom salts bath and some calcium tablets.
She did get some special food which she ate well (banana cake and raspberries and some fresh greens) But the next day she hadn’t laid an egg and was worse.
In the end we (gulp) took her to the vet. (on a public holiday – double gulp)
Ok.. not ‘we’. Jeff took her to the vet. I was a mess and didn’t want to look completely pathetic and unable to hold a grown up conversation with the vet, so Jeff went.

Poor Dora had a really high temperature. No egg but it was possible an egg broke inside and scratched her reproductive tubes and got an infection. Sadly the best choice was to have her put down poor little feather-butt.
So Jeff got home and we had a little chook funeral.

Sigh. I don’t like those days.

The title, while lamely amusing, is a bit misleading.
We milled nothing, but our Tree Guy, Warrick retuned to get into the big tree and start getting timber for his kids cubby house.

I really enjoy watching the process…

Its really lovely timber… smells amazing and the grain is gorgeous

It will be great to make some stuff out of it eventually ourselves

The wind made it a bit (big bit) annoying for Warrick with the sawdust flying up and swirling about.

There will be some interesting leftovers here for us to have a play with too

It was a pretty full trailer by the time it was all loaded and a pretty long day for Warrick. Still… he lives about an hour away, so best get as much as possible now. Apparently work has picked up again so the window of opportunity was a bit narrow.

I didn’t do much outside today… apart from popping down to act as audience at the milling site…

Corn blown hither and thither

I did pick some veggies for dinner and gave some to Warrick to take home as well.
Looking forward to making a new batch of pickled beetroot!!

I think tomorrow is meant to be raining. Lets hope the wind subsides for a while
Its totally wild out there.
Hoping the neighbours trees hold on and don’t squash the house tonight!

Have a lovely day
Cheers!

I think I am officially driven crazy by chooks and blackbirds that just want to vigorously dig everything up.

I paid attention to my two main tomato plots the other day by pruning and retying, plus mulching THEN patchwork quilting them with bird wire

I have since worked out the main culprit for the craters I kept finding was Flea.
Watched her nonchalantly hop her way over the fence into the veggie patch

The bigger of the two tomato patches had outgrown its netting.. so did the same in there

So… uncovered, pruned and mulched

Then did the wire thing.
Took so long!! Hopefully the tomatoes will thrive now they are not being dug up… plus the mulch will help

So… here is the pesky little Flea…

I finally caught her escaping. She had been a bit canny about it up until the other day.
I suspected this was her port of exit…

Fluffy butt

Aaaaand down…

Much as I find her cute following me about like a dog and wanting to come inside… she is so rough on the gardens.
So… time for Lisa and Jeff to do their usual Dodgy Brothers patch job

Not long after the wire went up, I caught Flea on the wood pile indignantly Bok Bok Bokking away haha – Thwarted!!!

We ran out of wire, so I grabbed some old shade cloth to finish the job

Now I can start working on cleaning up the mess on our side of the yard.

The other day when the tree guys were here doing their thing, I had locked up the girls in their coop and duck yard (Had visions of Flea and Flossie trying to get up the trees with the guys)
They were pretty annoyed.
This girl slipped past me when I went in there… and unlike Flea & co who just come running to us and let us pick them up, these chooks are panic-stupid.

After she failed to be herded back into the gate, I just left her to her own devices and was quite amused to see her little Mission Impossible act
Breaking back INTO the coop!!!

And yes… I did hum the theme song the whole time…

Strutting along then.. Bombs Away!

Chooks!! They make a bit of extra work, and make you swear at times (when I saw the crater in my once-celery plot)(for example)

But they are amusing and the eggs are fabulous!

Hope you are having a splendid weekend!
Cheers!

Well… I had a great nights sleep and woke up a lot less inflamed looking and no real itch!!

Such a relief!!
Eventually we got back down to the paddock to start the clean up – just whatever we could do at this point.
It looks a bit of a mess by the fence with the stumps…
But I have high hopes of tidying it up and creating some steps to nowhere…

See what I mean? The steps have already been partly started
Below is a snap of the yard from halfway up my stairs to nowhere…

And a low flying birds eye view of all the remaining timber..

The chooks are loving it! Like a brand new playground for them!

Jeff took down the chainsaw and axe and started clearing up the remaining smaller pieces in the neighbours paddock.

I helped move stuff about and marked the sizes on the logs.
Drove the car around and loaded up some of the either stackable or bonfire wood and took it home (Easier than wheelbarrow haha)

Jeff did a fabulous job!
A lot got split as well so I will go back into the paddock tomorrow if the weather is ok and load up whatever is now stackable.

Not a bad afternoons work…

Meanwhile… in the garden…

A small garden project I’ve been wanting to put in…
This iron gate or fence piece came from Ruby’s garden and I wanted to use it to grow something on. The poor apple cucumbers – been in their pots forever. Not sure if they will grow or not but…
They’ve got something to climb on if they make it.
Around the edge I’ve put celery seedlings

First cucumbers of the season!!!
What beauties and we’ve been eating them the last couple of nights in the salad… ohhhh sooo good!

I picked a large bowl of snow peas but split them into two packs and gave them to the tree guys

I have also started thinning the carrots – finding lots of nice sweet young ones… also greatly enjoying grated up into the salad!!

We can have new potatoes nightly too… so life is pretty good!

Hope you are all doing well!
Cheers!

At last!!
The final trees have come down (sob)
Really sad to see these behemoths go but also relieved as its done and things are safer now

As usual… it was an amazing process to watch

Nice of the farmer not to mind us using his paddock and wrecking his/our fence

The colour and grain is wonderful.. as is the smell!

Happily this time the tree guy has a big chipper, so instead of spending an eon on the cleaning up process, we were able to pay extra for them to just throw it in the hungry machine and spit the mulch back over to us.
Much better as I didn’t want a long clean up process when its someone elses property

I can now mulch everything in sight…

(Yes, I will need to let it sit a while before it goes on gardens but on the paths it will be great)

And down comes the biggest tree! She made a massive thump – really gets into the heart of you!
On a happier note, in her next life she will be a cubby house for kids as that is the one the tree-guy wants to mill for himself.

So now we have to sort out the milling and who wants what as well as cut the rest into firewood.
Not to mention fix the fence!!

I have more photos, but not processed yet… also want to get up on the stumps to take an overall shot.

I’ve been out of action a bit.
Somehow I got some allergy which manifested as a full body rash.
And itchy. Super itchy…
Here is my very non-sexy-leg as an example:

Have tried to pinpoint the culprit so I know to set it on fire and never go near it or eat it again… but I truly am clueless.
As well as the antihistamines and creams, the doc put me on steroids for a couple of days to calm my immune system down.

You know…I’ve done survival training at Jervis Bay in winter – one of those nights stands out as my most uncomfortable and miserable night ever.
Now it has been shuffled back to second place after last night!
It was insane! Imagine wearing a full body jumpsuit made of that itchy wool right against your skin. Like mini pins and needles and itchy. (Did I mention itchy??)

I managed to sleep maybe one hour, got up at 7am to gobble down the drugs, nearly passed out before I could so went back to lie down until I was able to get the pills and a banana to have something in my stomach… eventually I was able to sleep properly. Jeff woke me at 3pm, so I didn’t get much out of the day.

I am still sitting here past midnight as I am not keen to go back to bed to revisit that whole thing.

Hopefully by tomorrow I will look less like I have the measles!!!

On a brighter note… I am getting some tomatoes. I had some on toast with basil and my garlic salt and it was very much the days highlight!

Hope everyone is well and less itchy than me!
Cheers,

Hello there! How are you all doing in this upside down world these day?
I hope you are all keeping safe and happy.

Its well past midnight and I have just finished making another 19 jars of jam. (the above was from the other day)
We’ve still been getting oodles of plums, although I have managed to give away a couple of buckets worth so that takes the pressure off

I cut/tore the fruit leather into strips and dusted with icing sugar… just to ward of the stickiness.

Raspberries are still steadily coming along. Jeff did a lot of weeding in there today!

We are able to grab something fresh from the garden daily… which is fun.
I love having lots of lettuce to pick as needed.
I think soon we’ll get our first cucumber.
We have had a couple of small tomatoes… they didn’t get photographed but they certainly got eaten! Taste amazing!

A lady came around to collect a bunch of tomato seedlings I couldn’t use… she’s a bit newer to gardening and was talking about her daughters potato patch.
She didn’t know you could bandicoot potatoes, so I showed her what I do.
Nice to know you can start eating your spuds earlier than the official harvest day (And yes,… she got heaps of plums too!!)

These potatoes are already eaten!!

Here is the wasabi soap from the other day, cut.

I also made soap today… the ever popular cedar and saffron, which I had totally run out of again!! (Must make a point of really stocking up on that!)
It was my reward for doing a few hours of housework.

Anyway… its pretty late now, so better get to bed!
I’ll leave you with a photo of Baby Pip, when he was all ears and feet!
12 years ago!!! Hard to believe!

Cheers!

Hello!
How is your 2021 progressing so far?
Things are just rolling along here, lots of things to do in the kitchen. Like cook a million plums

I have de-pipped and moolied them and made some into plum/raspberry jam (and I tried that this morning and was really happy about it!)
I also made some plum/raspberry fruit leather… although I popped it back into the dehydrator as it was a bit sticky still. I did put a little sugar into it… and the taste is good… a bit sour and sweet at the same time!

Also made some straight raspberry jam, which has also been taste tested 🙂

I picked a heap of basil.. hopefully the trimming will make the plants bush out and produce a lot more leaves.
I wanted to make pesto of course… baked the garlic.. then discovered I had forgotten I needed parmesan cheese.
Couldn’t dash into town because the car went doo-lally on us the other day and it was taken into the mechanics.
There was only one mechanic in the district open.. apparently everyone else takes extended holidays at this time of year!
It was ready today but they were so flat out there was no-one available to drive it out to us.
Being a one car family… I had to walk into town to get it.

The walk down the side of the highway isn’t great, but the walk through town, stickybeaking at peoples front yards and gardens was nice!!
Anyway, got the car, got the cheese, back home to some cooking

Looking forward to having this in a meal! (I like making chicken, pesto, pasta)
Maybe even with a side salad??

I have started dehydrating some strawberries.
Oh they are so good like that. I am trying not to eat them though.
They make a wonderful addition to trail mix or in home made muesli bars

I did get into the garden yesterday… to sort out this poor tomato patch.
There were 6 tomatoes planted… but my compost produced a ton more!
I literally had to weed out tomatoes!
I put a post on the local noticeboard for anyone to come get the plants but.. surprisingly no takers…
Will have to try again and do the word FREE bigger 🙂

Hopefully they now flourish.

I squeezed in making a loaf of Wasabi Fragranced soap.
I think there is a local market in February… so if I want more stuff cured in time I need to make a couple more batches. Just hard to fit it into the kitchen schedule right now.
There is only so much washing up one wants to do…

There’s my handsome blue-eyed boy!!
Currently curled up on my lap.
He is being a bit of a snot-head at night at the moment.
He knows when I am fixing his food and about to put him into the laundry for the night and he hides under the couch… its a really awkward spot to get to. I have to lie down on the floor behind the couch and try to reach him… usually means grabbing an extremity and carefully trying to drag him out without hurting him until I can get a better hold.
He goes like a limp tea bag and is extremely unhelpful about the whole situation – apart from purring his head off!
Last night I shut him in the bathroom while I sorted his food and bed out so I didn’t have to go through the whole ordeal!!
Pest! (Lucky I love him)

Ok… thats all from my end of the world
Hope you are all doing fine and keeping healthy!
Cheers

(The ‘look’ I get when I’ve taken too many photos)

Hello.
Here we are, day three of 2021
Its steadily raining outside at the moment. I am sure the garden is enjoying that.

There is Jeff cavorting about on top of the water tanks, picking plums!
Some birds have started getting into them, so we did another good lot of picking today.

Not a bad haul.
They don’t need to be red to be ready either. The skin and pip can be a bit sour but the rest are sweet and juicy
I see Jam in our future!!

We also got in and picked the raspberries… it was threatening to rain earlier so we did that first

And another handful of strawberries

The new tomato patch has perked up a bit. Although I’ve given up on the lateral… pretty sure the blackbirds have been the ones that dug the poor thing back up again.
So annoying having to net everything!!
I need the whole garden netted, not just plot by plot!!

Pretty sure it wasn’t Flea… who is keeping her escape route a well kept secret!!!

We put her back on her side while we were picking plums but she snuck back when we weren’t looking.
She sinks to the ground when you get close in preparation for being picked up and relocated haha

Overall we pretty much let her do as she pleases because we have no disciplinary skills!!
One day I will hide down there and watch to see how she is getting out!!

In other garden news… the butternut pumpkins are trying to produce flowers.

The zucchinis have lots of flowers… and some hopeful starts to some actual fruit

I never bother trying to hand pollinate… I just let nature take its course…eventually, she does 🙂

I gave the corn another feeding of ‘gogo juice’
We really need more warm weather though.

When I sort out some netting for this patch I’ll also put a heap of mulch on it… will add that to my ‘To Do’ list. I am sure I’ve talked about this before… All talk no action!!

Lovely little beetroots!
I re-covered these today as well as giving them a feeding too.
I suspect the birds have been digging in there too. Not badly.. just enough to be annoying.

The pear tree is laden with fruit!! Fingers crossed they hang on and ripen!

Finally got in and snipped the heads off the chives so I can collect the seed!

The day lilies are looking gorgeous! I really love their colour!

We also pulled out a ton of weeds from the side garden but will follow up on that with photos when we’ve made more progress.
I think we need to pull out most of it and start again. Its a bit crazy.

Anyways, thats about it from Tasmania for today!
Tonight I am all rugged up as its a lot cooler than what I prefer summer to be!!
I was too lazy to start a fire though!
Pip is tucked up under my windcheater making little kitty snoring sounds… he clearly thinks its too cold too!

Hope everyone is doing well
Cheers!

(Bee’s and Borage!)

Happy New Year to you all.
Lets hope 2021 will be a little less challenging than 2020!!
I don’t have any mad goals or plans… we’ll just roll along and go with the flow!

I am still hugely optimistic about a November trip to Japan with a few ladies… but… we shall just see what the year brings.

The other day I actually went and relocated a few tomato plants. Cleared out the garlic patch and topped it with some nice compost.
All the tomatoes look a bit sad but I am sure they will bounce back

Its a bit of an overcast day to start the new year…
I’ve uncharacteristically started 2021 by folding and putting away a lot of laundry.
Its going to take me a week to recover…

I’ve also done a bit of cooking.
There is a banana/raspberry loaf in the oven… and its smelling amazing.
Still a few minutes left before its ready.
I also made stage one of some strawberry ice cream. The mixture is chilling in the fridge…
Should go do stage two soon so I can get that finished off!

Then I guess I should go find some potatoes for dinner??
(These ones we ate the other day. Love being able to just go and get them as needed again)

Still a bit of a wait before the tomatoes are ready… agony!

Yesterday we picked some cherry plums! We’ve been grazing a bit on them. Happily this season we are getting some before the birds.
We also picked a box of them for Sharon and family who came around with a bigger ladder!!

I’ve cooked some, but will have to go get some lemons from Margie so I can make some jam!

Summer… its a really lovely season!!
Cheers!!