Lisa – Page 149 – Head in the Clouds

Saturday

Jeff’s slightly ‘fixed’ smile after photo #8 as niece was helpfully pulling faces, sticking her finger up her nose and dribbling cucumber – best I could do with what I had.

This morning we bid a fond farewell to Emma as we put her on a plane to go home. Its a lot quieter here tonight that’s for sure!! Apparently she is returning next holidays – not sure she has cleared that with her mum as yet!!

We managed to do a lot of bits and pieces today. The weather was again super-gorgeous, so I shoved a load of washing on

My awesome Canadian cousin (who lives in the US) sent me this t-shirt!!

We ate lunch on the back veranda and soaked up what vitamin D we could…

Everything is better eaten outside – especially if it has home made tomato relish on it!

Mana and I collected the rest of the silverbeet seeds while we were sitting out there.

I picked a few things from the garden/hothouse

Still this and that coming out of the hothouse

And treated myself to a bunch of spikey dahlias.

Mana and Jeff took the bird netting off the strawberries and dug up all the weeds – it looks amazing now

Strawberry patch – long overdue for a clean up

I cleaned up the kitchen (surfaces in our place invite random ‘stuff’ to be plonked on top of them)

And prepared part of dinner –

Grating zucchini – collecting some of the seeds from that big one. It was the best plant, so makes sense to collect those seeds.

Who keeps and reuses cereal packets?? I find them easy to recycle. The boxes are great for craft (or backing for signs at markets) and the bags are tough as nails – I bake our bread, so I keep my bread in cereal bags! I also store meat scraps/cooked bones etc in them in the freezer until either we take our rubbish to the tip (no collection here) or sometimes pop them in Ruby’s bin if I am really pushed for freezer space.

Stupidly I only recently discovered how fabulous these are to re use!!

Mana came inside and put on another batch of apples to dry

The apple trees haven’t run out of fruit yet!

Thought I better restock up on wood. So much better to do that job in this weather than wait until its cold, miserable and raining sideways!!

I like to have two or three loads at the back door

Jeff build us a couple of wood storage boxes for the back door out of pallets. It’s pretty easy around here to get hold of pallets to make various things. And the ones that don’t break apart nicely make beautiful kindling.

We store our main supply undercover next to the hothouse. We also use pallets to raise them off the ground, which saves a lot of muck & bugs when you get to the bottom layers!

We also have a foreman for this job

Dinner was a meatloaf (I tend to thaw enough mince to make hamburgers one night, then use the rest of the mix in a loaf tin the next day to make into meatloaf)(Its like leftovers you haven’t cooked yet!) along with home grown vegies and my fav. tomato/zucchini side dish. Easy (and probably healthy)

I finished the day by completing a ‘Cozy Cuff’

Getting in touch with my Knitting Nanna Self

So a bits & pieces kind of day, but definitely productive!

Hope everyone’s weekends have started well!

Cheers

PS re the band aid.

Emma decided yesterday that she needed to take this old broken jar home that she found at Magnet Mine. (Who am I to argue? My souvenir was a three foot long chunk of driftwood!! 😀 )

Since I am a klutz and can injure myself on dangerous objects (like margarine containers)(Sadly not kidding) I shouldn’t have gone near the jar. Instead I picked it up and made quite a mess of my finger

As a friend kindly pointed out, I married a walking first aid kit, so I got sorted out by my personal nurse & got a kiss into the bargain! Awesome huh?

Emma helpfully ran about taking photos of all the blood splatters and made me the fabulous montage below!!

Friday’s Footprints – Rocks at Penguin Beach

Another favourite beach of mine, when I am in a rock collecting mood, is a small hidden rock beach, just on the outskirts of a sweet little coastal town called Penguin.

You really have to know where to go (love local knowledge) to access this one. There is no sign, or parking… you just pull off the road by the railway as best you can.

Without being run over by a train (mind you – they are only infrequent goods trains so you would have to be very unlucky) you cross the tracks and see a big hint as which way to go –

A fifteen second walk through a stand of trees…

Then you get to feel all rugged, hiking down the mini cliff to the beach.

Unlike the gorgeous white sands of Sister’s Beach and other beaches in the area, this beach is covered in amazing rocks.

Mid to low tide is best – more rocks to find

Look closer

There are a stunning variety of coloured rocks on this beach

It is also a beach known for having a lot of sea glass

I know a lady that makes beautiful and creative jewellery out of sea glass. I just like to collect it – one day I will take what I have over to her so she can actually put it to good use. In the meantime it looks pretty in jars on the back veranda.

At low tide you can scramble across these rocks to the next beach, once you run out of rocks to look at on the first one…

Jeff was awesome enough to give me a rock tumbler for my birthday a couple of years back.

The colours and patterns are amazing once polished up

I need to put it on again soon as I have a vast collection of yet-to-be-polished rocks

Anyway, short and sweet tonight. It was a big day out at Magnet Mine again, and got to be up early to deliver niece to the airport! 🙁 Her stay here has gone too fast – we enjoyed her wacky company, chatter and enthusiasm.

Check out my facebook page here It will take all of one minute as I have only made two posts! 😀 (I am sure it will find direction and momentum eventually)

Hope everyone has a super weekend!

Cheers

Origami, Wrapping & Sunsets

Be healthy. Start your day with a nutritious bowl of raspberry ice-cream.

As promised – we had raspberry ice-cream for breakfast. (and Emma followed it up with pizza – well, its not a proper holiday until you have had pizza and ice-cream for breakfast is it?)

And I can happily report that the ice-cream tasted amazing!

Today we got a LOT of rain. And its about time too! The recent grey days have hardly yielded a drop, so the garden must have enjoyed itself!

With the help of my lovely niece Emma and her fancy phone, we created a video to show those who were interested in learning how to fold those origami seed packets, seen in an earlier post.

However… seems there are limits to what I can upload here and my video was about 200 gig oversized! Oopsie.

Damn.

So… I opened a facebook page for “Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt” as the easiest way to share it that I could think of right now (not being the most tech-savvy person I am at the bottom end of the learning curve with this blogging 🙂 )

You can take a peek here . (I’ll figure out what else to do on the facebook page as I go along!) 😀

So…(again) as a preliminary instruction, grab your square piece of paper, turn to the blank side and mark out each third of the paper – for most standard origami papers that means every 5cm

Mark your paper like this (on all 4 sides)

You don’t need to draw each fold like I did in the video. That was just so you could see more clearly where the folds were to go.

Then watch video.

I apologise to those who don’t use facebook. When I have more time and get more savvy, I will work out a different plan of attack!

And if all else fails – stop-motion-photography! (What else am I going to do with those upcoming long winter days huh?)

I also had to finish off and wrap a few presents that we are sending back with Emma for various birthdays that have come and gone. Yes – on one hand its the cheapskates way of moving things about… but on the other hand I know they will get there. I have had a couple of postal hiccoughs recently – one parcel is currently lost between here and Canada – so at least I know this little lot will have a good chance of making it.

A friend of mine makes these amazingly cute little bags and sells them at the market for a crazy $5 each! Makes the perfect ‘wrapping’

I actually suck at wrapping. I am not neat and my only saving grace in the above photo is how pretty the origami paper is that I used!

The Japanese have got wrapping down to a fine art. In fact, there are lots of people in Japan, whose sole job is wrapping presents at department shops! Their presentation is superb, and even when you buy a box of bakery biscuits or cake its wrapped with tender loving care with all the trimmings – here in Oz, you’re lucky if someone shoves it in a bag for you!

We hosted a 16 year old young man for a month – this was some of the beautiful parcels his mother sent us!

And this is how you wrap sweets –

and each sugary treat is individually wrapped in a twist of fine paper

Beats plastic hands down any day!

Well, that’s all from me today! I will leave you with a few sunset photos I took a couple of hours ago – again after the rain, the sky and clouds were beautiful. (So far the across the road farmer hasn’t noticed me using his fencepost as position of choice for my photography!)

Cheers!

Sunny Autumn Days

Autumn has been kicking up some pearlers of days! Its been great doing a little scruffing about in the garden (mind you a concentrated effort is needed)

The salvia has exploded. Its hard to believe I cut this back to the nub every season. I think it comes back a little bigger and better each year. Its alive with bee’s and butterflies.

I thought I killed it. Cut it back then got heavy frosts. Looked really woebegone for ages!

I was pleased to sell all my cucumber at the markets on the weekend but several more are nearly ready for picking again!

I haven’t had a cucumber plant this productive before

Chickens are enjoying their scraps and outings into the main yard – still laying well!

Pip totally thinks he is going to go prancing about on top of the chook coop. (I took him down much to his disgust – I didn’t really have time to go mucking about with ladders to do a Siamese Rescue.)

Its not all work – yesterday evening us girls went down to Fossil Bluff to watch the sun go down, paddle and generally enjoy ourselves

Source Images: DSC_3218.JPG (Av: F22.0; Tv: 1/3 sec.; ISO: 0; FL: 20.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Dusk

Today was another super beautiful day, so we took the kayaks down to the river for a paddle

It was Mana’s first time trying this. She did really well. (Happily she didn’t fall in, even though it was sunny, the water was a tad on the fresh side!)

I got to trot along the path that goes by the river to keep an eye on them and take some photos

They had the river almost to themselves today!

Then it was back to the kitchen to make up a promised batch of raspberry ice-cream!

Emma cooked and sieved the raspberries while Mana and I made up the base vanilla recipe. Once cooled, we mixed them together and chucked it all in the ice cream maker

The taste tests were extremely positive – but it still needs to freeze properly overnight.

Apparently we are having ice-cream for breakfast. 😀

The last plan of the day was somewhat thwarted. As a treat, we were making home made chicken pizza’s plus we were going to introduce Mana to “The Princess Bride”

Imagine how happy I was to finally get the first two pizzas into the oven and exactly 5 minutes later – total power failure!!!

At 6.30pm weekday evening… you could hear the mothers in the district crying I am sure!! Half way through everyone’s dinner time!! It didn’t come back on for two hours!

We decided to try to cook one in the BBQ.

Oh. My. Sainted. Aunt.

Walking back into the shed, seeing smoke pour out of the doors – it looked like we had set the whole place on fire!!!

Source Images: Sad Pizza.jpg (Av: F2.8; Tv: 1/15 sec.; ISO: 1600; FL: 28.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — We are holding the funeral tomorrow

I went from “Not Happy” to “Less Than Happy”

I made an emergency run into Wynyard to get hot chips and bread – reeking of smoke – and put the other two pizza’s on the fire top – they crisped up, but at least they stopped short of cremation.

Dinner by candlelight & torchlight, entertainment by Emma’s string of really bad jokes! Mana thinks we are all mad. 🙂

Cheers everyone

Ruby Tuesday – Garden Update

It’s great to have minions… well… mine aren’t yellow, but they are willing workers, so we managed to get through a couple of garden beds for Ruby today.

Ruby had some visitors, so I didn’t go in to get stories – but we had a lot of fun in the beautiful sunshine.

The second potato patch has sprung a lot of potato plants at the end of the season, as well as a blanket of weeds

A couple of stinging nettles in here made gardening that much more exciting!

We left the potatoes. Even though Ruby wont get a lot off them, there will be something, and food is food!! 🙂

The next task –

The pumpkin/zucchini patch, while totally finished with only weeds growing, yielded a surprising amount of potatoes!! Too funny!

I weeded this quite a few weeks ago and the weeds have stayed away (mostly) due to the good layer of seaweed I dumped on top of it.

I will take Mana down to the beach next week and we will stock up on seaweed and cover each garden as it gets dug to slow down the weeds.

Ruby keeps finding nice sturdy little tomato plants popping up here and there! So it made me laugh to see that she had moved what she could into the hothouse to see if they would last the winter!

I got these ones to put in my hothouse

Ruby’s broccolini are looking great!

Tunnel of broccolini with rogue broad beans at back!

Even better I saw the start of the vegetable already!

These will be on the plate before we know it!

This zucchini got its second wind!

Emma and Mana got up the ladders and tidied up the man ferns

All the dead fronds were brought back to our place. They make excellent kindling.

At Half Time in the gardening, Ruby came out with a little plate of banana passionfruit (with ice cream) for us to try!

I’ll have to take a photo of the fruit for you to see tomorrow if you are not familiar with it

The vine covers a good portion of the back fence and has a lot of flowers right now!

I will be testing a beetroot recipe soon this week, so stay tuned. Its one of those vague old fashioned things that give you a guide and basically wish you good luck with it!

I thought I better test it out before writing it down here!

In other news, there soon will be a serious meeting & afternoon tea with a couple of cousins, friends & Margie with Ruby to pow-wow about her upcoming 100th birthday! (I’ll eventually let Ruby know about this haha)

Its all very well to say you don’t want a fuss, but when you have been around this long and are very well known in the community, along with a massive extended family, I am afraid fuss is what you are going to get. 🙂

I wouldn’t be surprised if around 200 people turned up on the day! Its to be a gathering at Ruby’s church hall, but not much else has been sorted out, and even though we are talking September, it will go fast. I think poor Margie has been having kittens about it! And really – a gathering of that size needs to be organised, so in a week or so we shall turn up with cake, put the kettle on and really get some proper plans in place!

Cheers everyone!

Lazy Day with Photos & Drawing Games

Source Images: DSC_8186.JPG (Av: F2.8; Tv: 1/2 sec.; ISO: 800; FL: 28.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Night shot, Cherry Blossom

Hello,

It was a really lazy, low key day today.

I think everyone (me) was getting over the shock of the 6am start yesterday. I can’t tell you when everyone actually got up or moved out of their pjs into proper clothes… way too embarrassing 🙂

Jeff is on a nightshift, but before he went back to bed today he put the fire on for us and we totally enjoyed the cosiness, since the day was dark, gloomy and cool.

I enjoyed mucking about with photos, trying some different post processing on images, while Emma and Mana abandoned their modern technology to play a drawing game! (Wow huh?)

Pencils & the Samitomato Drawing Game (Original version – it has now been updated)

My very clever and artistic friend, Samantha, developed this great little drawing game. Rather than encouraging competition, it encourages imagination and creativity.

Four rolls of the dice will give the budding artist a set of directions to go ahead and draw. Among the thousands of possibilities, you may end up drawing “A fat grey mouse, making pancakes” a “Determined sky-blue sheep flying a spaceship” or a “Hairy violet spider wearing cowboy boots”

It totally solves that “Mummy – what should I draw nowww?” question!

Emma’s Sleepy, lemon-yellow elephant, drinking coffee

Mana’s prime drawing spot in front of the fire!

You can buy the drawing game via Samantha’s Etsy Shop or check out Sam’s instagram – Samitomato (I am sure I will get instagram soon – when I figure out how to drive it via PC)

Since I can’t even draw convincing stick figures, I stuck to the computer and played about a little with some past photos:

Source Images: DSC_2698.JPG (Av: F22.0; Tv: 1/10 sec.; ISO: 250; FL: 16.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Liffey Falls

Source Images: DSC_2346.JPG (Av: F22.0; Tv: 1/125 sec.; ISO: 0; FL: 16.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Sisters Beach

Source Images: DSC_2326.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.; ISO: 640; FL: 250.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Rocks at Sisters Beach

Source Images: DSC_2343.JPG (Av: F14.0; Tv: 1/800 sec.; ISO: 640; FL: 16.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — More rocks at Sisters Beach

Source Images: DSC_4044.JPG (Av: F14.0; Tv: 1/160 sec.; ISO: 500; FL: 60.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Grasshopper

Source Images: DSC_9355.JPG (Av: F9.0; Tv: 1/320 sec.; ISO: 500; FL: 60.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Don’t know what flower this was. It randomly grew around the side of the house.

Source Images: DSC_9665.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.; ISO: 640; FL: 20.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Rock pool at Rocky Cape NP

Time to hit the hay.

Cheers

Market Day Again

Source Images: DSC_2793.JPG (Av: F14.0; Tv: 1/800 sec.; ISO: 1000; FL: 66.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Sunrise

Oh I could have rolled over and gone straight back to sleep when the alarm went off. I had to seriously guilt myself into crawling out from under the warm doona and get my butt in the car!

The car was pretty much packed the night before and Jeff came with me to get a spot and unload it before returning home to collect the girls.

I got a bit of a weird spot – I got moved from the one I thought I was getting. I really need to remember to call the council and book a spot if I intend on going. (It also means I don’t need to be there quite so early)

Clearly I didn’t get to really working out a decent display as this site was a much different space to the normal ones I occupy!

Weather wise it actually turned out great again! Warm, mostly sunny and most importantly – no wind!

It got to about 18C (64F) today – but its cooled right off tonight. Right now its 6C (42F). We totally have the fire going tonight.

People were in a good mood today and the atmosphere was really friendly. Lots of people stopped to chat & so many people brought their dogs along for a walk – this thrilled the girls no end as they had to meet and pat each one (if their owners said it was ok of course)

Someone had bunnies for sale! They were really cute. Of course Emma totally wanted one. I figured it wasn’t the kind of souvenir that I should send her home with. (My sister would have had a lot to say I am sure! haha)

13006555_1008880469204238_550879662241148302_n — Two happy girls! ( Credit – Mana’s camera – random photographer!)

I did end up selling quite a good lot of stuff today. The tomato relish sold less than usual, but I sold out of the beetroot chutney and the sweet chilli sauce. Emma totally charmed a customer into buying the last sweet chilli sauce bottle in a performance that was actually stage-worthy! 😀

The signs were done by another Japanese friend of mine, Sanae, who is an amazing artist.

The raspberry jam was a really steady seller today! Glad I made a couple of new batches!

I sold a few packs of seeds…

We managed to clear a tray of seedlings… hmmmm… now to keep them alive and unchewed until the next market!

Margie drops in for a chat while Jeff taste tests a delicious plate of crepes made by our friends

I also brought along my new Swear Jar. Sadly I gained no coin for it this time, but I am going to work on that. To be honest I think I may owe it a few dollars already. I got my ‘Swear Jar Sticker Pack’ in the mail last week and Emma tarted up a nice big jar (optimism) to make it look pretty.

Its all part of the Love Your Sister fund raising campaigns for breast cancer research. One of Australia’s fabulous actors, Samuel Johnson, rode his unicycle around Australia to raise funds, awareness and set a new world record for the most kms ridden as his lovely sister, Connie, tragically has terminal breast cancer. He managed to travel 15,955 kilometres over 364 days and raised over 1.5 million dollars!!!

Their new target is 10 million dollars and Sam has quit acting until the goal has been reached. I think he possibly almost gave Connie a heart attack with that announcement! 🙂

I feel a little proud as after a facebook post by Sam that had a few rude words (ok – it was more than a few! lol) and then Connie posting to do the correct sisterly thing and tell him off for his language, I made a comment saying that swear jars should be his new branch of fund raising! This made them laugh a lot – but the next thing I knew – They were off and running with it!

Every bit helps when it comes to cancer research – not many of us are unaffected by it these days.

Although now I have my swear jar in the house I may have to give up playing Soda Crush as I don’t think I can afford that kind of moolah! 😀 😀

I sold another pair of ‘cozy cuffs’ but my stock is rather low as I have been busy over summer with other things. Now that its getting cooler I need to get click-clacking!!

I use these a lot – fabulous to have parts of your hands warm but still have your fingers free – and much easier to knit than ‘fingerless’

These special crocheted cuffs are made by my friend, Nozomi’s mother. They are absolutely gorgeous and waaaaaay beyond my skill level. Every now and again I sell a pair for her.

Sadly no-one bought a photo-card today! 🙁 Never mind! I got a lot of really lovely compliments so my ego was boosted, if not my wallet. 😀

Overall it was worth getting out of bed, as I came home $189.50 richer! So I am pretty pleased with that. Not to mention we all had a great day out.

Of course, no market is complete without dropping in on Ruby for a late lunch/afternoon tea!

13010102_1008712382554380_1240160311_o — Ruby filled us full!

Well – its time for me to be off and make a start on tomorrow mornings sleep in!!

I hope all your weekends have been fabulous!

Cheers

Source Images: DSC_2788.JPG (Av: F9.0; Tv: 1/320 sec.; ISO: 1000; FL: 28.0 mm) DSC_2789.JPG () DSC_2790.JPG (Av: F8.0; Tv: 1/250 sec.) DSC_2791.JPG (Av: F7.1; Tv: 1/200 sec.) DSC_2787.JPG (Av: F8.0; Tv: 1/250 sec.) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Sunrise over Table Cape, Wynyard

Beaches & Market Prep.

It’s lovely to have Emma and Mana staying with us. The bathroom has exploded into ‘girl-space’ as suddenly its bulging at the seams with face and hair care products. Being an extremely low maintenance wife (you’re welcome Jeff) it never sees these things scattered about (well – apart from the times Jeff decides to grow hair, then he gets in touch with his inner girl and hair care products start turning up). And it took me five minutes to work out what that strange sound was!! (Hair dryer)

We have been busy getting this and that ready for Sunday (weather has been looking decidedly iffy) but we took time to go down for a stroll on Wynyard beach so Mana could feel like she really had left home and give Emma and myself a chance to have a bit of fun with our Harry Potter wands & see who could out-jinx who! (I know – nerd city)

I did take some time out from nerd-dom along with trying to gain points for “Aunty of the Year” and take some photos of the evening cloudy sky

Source Images: DSC_2729.JPG (Av: F14.0; Tv: 1/800 sec.; ISO: 1000; FL: 28.0 mm) DSC_2730.JPG () DSC_2731.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.) DSC_2732.JPG (Av: F11.0; Tv: 1/500 sec.) DSC_2728.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Dusk over Table Cape

Source Images: DSC_2754.JPG (Av: F14.0; Tv: 1/800 sec.; ISO: 1000; FL: 28.0 mm) DSC_2755.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.) DSC_2756.JPG (Av: F11.0; Tv: 1/500 sec.) DSC_2757.JPG (Av: F11.0; Tv: 1/500 sec.) DSC_2753.JPG (Av: F13.0; Tv: 1/640 sec.) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Enjoying the clouds dance across the sky

Anyway, there is a market on tomorrow, so I am speed-blogging again so I am not up all night – therefore some chance of actually getting up at the right time to get a good spot. Also trying not to just go “Rah rah, blah blah, here – photos – bye”

Was awesome having a jar-washing-side-kick (Thanx Mana) Such a painful job – I cleared out some old ones before starting on the cooking

Still heaps of bags of raspberries in the freezers so I did a couple of batches of jam

Making Jam before Emma eats her way through my raspberries!

Manual labour – but I love my ‘Mooley’ (Moulinex). I use it heaps for my sauces especially, but it takes about half the seeds out of the raspberries – I just prefer my raspberry jam slightly less seedy.

For those jam cookers out there – how do you judge when its ready? I am slowly getting it right – I very much do NOT enjoy having to empty out the jars to recook the mixture.

So, sometimes it ‘drips right’

But I prefer to put it on a cold plate in the freezer for a few minutes to then see if the skin wrinkles.

All labelled and ready-

I’d love to get some fancy labels made, but – these do the trick without costing much.

While I am not working the girls excessively hard, they enjoyed todays job of folding seed envelopes

Since I also had both a broccolini carpet & a willing helper, I figured potting up some seedlings for tomorrow may be a good idea

Eventually I will just have to weed this!

No shortage of plants

I have pots everywhere, so I just had to pick up a bag of potting mix

Do you think $1.50 per pot sounds like enough of a bargain?

I also picked the rest of the cucumbers that were ready. Lets hope they sell!

Time to do what the cat has been doing all day (no- not bathing)(or chasing bugs) and get to bed!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend wherever you are in this amazing world

Cheers

Pip’s way of dealing with a grey day is to go straight back to bed!

Fridays Footprints – Cradle Mountain National Park

Cradle Mt is only a 2 hour drive from us and it makes a fabulous day trip, complete with picnics, wildlife and beautiful scenery.

Cradle Mountain forms the northern end of the wild Cradle Mt – Lake St Clair National Park.

The area is formally recognised through World Heritage listing as being part of the natural and cultural heritage of the world community. The core area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1982 on the basis of all four natural criteria and three cultural criteria, at the time satisfying more criteria than any other World Heritage property on Earth.

Pretty awesome that we live near it! 🙂

There are a variety of walks, ranging from an easy 20 minutes, right up to a fairly challenging 6 day hike on the Overland Track. (This is on my “to do” list)

Some areas are dark and knotted with moss covered trees

And others more open and scrubby

Boardwalks help protect both the flora and fauna of the area and visitors are asked not to stray from the pathways

The variety of lichens fascinate me

We enjoy bringing our visitors here – usually after a picnic lunch, we tackle the 3 hour walk/hike around Dove Lake.

Sometimes we get brilliant sun –

And other days you might be lucky to see Cradle!

Personally I like the misty damp days best. It brings out brilliant colours – especially in the trees

Source Images: DSC_9268.JPG (Av: F7.1; Tv: 1/200 sec.; ISO: 500; FL: 55.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Its like the bark was painted

There is a fantastic path, mostly boardwalk, the entire way around Dove Lake, and the view of the mountain constantly changes

Source Images: DSC_0616.JPG (Av: F10.0; Tv: 1/400 sec.; ISO: 400; FL: 20.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Easy tracks

Winding your way through the scrub

Source Images: DSC_9309.JPG (Av: F7.1; Tv: 1/125 sec.; ISO: 500; FL: 70.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — An adventure around every corner

At times the path leads you down to small beaches

Source Images: DSC_1460.JPG (Av: F7.1; Tv: 1/200 sec.; ISO: 640; FL: 52.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Gnarly gum trees

Where your view of Cradle Mt changes again

You find small determined plants, literally growing out of the rocks

How a small plant can grow out of a rock beats me!

And the unique Pandani stand out in the landscape

Source Images: DSC_9301.JPG (Av: F6.3; Tv: 1/100 sec.; ISO: 500; FL: 70.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Found only in Tasmania, the pandani is the largest heath plant in the world.

My favourite part of the walk is entering the Ballroom Forest

Source Images: DSC_0639.JPG (Av: F4.0; Tv: 1/60 sec.; ISO: 2000; FL: 20.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Ballroom Forest – Romantic sounding name

Quite often you will see wildlife

Source Images: DSC_1428.JPG (Av: F8.0; Tv: 1/250 sec.; ISO: 640; FL: 300.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Wombat crossing a stream

The boatshed that stands on the northwestern shores of Lake Dove was built in 1940 by the first Ranger at Cradle Mountain, Lionell Connell & is quite a landmark on the lake. The shed was built largely from King Billy pine. Although some restoration work was completed in 1983, the shed remains pretty much unaltered from its original form – It can be a tricky proposition to get a photo sans-tourists as its a popular place for photos

We are hoping to return soon to do a different walk with Emma and Mana – if the weather isn’t too dreadful.

Enjoy the weekend all!

Cheers

Around the House

Source Images: DSC_2614.JPG (Av: F4.5; Tv: 1/80 sec.; ISO: 800; FL: 42.0 mm) Processing: Fusion F.3 (HDR; Mode 1) — Treasures from yesterday

This afternoon we picked up our new guest, Mana, so today was a day of making sure her room was prepared, a cake was ready for afternoon tea, and all that kind of stuff. (Will post some photos of Mana once she has had a good sleep! 30 hours of travel since she started from her home!)

Emma fossicked through the garden to put some fresh flowers in her room

I think she did a lovely job! I hadn’t realised we still had such a variety in the garden

I had to pick a few of the cucumbers before they got too big

The oca is looking reasonably good. No idea if I will get any tubers of them. They are a new thing to me – (since coming here anyway) they are awesome baked!

Oca – a long time from planting to digging up!

A little bit of autumn from our poor little Japanese Maple. Now that we have more water I will be able to nurture it a lot better.

I save, or get Ruby & Margie to save meat trays. I find them useful for catching water under pots. At times I can have a lot of cuttings or seedlings on the go.