Category: Garden

 

We finally started getting some decent rain yesterday! It got pretty wild there for a while!

I had planned on going to the market tomorrow so I picked what was left of my beetroot to make into chutney

Sadly the weather forecast is rain and wind – so I am staying home. Its not that I am a sook about getting up at 6am to stand about in the wind and rain – (well actually, I am) – but on days like those no-one much comes out to buy stuff (sensibly so).

I decided to roast up the beetroot anyway, I just didn’t make up the chutney yet

The girls won the leafy bits

I love the colour!!

I peeked under my vegie netting to find my broccolini taking shape!!

I also found a few leftover grubs!! I have to squash them myself because our spoiled chickens turn their beaks up at them!!!

I had to get onto clearing up the windfall apples as the European wasps were getting too plentiful.

Lucky the cows have been moooved (haha right??) closer and were happy to munch up the dodgy apples

Best coloured apples! 🙂

Got a decent haul of windfalls – into the dehydrator they go

 

Well, I finally came up with a goal for this year. Every day during May, I am to walk the 8km circuit around the Inglis River. I have a number of spare kilo’s that I’d be happier without, so…

The fluffy cattails line the river banks – you can use the roots to make something similar to flour-Jeff collected & processed some roots and today made a cake/blob/biscuit from them.

I would say this is kinda like a damper… the taste wasn’t bad. It would stick with you for a looooong time I suspect. It was also somewhat gritty, so I am going to recommend he wash the roots out more!!! 😀

Still – its fun to try bizarre new things.

Anyway, back to the walk… Its pretty easy – a few ups and downs, but not too punishing

I like the paper like bark on these trees

The tide was pretty low as we set out. the muddy banks aren’t as pretty, but they are a hive of activity as you see little crabs scuttling about everywhere

You get to walk through a mini rainforest –

The first real excitement of the day was seeing a Tiger Snake!

Hardly saw a snake all summer – I was surprised to see this one.

I enjoy how the path changes along the way with the vegetation

Little bits of interest…

But the most exciting part of the day was at the close of our walk when we came across a platypus!! It’s so rare to see one in the wild – and this one was practically doing cartwheels for us!! (They are supposed to be shy!)

If you are not familiar with this animal, it is classed as a Monotreme. That is an egg laying mammal – a class that also includes the Echidna. Its a lonely group – they are the only two animals that belong in it!! Platypus are the oddest looking creatures with their duck bills and beaver-like tails. It really looks like they were put together in a hurry.  Cute they may be, but in keeping with the good traditions of Australian animals that want to kill you, they are equipped with venomous spurs – so not a good idea to cuddle them. Apparently the pain from a scratch is pretty bad, and also impervious to normal painkillers, even morphine. And it lasts for months.

Well – off to bed for me. We have some new arrivals tomorrow morning.

I’ll keep you posted! 😀

Cheers and enjoy your weekend!

 

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

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

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-

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

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

 

Its a rare thing to actively plan to do nothing! I found myself thinking of all the things to do tomorrow that I was trying not to do today!

Really it was about moseying along and doing what took my fancy (And staying in my pjs for as long as possible)

I did eventually get outside and enjoyed picking  what was ready in the garden

I went into town and stocked up on a few containers as I plan to partly cook and freeze the tomatoes into smaller packs, convenient dinner sized, rather than the 6lb packs that I have frozen for relish and sauce batches!

I have a rogue jam melon plant or two growing a bit late in the season around the rose bushes… I was wondering if they would ripen in time before the weather turned. I have noticed they are expanding quite quickly

This was one week ago –

This was today –

Jam melons are funny things. I had never come across them until moving here. Seem an old fashioned fruit. They are not edible like rock melons or watermelons, but are cooked into jams. I haven’t had them for a couple of seasons, and not sure how the seeds ended up growing where they are!

I don’t mind the little garden mysteries! Like how this snap dragon appeared –

I had never planted them deliberately… but they popped up a couple of seasons ago, then disappeared. Nice to see at least one back!

OK – here is a little challenge for you, if you care to participate!

Guess the zucchini weight. I will send a small mystery prize to the person who gets closest. (Don’t get over-excited, it’ll probably be something quirky) 😀

In Kg/grams (google will be your friend here if you are used to imperial measurements.)

For example “1.436kgs” The clue is that it is more than 1.000kg and less than 10.000kgs 😀

Leave a reply in the comments section.

MARCH GROCERY ROUNDUP

I didn’t make my goal of bringing in more than spending at the supermarket, but still didn’t do too badly. There were some larger bulk purchases (like lamb for the Spoiled Siamese that was on sale) and I didn’t get to the market yesterday as it clashed with guests – not that that bothers me. I am way happier to be spending time with friends than getting up at Stupid O’clock to set up a stall in the cold! 🙂

Anyway – totals

Supermarket spending for March             – $331.93

Incoming from garden/chooks & jams     – $226.40

I can live with that! (But I still want to do better!)

Now I am just rounding off my day munching on a bit of sponge cake that Ruby made for me, with a cat on my lap and a fire crackling away keeping me cosy!

Cheers!

PS It was pretty cool out there today. I haven’t set up my outside thermometer so I can check the temps during the day – but I will get on to that. Daylight savings has now ended here so suddenly it seems to be dark before I am ready!

Right now it is 8.8C (47.8F) and apparently the local area reached 19C (66.2F) today. The small breeze was quite chilly I thought! Makes me wonder how long I will keep getting tomatoes ripening.

PSS Just as I was proof-reading the above, I could hear some loud thunking about on the back veranda. Heavy enough to sound like a person out there!

The offender was this little fellow –

A ring tailed possum! I haven’t seen one around here for ages – they are usually all brush tailed possums!

Didn’t mind me much at all

I think they are sweet!