Category: Uncategorized

Cats love to roll about!!
Pip is so enthusiastic about it when he gets to be outside with me!

Anyway, he is not a garden plant so lets move on!
Gee we’ve had some gorgeous weather lately! I might even say summer like!
Its really helping the plants make a move

I even pulled up a garlic (like a month or so early)

The purple patch does look a bit bleurgh…

Plus its got this rust thing on thats been creeping in. So I’ve got to find out what it is and how to combat it. Hasn’t effected the growth or the garlic itself… but I would rather not have it

Finally planted some carrot seeds!!

And some pumpkin seeds under the covers
I picked up some apple cucumber seedlings and popped them in too

Snow peas finally making a move!

The white garlic looking happy

I got in and weeded the potato patch… planting them under the straw helped overall with the appearance of weeds

There are even a few flowers here and there

The young blueberry bushes have some fruit too

Back up in the veranda garden, it was time to weed and mulch the lettuce

The cape gooseberry plants had dropped a lot of seed

This patch has done well overall… only lost one lettuce

All snug now. 🙂

The basil are grimly hanging on to life by their cuticles…so they got a weeding and a boost of kelp juice and some mulch.
Fingers crossed (The rocket doing just fine and dandy)

Moving right along to the herb spiral

The oregano is still super lush…
But the lemon balm was too bushy and the borage was just too big and getting mucky

The bees were loving the borage but I wanted my path back… seeds have dropped and new plants are already on their way

I also pulled out some mint that is getting in everywhere (of course) as well as giving the lemon balm a severe haircut (the chives can breathe again)

Nice to walk back down my path!!
I found a little spot for a new thyme bush too!
And put Mavis’s gorgeous Thyme Sign back with the right plant!!

Oh… and I crushed my thumb between two rocks which wasn’t smart.
The perils of gardening!

Hope everyone is having a lovely week!
Cheers!

Hello!
We’ve had a couple of nice days in a row… so getting a little more done in the garden
We did have some hail the other day which didn’t impress my poor tomatoes (The chooks probably weren’t happy either!)

My zucchini seedlings were bursting out of their pot…

So I put one lot out into the garden where I hope the weather is fairly nice to them

The tomatoes in the hothouse are about 4x the size of the poor woebegone outside tomatoes…

I’ve even got some flowers!

The lettuce patch … the seedlings I put in the other week are starting to look a little more robust.
Lots of tiny cape gooseberries appearing too… will be soon time for a bit of weeding and mulch

The rocket seeds I planted are all happily up, while their basil neighbours are NOT happy about anything!
I mostly keep each one covered at night but the chopping and changing back to super cold hasn’t helped much.

All the basil I planted out in the hothouse got ringbarked by something and died!!! All of them!! Will try again and make sure I cover them with bottles.

I have enough strawberries now to make a little pot of fresh jam… maybe tomorrow?

so many lush herbs… the oregano is especially fabulous

From garden to one of Rosemary’s awesome vases

Today… a clean up project

Just off the back veranda, fennel, lemonbalm, oregano, raspberry canes (?? no idea why) and general weeds

I have SO MUCH lemon balm everywhere…

So… thats the horror I started with

And here is where I finished up!

Some Portulaca along the front there and the other plants were given to me by my cousin Fiona.. and I can’t tell you what they are!!

I just grabbed some random bits of timber for the front edges and dug them in. Its so good to still have copious amounts of woodchip too

Anyway, will leave you with a few pretties to finish up

Orange calendula (got so many calendula seedlings popping up everywhere!)

Nigella… (Love in a Mist) (Such a pretty name!)

Random snap dragons appearing this year!

Loving my pathway, although its time to pull out the massive borage plant that stops me now walking all the way down the path!

Thoroughly enjoying all the sweet peas!

And bees.. busy everywhere getting right into the heart of the flowers!
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Cheers

Hello!

So… I’ve been thinking of putting together a bit of a ‘natural botanical’ selection of soaps to offer something a bit different to my ‘normal’ soaps (Do I even have normal?)

I just made an aloe vera soap out of fresh aloe from the garden. (I’ve failed to take a photo of the actual soap – its very plain with some green clay used as the colourant and rosemary essential oil as the fragrance. I am looking forward to trying it out

I will revisit the carrot soap, turmeric, orange (using the dried zest as a scrub) rosemary and some other ideas.

I saw online a ‘how to’ on dandelion soap along with all the blurb on the great things that the humble dandelion can do/or be a benefit for.

I went out into the paddock and took a huge basket… and found an underwhelming amount of dandelions!!
I dried the flowers anyway.

The easier and quicker part was to dehydrate and crush/powder both the leaves and roots

After this much effort I figured I’d need to do the infused oil properly so we stopped on the side of the road after one of our walks and picked a heap more dandelion flowers.
I partially dried those then dumped them into the oil to infuse

They were left for about 2 weeks.

Another hike and another forage session to get more flowers to make dandelion tea (Yah.. this is a process…)

Overnight soaking of the flowers created a brown tea colour, but once mixed into the lye it went a nice yellow

So… finally I was up to the actual soap making part! (No pressure)

I split the batch in two and worked on the bottom layer using the regular oil and lye mix, but adding in French green clay and a couple of spoonful’s of the crushed dried dandelion leaves
A fairly thick mixture so I could make an uneven divide between the two layers

Once in the mould, I sprinkled the first layer with the powdered root in the hope it would show up between layers once cut.
Once it set enough, I started to mix the top layer

I decided to just let the infused oil and the tea do the colouring for me rather than adding in any clays.
I did mix through an apricot kernel scrub

The whole loaf has also been fragranced by lemongrass essential oil, which is just lovely!

Drum roll… agony waiting today to get it out of the mould and see how it went.

I was so pleased with it!
It looks lovely and natural, but not boring!! I like all the little bits of texture and the muted colours, not least the powdered line of the dandelion roots!
I am calling it a success!

Cheers

Hi!!
Spring is still not springing towards summer
In fact, Tasmania just had a hefty amount of snow falling about the state!
My poor outside tomatoes are… sad.

I’ve been trying to gather some interest to get locals to join in on the Anniversary Bay Loop hike… two that booked in had to bail but are planning to come on the 28th when the next one is scheduled.

No-one else booked in. So I went anyway (despite the hail and rain)(Because I am tough) and found one fellow down at the carpark who planned to tag along!

So.. not really a group but hey!
And it was a great day out despite the grumpy weather

So grey

The fellow that joined in my hike, Peter, was a keen photographer so we enjoyed talking about photography and spent some time snapping photos on the beach

I just took my fisheye lens with me for the fun of it… I don’t need more photos of this area but…

Can’t help it

We had off and on again rain but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been… we had lots of hail at home but none on the walk (Would possibly explain the lack of crowds of keen people at the carpark wanting to come along)

Looked quite speccy with the sun out and the dark ominous skies!

Obnoxious use of the fisheye…

Love that teatree stained water running off from the hills

I’ve realised that we are about 2 months out from starting the Overland Track so I’m having to buckle down and get my butt out on the tracks at least every second day

Sometime in December I am going to load up with my proper pack so its not a rude shock to suddenly be carting 18kg up hills

We were lucky to secure spots and really looking forward to getting back out on that beautiful track again and leaving the ‘real world’ behind for a week!
Anyway, I’ve got time!

Hope everyone is doing well!
Cheers

The cherry blossom is about done.

Both it and the snowball bush makes things look a bit snowy

Little pest… completely ignored my requests to look at the camera

Snow ball bush

And petals…

When the weather hasn’t been acting hideous, we’ve been getting into some of the garden tasks…

I have been ignoring this like Pip ignores the camera

Happy now. Its even giving us strawberries already!

Time to remove the self seeded silverbeet and cape gooseberries that all went wild!

I’ve put a bunch of lettuce in one of the plots…

I’ve got more than the above. Just got out of whack sorting my photos!
Hang on… found it…

Hopefully they’ll perk up… the original ones are sitting up fairly well…

Self seeded sweet peas trying to sprawl everywhere so I set up a trellis for them

Jeff got in and trimmed the cognata tree back and pulled out the pelargoniums

Sob… but they were getting pretty straggly
Yet to decide what to put in

He also did a bit of roof sweeping!

Sadly we lost the other cognata. She split at the base of her trunk.
It really was way too big for this spot anyway… the 2 metres that it was supposed to grow to was a bit understated. I can see out the kitchen window again now.
I’ll plant something in its place that’s a little more suitable soon

I really feel like we have been tree killers in recent times!!

Sweet strawberries starting to come along.

A little more manageable

Did I show you my dodgy netting job?
Saved the remaining tomato plants from the birds that seem to go mad pulling everything out early in spring
They are growing slowly as the weather overall hasn’t been fabulous

Because it was going to be impossible to plant the back veranda gardens with the chooks still running amok, we grabbed some wire and popped up another temporary fence to keep the little darlings back down their side of the yard

Ummm… we might have put the gate on sideways… but its only temp and also it hooks shut over the bricks which makes it easier than faffing about with wire.

In other garden news…

The old carrot patch was pulled up

The snow peas got weeded again and they are finally making some progress

They seem awfully slow this year…

And the crazy rocket patch needed a do over

I planted half with rocket (which came up already) and the other half with basil seedlings.

Well… thats a little of whats happening out there to keep you up to date!

I had an impromptu market last weekend at a local school… they had some late cancellations and I heard about it and managed to get a stall. It was very worthwhile – sold heaps so I was happy about that!

I got a delivery of 25kgs of caustic soda (lye) today and I am all excited to get into some new soap ideas!

Hope you are all doing fabulously!
Cheers

Hi again!
Lets finish that walk… as I continue to admire the views

Neat shelf of rock hey?

Back down to the rocky shore

Glancing through the layers of rocky outcrops, then up into the green hills

A bit of effort was required along here… up!

Such pretty greens!

All the blues and all the greens

Looking back to that rocky shelf

Still looks like a bit of a way to go before we see Sisters Beach!

Funny how the light on the scene changes depending on which way you look

These are more like wallaby tracks than people tracks!

We thought this looked very ‘Amphitheatre’ like

Back up the hill…

Nice of someone to cover the barbed wire with polypipe (Safer to duck through)

The wattle looking very pretty

Path through the bracken…

Followed by a path through the tall reedy grasses

We eventually met up with the Postmans Track and followed that path down to the beach

Plenty of moss and weird lumpy things to peer at along the way

And Big Bad Banksia Men…

This one still had fluffy seed pods which I hadn’t seen before

And down we go!

Beach in sight!

So lovely to be back on Sisters Beach!

Nice easy walking from here!
All up we were probably a bit over two and a half hours… probably less than three!

Once Summer decides to show her face, then a dip in that inviting water will be the order of the day after a walk like that!

(I know… can’t resist the cool rocks)

Finished up seeing a bit of beach art right before getting into the carpark to be collected by Maureen!
We really had a very enjoyable walk! I am so glad Gerry suggested it! I’d been keen to give it a go for a while!
Hope you enjoyed the adventure too!
Cheers!

Hello!
I seem to have a million-squillion photos of this walk so I will break the adventure up into two posts.
I’d never gotten around to doing this walk and so was very keen when my friend Gerry suggested it.
I am sure you all remember my market buddy Maureen – Gerry is her husband. (A fabulous gardener – I enjoy tours of his veggie garden when I pop around. I learn lots!)
Unfortunately Maureen has been unwell, so sadly wasn’t up for the walk, but she kindly drove us in and picked us up at the other end so we didn’t have to tromp all the way back again!

We started off at Boat Harbour – easy to see a little bit of local garden influence on the track as we started out

It started off a nice little track, all enveloped in pretty vegetation

And some native something or other… I am sure Gerry told me but now I forget!! Very cute berries

I am pretty sure its a native Tassie thing. I just assume that any bush that is adorned with spikey bitey things is Tasmanian haha

Before long we wound our way down to the shore!

A small sandy bit but lots of rocks to scramble over

An old fish trap! Apparently it wasn’t just the Aboriginal people who made them but the settlers to Tasmania also set them up.
I am not sure of the history of this one

Lots of rocks

Kind of a neat colour pattern here

A bit closer to the fish trap

Imagine the effort that went into making these!!

We decided to walk up to the shoreline and trees to see if the track was easily found. There is a high tide track, but as we found out – the signage was only obvious if you’d walked the opposite direction. We kept finding the start of those deviations AFTER we’d scrambled along the rocks!

Gerry and I had a bit of a chuckle at this. We thought it was a really big fungi of some sort. So I took a snap with Gerry’s hand for scale.
Of course we poked it – was spongy like a fungi.
I nudged it harder and it rolled over! No idea what it was or was from but it was a dense rubber or foam of some sort.
We propped it back up in place so some other person could come along and get all excited at the Big Fungi!

Back down to the beautiful shoreline

A small stream and tiny waterfall running off the hills

Easy bush track here!

Fantastic boulders would appear with such a wonderful variety of moss, lichen and other plants growing on them

Down we go to do a bit of serious boulder scrambling!

Slow and steady over these!

Gerry was very patient with my constant snapping of photos 🙂

We had such an amazing day with the weather too! It had been so dodgy and miserable.
Felt wonderful to be out getting warm and seeing that blue sky!

Of course I am obsessed with the rocks though…

Amazing how they change colour so often along a fairly short stretch of coastline

More lovely trees and blue skies…

And back to rocks because they are cool

We headed back up into the scrub where the trees and other vegetation closed us in quite a bit
Suddenly we realised there was quite the cliff of rock looming over us!

The photo is a little underwhelming compared to real life… but it was quite big!

Sweet bush flowers

Out from the bush and into this neat clearing for a spectacular view along the coast. I was really enjoying seeing new views of our coastline

I might leave you here and finish up the walk in the next post tomorrow!
Hope you’ve enjoyed so far!
We certainly did!

Cheers

Hello!
Today is pouring torrential rain and a bit windy too!
Indoor day I reckon.
So pleased to see this colour iris popping out! I originally got the rhizomes from Ruby and glad to see them again… the iris after moving them didn’t do much the first season.

The patch is so lovely now! (Ahem…. not so much the patch between the iris and the house !!)

Wondering if I should get out there and snick a heap off for a vase since the wind isn’t being kind

The white were the last to appear

We might get a few apples… the last remaining tree is pretty sad actually but one side has a good amount of blossoms so fingers crossed.

No need for too much blather on my part… just some photos 🙂

Sage

Oodles of blossoms…

We’ve had some lovely days recently…
So we’ve been in the garden – Pip too

And while I was on the ground getting head-butted by a cat, I took a snap of the cape weed.

A few sweet pea plants have self seeded so I’m really happy about that too!

And what better place to pop them but in a cute little cup, hand made by my sister?
Hope you are all having a lovely week
Cheers!

I am still going to basket weaving on Friday mornings. I really enjoy meeting the ladies at the centre and generally socialising – with a cuppa and something to eat and some weaving as well!
I made another lily last Friday so I could remind myself of the technique and also continued to twist my flax into a cord which is getting nice and long. One day I might turn it into a basket!

I cut some more soap..

The sprinkle soap turned out pretty – I used the rose-geranium essential oil as it sold very well at the last market
And also sliced up the black raspberry and vanilla soap too – despite the oopsie in colour mixing I like it a lot

Leftover mixture…

More black raspberry and vanilla soaps that I unmoulded today… I have an order for three butterfly soaps and a horse:

And all the offcuts from the coloured soap I cut up into rough square shapes and mixed back into a plain white ‘batter’ (using the same fragrance, Lemongrass and Exotic Lime)
Waste not want not?
Makes me think of nougat!!

I went for a lovely walk today… one I hadn’t done before so when I get my act together I’ll share.
It was a lovely day and every step of the way I feel rather lucky to be living in this area!!

Hope your weekend was amazing
Cheers!

Hello…
Since Christmas is creeping over the horizon, and soap takes about a month to cure… I thought to get into a bit of a soap making session.
Above are the last batch of Christmas tree soaps for one of the local shops.

Sharon dropped off the other soaps from our last workshop and I took them all into a local shop for people to collect

This was lovely… soft greens with a scrub

Coffee! And two tone!

This grey and saffron turned out pretty

So did the bee soap!

I am sure they are all going to be really happy with their soaps!

So… what soaps have I put together?
Some stock standard ones that sell well…
Eucalyptus and beach sand hand scrub – two batches

Cedar and Saffron… three batches!

Today I did another confetti soap.. looking forward to cutting it. There is a layer of pink on the bottom and I’ve used the rose and geranium essential oil, since that one sold so well last weekend

I also did a black raspberry and vanilla loaf… but muffed up the colours lol. Bit too much black.

Then… whats on the inside??

So pleased with this technique! It worked!

Super keen to try more raindrops!

Then there was this epic effort/experiment

Underwhelming from the top??

Sneak peek…

The slab mould tasks one and a half times the mixture… so I divided that into 6 and made 6 separate batches… letting each one set up a bit so I would get even layers

I learned that one should not leave it too long between each layer – I had dinner between the pink and purple layer and it wants to part company from the rest of the soap.

Oh the cutting 🙁
I had to use a knife as my cheese cutter is too small.

I am going to have to make a bigger wire cutter for occasions like this

So… once I had it cut down the middle I could use the cheese cutter to tidy things up. There is a bit of wastage but I am planning to cube all the bold colours and drop them back into another soap.

Final result? Pretty great! (Lemongrass and Exotic Lime fragrance)
Would I do it again? Maaayyybeee?? (It was an all day up until 1am kind of effort in between everything else so…)

I’ll return with the latest cuts soon!
Cheers!