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Hello! Look at us!! Stampeded into March so now we are in Autumn!
And yes.. I put the fire on.
My hopes for any tomatoes ripening are starting to plummet.

Pip update… back at the vets today as he really wasn’t getting better. So stressful… (Glad I didn’t have kids if this is the way I act around a cat with a bottom problem haha)(I’d need to be hospitalised!)

Anyway, they gave him a heavy sedative so they could look at what was going on properly without fear of being shredded – still found nothing obvious, but with the tests and scans at least everything there is looking fine (Bladder, kidneys, infections etc)

So… we will keep the cone on properly and only off if we are watching him closely. He was given an antibiotic as well, plus we have a kind of a wash thing I have to do to his penis area twice a day.
The fun never stops here!! I managed the wash this evening without too many dramas but he is still groggy so tomorrow should be a bundle of fun.

Anyway, here is Pip helping to keep the doorway upright!!

Did a hopeful round of the garden for any tomato that looked slightly ripe

Not bad… but most of these came from the self seeded plants out the back here rather than the proper plots

Thyme… plus a bunch of basil and oregano for the spag.bol sauce I made today!
Yummo

The wind is going crazy – lots of pears falling before their time. They do stress ripen a bit so will try some tomorrow

Started cleaning up the garlic the other day:

Its fun for the first little while, but then my brain gets bored… might have to put a movie or audio book on outside and listen while cleaning up.

Looking (and smelling) lovely

I already have orders for seed garlic!

I went for a drive with Sharon and family this afternoon – they have some of their cows on this amazing property and Clarabelle (I think) just gave birth to a calf!!

We found the cows and Hamish the Highland Bull, but no calf…
So there was a lot of frantic paddock and bushwalking (me in crocs haha) to locate the tiny Moo

Hamish on his way over to see what we were doing

Paul finally found her (discovered she was a girl… only 24 hours old) tucked up under a tree in shelter. Mum came over and herded her baby away.

Hamish up closer…

Tiny Baby Moo far far away. Hopefully in the near future they will go back to Sharon and Pauls place and I will be able to have a cuddle.

Hamish being all posey… Such a handsome fellow

I should have known a short trip down the road with Sharon and Paul wouldn’t be boring! Totally got my exercise in today traipsing about looking for a baby cow! 😀

Lottie!! Such a little farm kid in her element!!

Next time I’ll arrange the sun to be in a better spot

Anyway, once the stress of making sure the calf was fine and healthy, it was a lovely little jaunt around the paddocks with stunning views and sunshine!

So lucky to live in this spectacular place!
Hope you’ve all had a great week…
Cheers

A sea of lettuce!

Poor Pip. He has been in a bit of a bad way. Suddenly while washing his nether regions he is howling/crying! No idea what has brought that on. He hasn’t been sitting down properly on his butt either.

We got an appointment at the vets, but I dashed down early to get some happy pills for him so things wouldn’t be quite so traumatic.
He was seriously stoned

He had to sit his back half down to manage to eat (he totally had the munchies) and spread food everywhere

Oh he was NOT happy at the vet. It was like he was swollen up because I couldn’t get him out of the carrier!
I did finally, sat him on his towel and had him by the scruff of the neck and patting his head and saying soothing things while the vet prodded his manly bits and Pip growled and yowled! (Understandably)

On the good side, no sign of the usual/possible issues. I know he has done a few wee’s no problems with no crying or difficulty. So rule out kidney stones or UTI’s. No redness or swelling.

Could he have over washed his tender boy bits? Lets face it. Cat tongues are like sandpaper…
I got sent home with some pain meds in syringes (oral), a cat collar and one really unimpressed but still stoned cat.

He was dopey pretty much right up until bedtime – I put the fire on last night and left him on the couch since his motor skills for jumping into his usual bed were still iffy.

Today he is a bit better. Collar has been off and on. A couple of washes has brought about a growl
I think he just might need to leave things alone for a bit!
Right now he is up under my windcheater curled in a ball sleeping! (Nawww)

Anyway, enough about my cats private parts haha

Spare bed… really needed to get more lettuce up and coming, so gave this a quick dig and added some good compost stuff in.

I grabbed a punnet of mixed lettuce seedlings the other day -soaking them so I can pull them apart more easily.
I decided to put both seedlings and seeds in

And a row of spinach – I like the baby spinach leaves

Seedlings separated and spaced out

And in! yay.
I’ve also stretched out the netting to cover this plot as well.

Its actually getting cool/cold at night already.
I’ve got a million tomatoes and a plot of corn that needs more hot weather. Wish the tomatoes would ripen faster! They seem so far behind this season again

Still… was able to forage for a decent lot of food for dinner

I get enough tomatoes to put in the nightly salads… those strawberries. I plan to eat them later. They smell so good. (Yes a few got eaten while at the patch)

The cucumber plants have been slow but reasonably steady. They’ve struggled with some bug I can’t get on top of but we’ve had enough to put in the salads as well, so thats ok… and another lone capsicum (so sweet!)

And of course some potatoes!

In other news, I am attempting to hike regularly again…!! Sigh. Not done so well over summer in this regard
Anyway, did a double lap of the river track the day before yesterday. (12kms)
Spent yesterday in ‘Fretting About Pip’ mode, but managed a lap today – just one as I was developing a good sized blister (which sadly tells you how much hiking I have NOT been doing) so thought best to finish up and tomorrow plaster it up before heading out!

Anyway, thats about all the recent stuff around here!
Hope you are all having a really lovely weekend!!
Cheers!

I tried out a new fragrance… lemongrass and exotic lime! So fresh and beautiful.
I decided to try another ‘shimmy’ design and saved the cutting for the soap workshop yesterday!

The pattern made for a fun ‘reveal’

I did a Taiwan Swirl pattern demonstration after all the group members had finished making their batches of soap

By this stage of the day the table is in quite a mess

Such a pretty design!

An attentive audience haha

The leftover mixture I blend together and then pour into a separate mould
(Thanks to Sharon for getting some action shots!)

While on the soap stories, update on my facewasher and scrubby collection

I ran out of yellow so edged it in pink!

I think I have enough cotton to make 3-4 more

Still a little bit of tail tucking to be done

In exciting garden news, the corn has FINALLY popped out with fluffy tops and silky bits!

The crop is still looking happy and healthy so fingers crossed for some corn!

The carrot flowers blooming!

Dinner!

We had a decent clean up in the yard the day before yesterday…

Not that I got any actual photos of the cleaned up bits but you see we’ve got a lot of work here to do

Jeff spent a lot of time in the paddock cutting up leftovers from the milling as well and we moved and stacked a fair bit.

After a fairly busy day, we managed to get the kayaks in the car and down to the river for a paddle!!
So nice to get back on the water!
Hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend!
Cheers

Hi… Really don’t know where the days are slipping away to.
Halfway through February already!

Today, Sharon’s husband, Paul and his friend, Ed, spent the day getting through heaps of the timber in the paddock
Jeff cut and split ‘smaller’ pieces while the others milled a fabulous lot of the wood

There are some fantastic pieces in there and my brain is a bit giddy thinking of all the possible projects

Beautiful slabs and sleepers.
Paul took most of this back today. We are doing a bit of a barter for all their hard work – ie they get lots of timber to use!!
Below is a good number of slabs they did last week. I am hoping to revamp the hothouse with it and create raised beds around the edge of the structure… (Looks amazing in my head!)

We drove our car into the paddock and filled it a couple of times with the wood that Jeff was splitting, then drove it back so we could stack more – trying to clear the paddock as fast as we can for the VERY patient neighbour

Still harvesting food as needed for the dinner table

Actually today was pretty good… Sharon dropped in with Lottie and we all came up to the house for lunch. I picked fresh lettuce, added our cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum and grated carrot.
I baked a tray of potato bits (in olive oil and my garlic salt), hard boiled some eggs and put out a bowl of the pickled beetroot and a jar of homemade relish!

All soooooo local !!! (Bit proud)

Yum

Did a bit of a pick and sent home Paul with extra veggies
They brought us over some fresh onions too!!

The carrot patch is so lush

Funnily enough there are several plants going to seed… really strange as they usually take over 12 months before even thinking about it

I spent a fair bit of time tying up the crazy tomatoes

Snipped off lots of the big leaves and tried to wrestle them back under control
I still have more to do.
But then I got distracted and FINALLY weeded the corn and mulched it.
Still no sign of cobs but surely they can’t be too far off making an appearance?

Most of the celery survived despite being dug up by Flea.

I keep thinking I want to remove the shelters off the apple cucumbers but…it keeps turning cold at night

I did get in there and weed and they’ve grown a bit since the photo … maybe I will just leave them alone if they are happy.

I Spy… baby butternuts!

I put in some late potatoes… because?? Because I could basically. Will be interested to see how they go at this time of the season.
Our other patch is a scant few weeks off full harvest

Soap… Did the embeds.
I was hoping to have a few more bunny soaps for Easter

I made the embed, which is basically filling a silicone tube with the soap mix. The first one I took apart didn’t come apart cleanly (Bunny’s foot got a bit mangled.) These ones stayed in the mould for a week while I was sick… so came out better because they’d set a lot more.
Key tip… Be Patient!

The extra ones I cut down and poked into some heart moulds

Check out my lovely vase, designed and created by my sister Rosemary!
I do need to put it somewhere else to photograph it so its not competing with the table cloth.
Not too many flowers happening in the garden but the oregano flowers were perfect

Well… I am feeling a few aches and pains from spending a day moving wood about so I am going to call it quits for the night!

Hope you’ve all had a splendid weekend!
Cheers

I finally got around to cutting the slab of soap I made a week back. The nature of the slab mould makes creating the swirls a bit more…controlled?
Anyway, lots of fun!
I’ll have to increase the mixture for this mould as most of what I cut was a bit thinner than what I wanted.
The two pictured above are the end pieces that I didn’t slice in two.

I do really love the results of the swirls

Of course, I put a couple together to get that mirror image effect

Pretty cool

A few more photo challenge photos…
Day 4 was ‘Fruit’

(I threaded some yarn through the peel to dangle it up, then did a little bit of photoshop to remove the yarn)

Day 5 was Black and White… Took me ages to get something.
In the end I settled on a chook

So funny when they are just going to bed…they just stare at you.

Day 6 was hat or hats.
Mind you, we’ve got a house full of so many different hats, but I decided to torture Pip with a tinfoil hat.
The resultant photo was pleasingly full of Cosmic Woo…

In the photo below I am sure he is plotting to kill me..

And this one kinda shows off his new shiny bonnet haha

And day 7’s subject was Falling Water… I didn’t get creative with setups… I just stood at the back door!

Anyway, thats my Saturday done… its 10pm and I think I am feeling better because I really really want some chocolate cake and am debating with myself about going to bake one!!
I’ll try to resist!
Cheers!

Wow… we are getting hit with quite the storms today. The rain has been pelting down and we’ve even had thunder and lightning!
I had to get in all my wet weather gear just to go lock up the chooks tonight!

Its Friday night and I am feeling a lot better than I have most of the week.
Still haven’t done much though!!

Standing at the back door while the thunder rips across the sky and the rain blows right in the door!!

We have a few guttering issues!

Earlier I ventured out, cleared the filter for the tanks (water is pouring in!! Yay)

Also picked some beetroot

Yesterday or the day before (can’t remember now) I took a few snaps of garden ‘stuff’

Corn still has a long way to go!! At least its getting a good drink today/tonight

Lebanese zucchini! Suddenly I have a million. (And no appetite haha darn)

A sea of tomato plants

Excited to see a few ripe ones happening on the outside plants!

Despite losing a couple of branches and lots of pears in the wind… enough are hanging on.
Will go inspect damage tomorrow if this weather calms down

Plenty of rhubarb
Huge leaves!

I found some stuff in the hothouse too!

I was playing about with the camera yesterday as I was trying to get some photos for the current challenge.

Trying to get Flea to pose…

Nope!

She’s a funny chook!

This chicken really looks like she is about to ask to see the manager!!

Anyway, nothing much else to report from my part of the world!
Hope you are all doing great!

Cheers

Hi…
Gosh. I ate something Sunday night that firmly disagreed with me.
Firmly and emphatically.
The results were not pretty!!
Lucky I have my own personal nurse who set up a pillow on the bathroom floor and kept me company with cool facewashers to my forehead!

In the end I slept on the couch in the sunroom as its quite a hike from our bedroom to the bathroom.
My body said nope… you are not keeping anything inside for a while!!!
Monday was a right-off… today I was vertical off and on but mostly rested. (weird)
Just trying to rehydrate etc.

So nothing noteworthy really happening here… but I did start a new photo challenge. Thought I might share my first three images.
Top one, the subject was ‘Green’
I put a drop of food colouring on the oil layer and waited… This image I thought of the number I did was the most effective.
Its really mesmerising to watch the colour drop and expand!

The next subject was ‘Weather’

Of course… summer in Tasmania can be… changeable! I thought this one encompassed the feel of it!

And the third day was ‘Geometric Shapes’
I found a discarded coffee cup today – with the remains of a hot chocolate from before the ‘I had to live in the bathroom for the night’ incident.

Happily the dried chocolate at the bottom provided me with a shot!

So… anyway. Thats about all for now.
Pip has been an especially happy kitty as he has been able to nap with me for about two whole days now!

I sincerely hope everyone is feeling better than me!
Cheers 🙂

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!