No photos from me today!! I know!! Shocking! We put Megumi on a plane this morning and she is spending the week with Rachel in Ballarat. She should have a lovely time and I am very ready for a break. Sloth week coming right up!
Anyway… for those of you not in Australia: summer has been brutal around the country. Severe drought, one of our MAJOR rivers (The Darling) just about dried up due to mismanagement/irrigation etc. (Well… they are still arguing whose fault it is and why and blah blah) Temperatures have been record level… days on end of 40 plus degrees (103F) I think Adelaide reached about 47 the other day!! (over 116F)
North of the country is currently suffering insane severe flooding!!!
Oh, and Tasmania is on fire! 🙁
Today our area was under a reasonably heavy blanket of smoke from a 350ha fire west of us. Further south of that fire, there is another 8,000 ha burning. East of the Cradle Mt National Park there is at least 50,000 ha on fire. South west there is another 30,000 ha burning, and around Hobart there’s about 60,000 ha still burning! (ha-hectares. Not sure what unit of measurement people use around the world but if you think better in acres, times the number by about 2.5)
Anyway, its a shocker right now!
Bedtime for me! Hope everyone had a lovely weekend! Cheers
Hello! How’s the weekend going? I didn’t get properly moving until early this afternoon. Took a while to get the kinks out haha Then I got madly enthusiastic and built my new compost bay.
Time for this mess to GO! Celery and parsley becomes an absolute jungle when they go to seed! Plus still getting those purple potatoes that I don’t want popping up everywhere and lets not talk about the weeds.
I’ve decided to reuse the pallets we started using for the raspberries then gave up on.
I want three bays (like I wanted last time but didn’t quite get around to it) but doing one was enough for me this afternoon. Three of the holes were quite easy to dig – one was so hard! In the end I got a steel dropper out to break up the ground!
Layered with cardboard then I moved all the chook-poo hay that Jeff cleaned out of the coop the other day and topped with the remaining coffee grounds and mixed up and watered. Shall I explain how lovely it was moving dry chook-poo hay in the strong winds today? No? Imaginations working fine? Good.
I should have taken the photo AFTER I mixed it up. That coffee looks like dinosaur spew!! 😀
Anyway… that area is much neater and I can now work on filling that compost bay and hopefully getting on to putting in another two.
Corn update… the first patch still looks anemic and sad, but it does have a number of ears developing, so I am optimistic we will get something edible off it.
Meanwhile, the rabbit/chook ravaged patch is (in my opinion) magnificent and there are plenty of cobs developing too… some stalks have three!!
The third patch is also looking really healthy and glad its a few weeks behind the second patch. Who knows? I might for once get this stagger planting thing right!
I have a huge butternut pumpkin patch – and one butternut pumpkin!!
The little raised patch with the pumpkin in it have really started a good number developing
Happy big beetroot! I am scoffing back heaps of the pickled beetroot nightly!!
Quite exciting to see little capsicums forming!! They seem really pale but maybe its the variety. I can’t remember what the seeds were now!
The tomato lateral patch is rocking along!
No shortage of rhubarb!!
And our potato patch is starting to wind down. I suspect another month before we do a proper harvest. Looking forward to that immensely!
Hope the rest of your weekends are fabulous! Cheers
Well… Little Moo was returned to the paddock next door, and has taken a big liking to my sunflowers!! Little Rotter!
Neatly pruned the tops of pretty much all of this patch – they were about 5 minutes away from flowering too!! 🙁
Butter would not melt… Lucky he is cute! He still galumphs up to us when he sees us in the yard so he can say hi and get a scratch. I did try to feed him some of the fennel. I thought the strong licorice taste would make him wary of eating anything else on our side of the fence… Ha! He just guffed it down and looked for more!!
Luckily the sunflowers I transplanted into another garden are looking good so at least I should be able to enjoy a few soon!
I officially gave up on this strawberry patch. They didn’t do much good this season so I am going to start with brand new plants next season. I spent a fair bit of time pulling everything up and sifting through the dirt for the oxalis which has taken a bit of a hold in there. I am considering removing the rocks and putting in some raised beds here instead… (not for a while though). Now that its cleared out I might just pop some plants in that need to get out of their small pots and make use of the area for the remainder of the season.
Then while I was in the clearing out mood, I decided that the fennel and the herb garden in general was just an eyesore so…. out it went. It took a lot of effort to dig those fennel plants out! The roots are pretty solid! Megumi came out and did some weeding down the fence side of the garden so its all starting to look a bit less like snake habitat!! Not sure what I will put in here… at the very least it should be smothered in mulch!!
Pleased to get in and do some more gardening of the cleaning up type. I didn’t get photos, but while Jeff was out in the car, I cleaned out the carport that was looking very scruffy. The old and VERY heavy washing machine has been sitting there at an odd angle for 12 months, so I moved it into the corner tidily and cleaned up all other junk in there too… mostly it was accumulated leaves and dirt that made it look so shabby! I don’t think my back is thanking me for the appliance relocation effort though. Especially when I did a river hike afterwards. Sometimes I am not very clever!! Oh well… hopefully it will be less grumpy with me tomorrow! Hope your week has ended well! Cheers PS The blueberry ice cream was mmmmm 🙂
I had a bit of fun yesterday pottering about the garden picking stuff! I found the cherry tomatoes ripe on the vine thats growing in with the raspberries! I didn’t realise I had so many cucumbers!! Gee they are expert hiders!! I thought there was only one growing. I didn’t actually need the carrots or potatoes, but its too fun digging them so I figure I deserve to indulge 🙂 The beetroots are beauties!! We made them into pickles today. The kitchen smelled a bit strong but I feel happier with a good supply of pickled beetroot! Again I have been slack with the camera – so nothing else startling to share. Just cooking up some produce, running about watering – attacking a few weeds. Some other mundane unbloggable events like housework, shopping blah blah. Hope everyone is having a great week! Cheers!
Hello!! Well… we’ve spent a quiet day today, nursing a few aching muscles! The weather forecast wasn’t entirely accurate… and while half our hike was in cool and pleasant conditions… after lunch it deteriorated into feral. Megumi is never going to go out with us again!!
We started in fine tour guiding style by providing a local wombat to hang out on the path with us…
He/she wasn’t at all fazed by the excited humans watching it eat and scratch its bum on the boardwalk!! So funny
Clearly this wombat has been there/done that and is quite comfortable posing for the camera (would have helped if I didn’t have the fisheye lens on but hey… can’t win em all!!)
Onward
Still happy
Its always nice to get into the little rain forest area with the stream and waterfalls running beside the path
And we continue steadily up.
Its enjoyable walking through the scrubby bush with the mountains looming behind!
Sign of a dry season… the lake is rather low and we could walk into the boat house!
We rested here, ate a muffin and talked to a group of Japanese tourists!!
I finally pointed out to Megumi where we were going!! 😀 (ie UP) (But slowly)
As usual… the views got better – but the wind really started to pick up.
Fantastic effort! Got to the top of Marions Lookout – at least we got to see Cradle Mt while we ate lunch.
Doesn’t seem like a proper Cradle Hike without my lovely Cuz, Fiona!! Jeff – looking like a mad professor, took my bandanna because his ears were hurting from the cold/wind.
Megumi enjoying her sandwiches overlooking Dove Lake
The plan after Marion’s was to walk over the plain towards Cradle then go down the Horse Track… basically a big loop. We didn’t get far before:
No more views, but a temperature drop, sideways rain and plenty of wind!! It was hard going – I was a bit worried about Megumi as she wasn’t used to this kind of weather nonsense… especially being actually out in it!! We debated which way to return but stuck to the original plan. I enjoy this kind of mad weather but when you have someone new with you its not the best way to introduce them to the area. You want to show it to them in the best way!!
The camera got put back in its dry bag for quite some time… I finally got a bit of a break in the rain and snapped some of the pretty moss.
By the time I finished mucking about Jeff and Fiona were lost to sight and Megumi was a little way ahead…
We all caught up again for a drink and rest on the lee side of a large boulder to get a break from the wind. The view was murky…
Literally five minutes later…
Such a fabulous place!!
It was great getting back to the car and going to the lodge to get hot drinks, something to eat and sit by the fire!! Very cosy! Quite the adventure but I suspect our poor guest might decline the next offer of ‘do you want to go hiking with us?’ !!!
Hope everyone had a great weekend and stayed a little drier than we did!! Cheers!
Hi there! Not much from me tonight! Didn’t get the camera out to record things like – netting the last plums, watering, shopping, kayaking, baking raspberry muffins etc. But it all happened – I promise!! 😀
We’ve got a jaunt to Cradle planned for tomorrow so unless the weather goes pear-shaped, I have to get up rather early to sort a picnic etc and get underway.
Jeff liberated some lettuce leaves from the bins behind the supermarket!! :O
That might be a wee bit dodgy but the girls are loving it!
I am probably going to have ‘Hay Regret’ but I haven’t been able to get the straw and haven’t gotten around to getting seaweed in the quantities I want. Its not going on the garden, but wanted to slow the grass between the beds.
Basically we can’t mow or whippersnip when the pumpkins are running all about the place.
I spent a good portion of the afternoon rearranging the pumpkin runners to get a layer of newspaper down then bulked it up with the hay
Its all been given a good soaking too – I know Tasmania… if I didn’t the wind would get up and blow this across the neighbours paddock!
Anyway, it was a grand start. I have ideas that the whole garden will be under hay/straw and newspaper…
Seems a lot of work when there is only one pollinated pumpkin so far! (Still… I am proud of it anyway haha)
Got plenty of lovely beetroot too! Will be time to cook some more in the near future!
That patch of Black Russian Tomato laterals is going fabulously! There are a lot of little tomatoes started.
I spent a lot of time with my tomatoes today too – cutting off the excess foliage and tying bits up – trying to make sense of the tangle I seem to have!
This raised patch is a hodgepodge of tomatoes. I cut out a lot of leaves from here too… but they really need tying up in the near future
My two dollar tomato plants have been a bit neglected and dwarfed by lemon balm, weeds and so on. Attended to them as well to give them a chance.
All in all… along with a bit of weeding here and there its been fairly productive today! Time to put my feet up I reckon! Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Cheers!
Marigolds starting to show – clearly have to re apply some mulch here. The local blackbirds have had a fine time kicking it all out!
Hello!! I found someone to swap my raspberries for blueberries!! Pity we are at the end of the season – but keeping the fellows number for next year!! Anyway, blueberry muffins seemed like a good idea! (Ice cream next??)
Then I took an idea from Margaret. We hadn’t saved many plums, but what I got I cooked, took out the pips and ‘moolied’ (got pulp). I gave some to Margie who wanted to turn it into a version of the BBQ sauce. I thought that was a great idea, since I am out of BBQ sauce and not rolling in tomatoes yet to make more in the conventional way. I reckon it turned out pretty great. (Added bonus was no room left in freezers really so I need to cook what I have to save it!)
I am still dreaming of pesto… so trying to grow a few more basil plants. Happy to see some roots appear on these
This cucumber got picked and half put into tonights salad! Lovely and fresh tasting! Plenty of flowers and a couple of other small ones that have started growing… hopefully the leaf trim back I did will help with pollination. Also will have to get out the whitefly mix soon!!
Picked two more tomatoes today, and ate the first one! Oh its soooooo good to have a real tomato again! Loved it!
I made ‘zucchini balls’ to go with dinner today but essentially they were more like ‘splats’ than ‘balls’ You grate zucchini, carrot and onion, add in a couple of eggs and add SR flour and a bit of cumin. The recipe said one cup of SR flour but I really needed a lot more. Anyway, it wasn’t firm enough to roll into a ball so I just scooped the mixture out of the bowl and dropped into a pan of hot oil to shallow fry. Served with Greek yoghurt and yummo!
We did a lap of Anniversary Bay today… trying to start getting fitter as we have about 6 weeks until our next Overland Trek. My it was HOT! On the way home I stopped in at a farm and picked up some hay – need to clean out chook coop and also use it as mulch under the pumpkins and around. So hopefully tomorrow might be an actual gardening day!!
Hope your week has been going along splendidly!! Cheers
Hi There! A request was made for the raspberry ice cream recipe I use.
I have a base ‘Old Fashioned’ vanilla ice cream recipe… to which I just add 300gms or so of the fruit pulp (Strawberry, raspberry or plum usually)
300ml cream (Recipe originally calls for milk here but the end product is not so hard to scoop using cream) 1/2 cup caster sugar pinch salt 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 1 well beaten egg 300ml extra cream
Heat cream, sugar, salt & vanilla in a saucepan until almost boiling Stir in about half of the mixture into a bowl with the beaten egg, stirring well. Put egg mixture back into pot and keep stirring on low heat until mixture thickens slightly. Set aside to cool then refrigerate.
I make sure I have my fruit cooked and pulped then chilled before going ahead with the final steps. I sieved the seeds out of the raspberries. I also added sugar to taste as without I think its a bit tart.
Once cream mixture is cooled I add the extra cream in and mix well – then put the whole lot into an ice cream churner. After 20-30 minutes it can be transferred into container for freezing. If you don’t have an ice cream maker you can just mix it all up and freeze it anyway. I’ve done that before and it was fine!! 🙂
I found with the raspberry mix you need to take the ice cream out about 20 minutes before you want to scoop it because it does go a bit hard. The strawberry mix was easier to contend with! But all worth it because it tastes so good!
Well – we reached 30C today!! Thats pretty hot for Tassie!! (86F) Pip has been in various stages of collapse everywhere around the house. Mostly in doorways though – because he is a cat.
Around the garden… I haven’t been doing much weeding or tidying. A lot of watering and moving water about. I quite enjoy moving the sprinklers while they are still going in this weather! The first corn patch has started to do its thing, although it still overall doesn’t look all that impressive. Still… its exciting to see the little silkies appear!
Baby watermelons come and go, as do the baby pumpkins. Still hoping nature will do the job of pollination for me.
The zucchinis are appearing steadily!
Some of the rocket has started to go to seed. I’ve really been enjoying it in the salads! Marigolds are starting to pop out too
Yesterday or the day before I noticed a tomato FINALLY making a bit of a colour change!! Today I was thrilled to find it much more pronounced. I couldn’t help picking it… a couple of days on the kitchen window sill and then it should be ready to take pride of place in the nightly salad!
Found some flowers on my capsicum plants and have started training the hothouse watermelon up!
I actually spent quite some time in the hothouse (sweating) cutting off all the leafy extras from the tomatoes and cucumber plants. It had gotten so dense in there. Now I figure, more light, more energy from the plants can go into the fruit, insects might even see the flowers now and I can see whats going on!! I forgot to get a snap of the pile of leaves – it was quite an impressive lot! Hopefully that was the right thing to do.
Tonight we enjoyed the home made raspberry ice cream that I made yesterday! I took the seeds out and added a bit of sugar to the raspberries – its a pretty nice flavour thats for sure!!
