Rachel and I were up at a very civilised hour to do a bit of a drive around the city of Burnie (which is about 25 minutes down the road from us) to get a feel for the area, as Rachel is still investigating her property investment idea.
As we were filling in time near a property we were going to view, we went for a short walk, only to come across this waterfall and walk! We have lived here 5 years now and were totally clueless this existed at the other end of a park I drive past every time we duck into Burnie (granted not that often, but still…)
This flower grew in mass up the hill
We spent a very pleasant half an hour or so wandering down the pathway to the gardens
Edge of the bush area – a mass of forget-me-nots under the trees
Down at the other end of the park (the bit I knew about) showed off some gorgeous flowers…. not least the yellow iris that I now want to add to my collection!
Again – middle of the day not optimal for photos but here are a couple of the many roses that were growing in the park
See? Blue sky!
We wandered back up to the residential area and enjoyed just loafing about on the grass chatting and enjoying sea views.
Its nice to literally stop and smell the roses sometimes!
Last night our friend Rachel called and asked to come and stay for a few days – from tomorrow! Sure!! Excellent!!
But it did mean leaving my beloved garden for a day and attending to some housework to scrub the place up a bit.
The nice thing about spring when you have some visitors, its easy to brighten up the place with flowers.
Tedious as I find housework, I did have a lovely time picking flowers and filling every available vase and vase-shaped pot in the house.
Yes I lived in Japan – No I did not attend flower arranging classes. Result? Iris explosion!
Most of these iris were drooped over the lawn and since Jeff was mowing (again!!) today, I thought I would pick all the awkward ones and enjoy them inside.
This is slightly more zen…I bought this sweet little vase/bowl in Japan. The turtle at the bottom with his strategic holes makes arranging flowers easierDaisy ballTiny bunny vase – given to me by a lovely Japanese friend
My one dollar bargain at the local markets!!Tiny Japanese cream jugSaki Bottle! (clearly Japanese)A while ago I saw this chook-jug and couldn’t resist. Makes a decent vaseAnother favourite Japanese vase – stands or hangs on the wallSpindly Granny-Bonnet
Even after picking so many flowers – it doesn’t make a dint in the garden at all! Awesome time of year!
Hope you had a lovely day
Cheers
Pips reaction to the lack of fire most evenings recently.
Hello! Monday!! It was such a scrappy running about kind of day. At least it wasn’t raining & the wind wasn’t too bad either!
I did spend a bit of time at Ruby’s this afternoon getting some of the weeding done – but I will save that for Ruby Tuesday 🙂
Jeff made a great start on removing the grass from the new garden area!
The blue box is housing a collection of weird things that he has been digging up. I must take a proper look at what he has found so far.
And look!! So excited to see a baby tomato!
Tonight we trotted ourselves down to Fossil Bluff to see if we could see the super moon. The clouds obscured the initial rising, but it did come out at one point for us.
Switching to my wide angle – see? Lots of clouds!I enjoyed watching the moonlight on the water…
Did you get to see the super moon in your part of the world??
Hello – late notes from me. Last night WordPress was having a hissy fit about uploading photos so I gave it up and went to bed. Mind you – most of the day was about housework so its not like I had mega-exciting stories for you.
Except the corn…I was pretty excited to go down to the plot yesterday afternoon and see lots of little corn spikes poking up!!
Amazing since the day before I went over that area with a fine tooth comb and there was nothing showing at all!! I also went down in the misty rain last night to make sure there wasn’t a lot of snails/slugs hanging about.
Need a home in the outside gardens soon!
So pleased that these tomatoes from seed haven’t died!! First time I have gotten seed this far from tomatoes!!
Anyway – I have to go and decide what to do with the day – gloomy and VERY soggy out there today. I can’t say I am inspired to do much at all!!
The weather is trying to impress us – its working!
Hello! Wow – Friday again. That came around quick!
We had an excellent day – the weather was showing off by not raining again, so we were outside pretty much for all of it.
After attending to seedings, watering etc, we thought we might as well try to do something with the umpteen free pallets we scored the other day
Some will be useful for making ‘stuff’ others will suffice as kindling.But wait- there’s more! (and willow branches)
I have a fair few pallet projects pinned on Pinterest, none of which I have really gotten into as yet. But we really did need a new fence on the top side of the property
Mostly chicken-proof – but not pretty
All we have done to keep the chickens to their side of the yard, was unravel some chicken wire and bang in a few stakes.
Why not a pallet fence? What’s the worst that can happen?? Can’t look any more dodgy than what we have got.
The chooks were so happy we were digging in the dirt for them again!Ta daa! First one (Sheesh – what a mess)
Because of the sloping nature of the area, we decided to just plant each pallet in level, but stepped down from the previous one. (Can you tell the expert builders in this area?? haha)
About halfway there
This corner was just getting worse as it got more and more neglected. It was our original compost that went slightly out of control. The stones we put in a pile next to it to ‘store’ but with the weather, a lot has been washed further from where they are meant to be, making mowing a bit tricky.
Gloves, digging fork and a while later –
A good start to clearing this area
There should be some good compost underneath. We will make new bays behind this fence to have a place to just throw weeds/garden clippings that is separate from my other composts
Things got really serious! Out with the power tools!
We had to leave a certain gap to fit a new gate – this pallet was about 20cm too wide!Chook approval
By the end of the day we were pretty pleased with ourselves.
Better than the other manky fence. Now I am trying to work out whether to paint it (which we should probably do to extend its lifespan a bit – they are only pallets afterall, can’t expect too much) and what colour, and perhaps plant something at the base, or even a hanging/wall garden…
I tell you, the nicest part of the whole day was plonking my backside down under the cherry blossom to just enjoy lying on the grass looking up at the sky and pink fluffy blossoms. I even got Jeff to join me for a few minutes of nature appreciation!
I pottered about today – my biggest achievements were uncovering seedings, watering gardens and covering them back up again. I enjoy watering 🙂
Clear skies mean I can have a bit more of a play trying out night shots. Its amazing what the camera picks up that the eye doesn’t see – especially when enhancing them a bit.
This crazy spotty photo is not dust – Stars upon stars!
Anyway – was just experimenting trying to get the cherry blossoms in the frame with the stars – in between inconvenient trucks and their massive headlights driving past!!
Anyway – its a work in progress! We do get the Southern Lights in Tasmania – but I haven’t seen them yet! I would love to capture an aurora on my camera! I just have to practice my skills, just in case I am lucky enough to see one!
Rachel and I actually pretended to be tourists today – of course it was raining intermittently, but it turned off and on enough to get out and see the local countryside a little bit!
ok – it wasn’t warm either!!
Table Cape and some surrounding farm areas are all a sea of colour these days with the tulips out everywhere
We did go up to the tulip farm – checked out the shop and displays, but acted a little stingy and didn’t pay the $10 to actually go into the fields – figured I would wait until the weather was nicer, and I had my tripod to experiment a bit with some photos.
But there were a few fields of tulips that we could see on the drive back home, which was very enjoyable.
I am being a little boring in my blogging world – the rain is back with a vengeance, so not much of a chance to improve my garden.
Plus been running about with my friend checking out properties, which is awesome fun!
One place today that we went into was the most amazing mish-mash of styles and colours you have ever seen!! I think I time warped back to about 1974. I felt naked without my flares.
You know when something is so bad and over the top, it just tips over from tacky into fabulous? That’s where we were at today!
I just took some snaps on Rachel’s phone but haven’t got the ones of the lounge room (which was very special) via email yet..
I will drop back via my blog sometime tomorrow to try to be a little more interesting!
We spent a pretty fun day over in Devonport looking at investment properties with my friend Rachel.
Again – nothing new on the home front 🙂
Still, nice to drag a few vegetables out of both the garden and freezer to make up dinner & watch a movie or two in the evening – and generally catch up with a good friend!
Just thought I would mention that I am running a new photo challenge via facebook late November. The group has been created now with a new list of subjects to photograph – its a closed group, but anyone interested in joining in, please let me know in the comments below and I will send you out an email with a link. You would be most welcome!
Basic Outline
There is a list of ten subjects that group members go out and take photos of. As an easy example – the first subject is “Pink” People go and take a bunch of photographs with pink in them, choose their best/favourite shot and upload it into the “Pink Album” on day one.
It continues on for ten days, a new album & subject opening each day to contribute to. My contributions to the last challenge can be seen here
Once all participating members have filled an album, everyone gets to vote for their favourite images.
At the end, the person with the most points wins a prize (usually some home made jam/relish and something knitted)(All from Norwich House of course!)
While the competition aspect of it is fun, its mostly developed into a nice little community of people who enjoy photography – experienced and beginners -that come together for a couple of weeks, get creative, make friends and maybe even learn some extra photography skills, or impart some of their own knowledge.
Its very relaxed – there are some rules of course, but mostly just commonsense ones.
