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Hello! I am keeping busy with my friend arriving today, no new gardening news.

I had a question about Vegemite from Janet a few weeks back. (Popular spread for bread here in Australia) Her older son was daring her younger son to eat a whole jar for five dollars.

My immediate response was “Get your younger son to ask for a whole heap more cash”

Its not that I don’t like it – I love it, but very few of us Australians eat it with a spoon (shudder)

Its a yeast extract – salty/savoury NOT sweet or chocolatey. My Canadian husband seems to think it works well on his bicycle chains! 🙂

I am under the vague impression that you have to be brought up on it to like it.  People do make the mistake of sticking their noses in the jar for a big sniff – don’t do that!! You’ll never be the same again.

People also try to spread it like peanut butter – again, not a good life choice!

First, cook your toast, nice hot buttery toast!

Get your knife and artistically scrape bits of vegemite over your hot buttery toast!

I will take a couple of months to get through a jar – as you can see, not much needs to go on the toast.

Now, think savoury, be brave and take a bite.

Actually Vegemite might have been banned in the US, not for taste reasons, but due to the high yeast content!! Puzzling. And disappointing.

One of the greatest joys in an Australians life is watching foreigners taste Vegemite for the first time. 😀 Its the little things in life….

Any non-Australians out there taken the Vegemite taste test? Did it go well? Did it end badly? I would love to know!!

Hope everyones Friday has been amazing!

Cheers!

Hello – It’s 10.30pm and I just had dinner! The night kinda got away from me. So instead of garden updates or Friday’s Footprints, I am going to share my calendar project with you.

I made a calendar last year, mostly as Christmas presents, but I also was asked to put them in a local shop & I also sold a few at our beachside market.

It went pretty well, so I thought I would do another one this year. Naturally I am totally not organised, hence being so late with things tonight – the company I used finally had a sale on making calendars that ends Sunday, and I am busy all day tomorrow. So it needs to be sorted now!

It took me an eon of agonising tonight to put 12 images together!!

Its kind of meant to be local but I have stretched the borders of ‘local’ a little in a couple of cases

I think throughout the upcoming year I will have to try to get specific photos for a calendar – actually think “Calendar” at the time of taking the photo.

Where as I have a lot of photos that I like – its trying to think what a stranger/tourist/person buying a present would like hanging on their wall all year.

And annoyingly I have just remembered right now while typing this that I will need another image that will be put on the front of the calendar!!!! (Rolls eyes)

I tarted up a photo in ‘Fusion’ to get my last rainbow shot a bit more dramatic than it was before… 🙂

So thats the main lot…

OK – Just went through my very long ‘shortlist’ and here are some possibilities for the front cover – feel totally free to write and tell me your opinion!!!

Cheers and I will catch you up on garden stuff tomorrow!

 

Being of a limited income, a few years ago I settled on one charity to play with. Since I love making parcels, the shoe-box one (via Operation Christmas Child) seemed pretty tailor made for me.

Actually this year is the first in a while I haven’t done a bundle of my own – not sure what I have been doing with my time, but for me its the kind of thing you need to be vaguely working on all year – picking up suitable items at throw-out prices. Too stressful and expensive to do it in a rush… so I have sensibly ‘let it go’ this year.

For those of you not familiar, a shoe box is packed for a boy or girl of one of three age groups – 2-4 years, 5-9 years and 10-14 years old.  Each box is to contain something to love, something for school, something for personal hygiene, something to play with and something to wear… along with other special bits and pieces. They are then shipped out to children in poor/remote areas who possibly have never had something new in their lives.

Australia & New Zealand tend to send them out to places like Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Thailand, Vietnam…

While I am not part of any of the local churches (schools and other community groups do them as well as individuals) I like to go and help pack them up. A couple of weeks ago I went to Ruby’s church where they had about 120 boxes decorated and ready to pack with items they had collected all year.

Yesterday, Shirley from the Baptist church (and local OCC Co-ordinater) called me asking if I could lend another pair of hands!

Sure – since we are still getting drowned out there I couldn’t see me playing in the garden! 🙂

Afterwards I ducked into Ruby’s for a cuppa and a confession – I bought her a raised garden bed for her strawberries!! I think I may have gotten away with that, but let me save the story for Ruby Tuesday!

As I mentioned… the weather is not letting up at all. The river flooded again and the ocean is a dirty muddy colour due to the runoff into the river flooding the mouth.

Maybe tomorrow we can catch a break in the weather??

Cheers!

We were off to the airport this morning as Emma’s week with us was at an end. She does assure us she will be back soon!! 🙂

Was fun having her stay – love having a ‘Garden Slave’ (she took that very well) 🙂

Not much else noteworthy happened at Norwich House today… I did get another raised garden bed from the market – if it stops bucketing down out there I’ll take a photo tomorrow!!

I did catch up on a little much needed housework! I suppose it has to be done sometime!

Amazingly its been just us for the whole day and no-one else has booked in to stay! Haha – people have probably seen our weed problems and have no intentions of coming to get roped into that! 🙂

Hope your weekend was fabulous!

Cheers!

So – last Thursday we sadly said goodbye to Michelle & Co. wandered home and sat in our largely empty house, and after about 30 minutes we decided it was way too quiet!! lol

But my other sister, Rosemary fixed that problem. Pretty much just after we had noted how quiet things were, I got a message from her asking if we could take Emma for a week, starting Sunday!!!

Nothing like a 16 year old to liven up the place and stop us from getting too old and boring! 😀

So I drove off to Devonport this morning to collect our niece (I am thinking ‘Garden Slave’) and brought her home, where we gained extra Aunty & Uncle points by taking her to the beach and then coming back to a late bacon & eggs on toast lunch.

The other day we noticed quite a lot of agate on the beach – more than we would normally find so we decided to skip the gardening and fossick for a while

We got some lovely rocks today – here are a few dodgy photos I took in a hurry as it was getting pretty chilly by the time I got around to that!

I dipped them in water to get a bit of the effect I hope to get when I put them through the tumbler…

Thats just a few of the many we found today – I think they have potential to come up really nicely once polished!!

So – despite the forecast being rain ALL WEEK, I have plans to get back into the garden tomorrow – and with an extra set of hands, well… the sky is the limit! 🙂

Hope your weekend has been brilliant!

Cheers!

Well… a couple of weeks ago, we started out at Fossil Bluff with family in the rain, gloom and wind – and we finished back down at Fossil Bluff today, wearing t-shirts and soaking up the sun!!

First we took Michelle & Co down to Doctors Rocks to go gold panning!

It was fun to teach the kids and we even found a few flakes, so the day started off pretty well.

After lunch, Tony & Michelle set about packing the car – I think we created a Rock-Monster in Tony as he seemed to have half of Tasmania’s rocks stashed in their car. (They have ordered a rock tumbler, so will be indulging in a new hobby!!) 😀

Of course, last stop is to see Ruby & Margie, and present Ruby with the wonderful guest book that they made for her party

I still need to take a photo of the book properly, but it was a combined effort to hand make the book, and it is filled with many names and messages for Ruby.

Needless to say, she was thrilled!

Sadly, time was ticking away, and we had to bid my family farewell (ok, a few little tears) but it was a wonderful couple of weeks being able to show them as much of our bit of lives as we could and spending time together.

I must say it seems rather quiet at Norwich House tonight!!!

Cheers!

 

Well… I am dead on my feet today, so speed blogging with a couple of snaps from our Tuesday Adventure. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ will have to return next week when I am in some semblance of order!

Today was about 5 hours driving and 5 hours hiking – I am totally ready to face-plant my bed!

But we had the best day!

Only a couple of days left with my baby sister and her family, so we drove over to Cradle Mt National Park to see the sights, do some walks and indulge in a gourmet picnic (ok – it was ham and cheese sandwiches, but I upgraded it to gourmet because of the home made relish and the banana/raspberry loaf)

The weather was forecast as cold and raining – but we got cool and not raining… so yay us! 🙂

There were wombats out everywhere – ambling along munching on the vegetation

This one walked straight at me, sniffed my foot and just kept going (I hadn’t walked far by that point so sniffing my foot then didn’t make it keel over and gag or anything)

We also saw a wallaby just having a little lay down by the car park.

We did two short walks before having our picnic lunch, then did the three hour walk around Dove Lake. I love the way the boardwalks weave in and out of an ever changing environment – a mystery around every corner!

Anyway – bedtime for me! Tomorrow we have two beaches, a lighthouse, a tulip farm and a mission to find Valhalla Ice Cream!

No rest for the wicked!

Cheers!

Didn’t pick up my Blood & Bone today, so the garden was pretty much left alone – except for a bit of foraging.

The leek and potato (and bacon) soup turned out fine – just had some chicken stock, a can of evaporated milk and some parsley – and fresh baked bread as a side! Hit the spot tonight.

I also have tomorrow nights dinner on the stove, cooking ‘part one’ of a vegetarian lasagne.

Actually feeling a bit chuffed that the majority of the ingredients that are now simmering away on the stovetop are from my garden.

I had zucchini frozen, and some corn, carrots were fresh, as was the celery and chilli. I had to buy a capsicum & onion … I wanted a couple of eggplants as well, but none in the supermarket, so did extra carrot and zucchini.

I did have to revert to tinned tomatoes but the herbs are very fresh!

I find if I make the vegetable sauce mix the day before, the flavour is much better. I will put the whole thing together tomorrow afternoon, as my sister and her family are due back tomorrow evening – in time for dinner!

In between cooking, I attended to the housework. The many beach visits, rock & shell collecting, a constant fire & Jeff whittling wood had the floor looking a bit manky! A spruce up was in order.

Yesterday afternoon was really quite lovely. As well as doing garden stuff, we slipped back down the Calder road to go back to the little forest for a walk about

Everything was still damp and gloomy among the pine trees

Looking up it wasn’t bad…

Looking down was cool too…

Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be kind enough to let me get my potatoes in!

Cheers!

Ok – so we go to Black River Beach – full of amazing shells and driftwood and check out my souvenir!!

Seriously?? Do you know how useful this size polypipe is and how expensive?? It was mostly buried in the sand, so I rescued it! (Not to mention saved the ocean from more human rubbish!!)

Jeff had only a small amount of that long-suffering husband look on his face and only expressed a few (justifiable) doubts about fitting it into the car (Love my husband)

The look on the rest of the families faces was quite entertaining as I dragged it up to the picnic area that we had set up.

Mother: “Whats that?”

Me: “Mine!!”

Luckily Mum and Dad had brought along their car, so we kicked out Rosemary and Emma of our car and into theirs for the drive home!

Its going to be really useful in the garden – stay tuned! 🙂

On a MUCH sadder and less weird note… I lost all my photos of Black River Beach today that I had planned to post here. I was mucking about trying to remember the buttons for the self timer to get a whole family photo and cleverly reformatted the memory card!!!!  I am totally miffed at myself, and went through some agony trying to download a card recovery program or two that were not playing the game. So before a full-blown tanty ensued, I have given up, told you about my polypipe (Thank-you to Rosemary for those photos) and tried to move on. 🙂

Anyway – the important thing was I didn’t kill the family photos so here we all are on the beach together having a simply splendid day!

Hope yours was just as fabulous!

Cheers!

After spending the morning at the Penguin Markets (Undercover when it poured rain quite hard) we went down to our rock beach of choice just outside the town.

Happily all my family are just as excited about collecting rocks and sea glass as we are and a number of excellent hours were spent – with only a brief period huddled under some sheltering trees while it rained.

We brought along a picnic, so we could wander about with a sandwich in hand and check out the beach treasures

The rock walls in the water were fish traps made by the local Aboriginal people long before Europeans got to Tasmania

Sea glass is plentiful here!

Another day out and about – everyone in bed before 10pm – lol – except for me!

Have a great day!

Cheers!