Category: Uncategorized

For the first time since winter last year, the tanks are overflowing! The rain gauge has refilled and it doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon.

My next post may be about how to build an ark… altho my ark only needs to fit two people, one cat, 12 chickens and 2,000 books. (Maybe a guest room so I can pick up the neighbours on the way past – hey Cindy?? 😀 )

No really – despite the gloom I am delighted we are finally getting some good ground soaking rain.

It is also Lisa-soaking

I was wearing a full length raincoat too! I had to get up the ladder and muck out the water tank sieve that had filled with leaves, sticks & possums.

(ok – I was kidding about the possums)

Seems like the only chooks that have any sense are the three younger new chickens. They stayed firmly in the coop all day, and were nice and fluffy dry. The rest were a pathetic bedraggled lot

The rain has been blowing in too… so pretty much everything on the back veranda is saturated. Only the wood tucked in the very back corner seems reasonably dry (lucky)

Pip’s attitude to the deafening rain today was simple. Enter sleeping bag & Do Not Leave.

Apart from housework (blah) I did get around to sorting and packaging up a lot of the seeds I have been collecting.

I saved three cobs of corn, but I have no idea if they were hybrids or not (threw away original seed packet) plus I have never collected corn seeds before. Will be interesting to see if they sprout

I have not the patience or time to separate the teeny tiny basil seeds, so just took the pods off the stalks and bagged them up. The smell was divine!

Chilli

A mountain of rainbow chard

The cos lettuce seed still needs a bit of drying out

I kept a sunflower – high hopes for a big pretty plot somewhere next season

Remember the tomato laterals I started? Looks like we have two successes and one fatality.

Mind you… the self seeded tomatoes that popped up at Ruby’s that she gave me weeks and weeks ago are going along really nicely – despite the fact I haven’t bothered taking them out of their ice cream container yet!

Can I call that hydroponics??

I was out of potatoes, so I nicked over to the garage and grabbed a new box! We had such a good potato harvest this season. I’ll have to knock off a few sprouts, but they all look really good. (I think there are 4 more boxes to go!!)

For about 10 minutes, just before the sun went down, we got a little colour in the sky.

Enjoy

Cheers

PS Occasional extras via my Facebook Page

The day started sadly with a death in the family. Poor little Crook Chook went to chicken heaven last night. We palliated her the best we could – She got lots of cuddles yesterday and a cat box inside where it was warm.

Even though we love our chickens, taking a chook down to get a $70 vet bill, where it is unlikely to make a difference anyway, is just not a sensible option. Sometimes we nurse them back to health, and other times we fail.

I didn’t dig her plot today, so she is lying in state (in cat box) waiting for her burial tomorrow (Plus I had to check with Jeff to make sure that I wouldn’t be digging up previous chickens to bury this one!)

(and yes I cried!)

I was pretty boring today (not bored – just not doing anything really interesting!)

It really was a day that was full of gloom. It never really got properly daylight in my opinion.

Finally I figured I should toss myself outside and go for that walk. I took the camera in the hope something might cross my path that was interesting.

The river was at a higher tide level this time, which is a lot more aesthetically pleasing.

I came across this bunch of funny cows, whose paddock flanks one side of the path as I start out. They ran away as I got closer, then in true stickybeak-cow style, they started sneaking up on me! I spent a hilarious 10 minutes making them chase me up the paddock – stopping suddenly to turn and look at them so they would stop in their tracks, only to start following me again! (I was hard up for entertainment today) 🙂

Following is the sample of some of the trees that came down in the storm the other day and a sound reason to not go walking when its windy! Wouldn’t be much fun getting clobbered by one of these

I heard several pademelons crashing through the bush – but only got one dodgy photo for you

I didn’t get so much as rained on as constantly sprinkled on today.

Often when walking this course, you see random items of clothing propped up in trees & on stumps. Kind citizens finding these objects display them better in the hopes the owners spot them and claim them.

Today before finding the little beanie, I also saw a child’s sock. Seems like some kid was slowly shedding clothes on the way around!

I came home and went to give the girls another feed and was missing three… found that the three youngsters put themselves to bed early! I know a few mothers that would wish their kids would do this!! 🙂

At least they have gotten the hang of the new coop and roost, so we don’t have to go relocating chickens in the dark anymore. They learn quickly!

And lastly – getting the refresher on my limited crochet skills from Margie has been great – I am zooming around my rug and can now cover both legs!!

I hope what is left of your weekends is great

Cheers

It was an undecided day, weather wise. We got a little rain overnight, and the day started a bit gloomy. By the time early afternoon arrived the day could have gone either way, so Mana and I decided to risk a potential downpour and go for a walk up Sisters Beach.

Darn good choice.

We met about 6 people and three dogs.

Other than that, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves!!

As you walk up the beach, you find interesting rock formations/colours and today a bit more seaweed. (Mana must have been relieved I didn’t have collecting bags with me!)

Mana soaking up the sun & surf

I like where the scrubby grass meets the sand. All this area is Rocky Cape National Park

We came across this great little display of beach treasures. Someone has had a wonderful time putting this together.

Always fun for me to click away with the camera

A closer look at seaweed

I am wondering if I got a bit sunburnt today – while it wasn’t hot, walking into the sun was a bit intense!

We did little else today – sure was a wonderful way to relax and recharge our energy levels!

I hope your day was super too!

Cheers

First – Sorry I have to postpone “Ruby Tuesday” I had planned to go over there today and fine tune a story etc but a friend, Jeff rang and asked if I could help paint his house – in exchange for a load of firewood!!  Yeah! Count me in!

For someone that enjoys looking for ways to reduce spending & be economical, swapping some manual labour for firewood is a no-brainer to me!

Our friends bought a little investment house – a fixer-upperer in a great area – and are getting things sorted out for the keen tenants that are waiting to move in.

(Note *Friends* Actually family, but down here in Tasmania that could get complicated. Jeff’s Nan is my mothers second cousin. If you want to work out the nitty gritty cousin titles feel free, but it hurts my brain. 🙂 I label everyone ‘cousin’ or ‘friend’ and move on! 😀 )

Mana hasn’t done house painting before, so I dragged the poor girl out of the garden and gave her a paintbrush! (nothing like offering our international guests some variety hey?)

We started easy on the doors and then moved onto skirting boards and doorframes

Had to paint a few areas that already had the new carpet down!! Scared much???

Thankfully no mishaps and we pretty much got done what Jeff needed to have finished today.

So one day of painting will give us a good number of warm nights by the fire for free! Yay!

Not to mention a couple of days of getting very warm stacking the wood up!

I am totally off to bed – Just a couple of photos of the clouds this afternoon to leave you with… they looked a bit splendid this afternoon!

Cheers all

As promised – we had raspberry ice-cream for breakfast. (and Emma followed it up with pizza – well, its not a proper holiday until you have had pizza and ice-cream for breakfast is it?)

And I can happily report that the ice-cream tasted amazing!

Today we got a LOT of rain. And its about time too! The recent grey days have hardly yielded a drop, so the garden must have enjoyed itself!

With the help of my lovely niece Emma and her fancy phone, we created a video to show those who were interested in learning how to fold those origami seed packets, seen in an earlier post.

However… seems there are limits to what I can upload here and my video was about 200 gig oversized! Oopsie.

Damn.

So… I opened a facebook page for “Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt” as the easiest way to share it that I could think of right now (not being the most tech-savvy person I am at the bottom end of the learning curve with this blogging 🙂 )

You can take a peek here . (I’ll figure out what else to do on the facebook page as I go along!) 😀

So…(again) as a preliminary instruction, grab your square piece of paper, turn to the blank side and mark out each third of the paper – for most standard origami papers that means every 5cm

You don’t need to draw each fold like I did in the video. That was just so you could see more clearly where the folds were to go.

Then watch video.

I apologise to those who don’t use facebook. When I have more time and get more savvy, I will work out a different plan of attack!

And if all else fails – stop-motion-photography! (What else am I going to do with those upcoming long winter days huh?)

I also had to finish off and wrap a few presents that we are sending back with Emma for various birthdays that have come and gone. Yes – on one hand its the cheapskates way of moving things about… but on the other hand I know they will get there. I have had a couple of postal hiccoughs recently – one parcel is currently lost between here and Canada – so at least I know this little lot will have a good chance of making it.

A friend of mine makes these amazingly cute little bags and sells them at the market for a crazy $5 each! Makes the perfect ‘wrapping’

I actually suck at wrapping. I am not neat and my only saving grace in the above photo is how pretty the origami paper is that I used!

The Japanese have got wrapping down to a fine art. In fact, there are lots of people in Japan, whose sole job is wrapping presents at department shops! Their presentation is superb, and even when you buy a box of bakery biscuits or cake its wrapped with tender loving care with all the trimmings – here in Oz, you’re lucky if someone shoves it in a bag for you!

And this is how you wrap sweets –

Beats plastic hands down any day!

Well, that’s all from me today! I will leave you with a few sunset photos I took a couple of hours ago – again after the rain, the sky and clouds were beautiful. (So far the across the road farmer hasn’t noticed me using his fencepost as position of choice for my photography!)

Cheers!

Hello,

It was a really lazy, low key day today.

I think everyone (me) was getting over the shock of the 6am start yesterday. I can’t tell you when everyone actually got up or moved out of their pjs into proper clothes… way too embarrassing 🙂

Jeff is on a nightshift, but before he went back to bed today he put the fire on for us and we totally enjoyed the cosiness, since the day was dark, gloomy and cool.

I enjoyed mucking about with photos, trying some different post processing on images, while Emma and Mana abandoned their modern technology to play a drawing game! (Wow huh?)

My very clever and artistic friend, Samantha, developed this great little drawing game. Rather than encouraging competition, it encourages imagination and creativity.

Four rolls of the dice will give the budding artist a set of directions to go ahead and draw. Among the thousands of possibilities, you may end up drawing “A fat grey mouse, making pancakes” a “Determined sky-blue sheep flying a spaceship” or a “Hairy violet spider wearing cowboy boots”

It totally solves that “Mummy – what should I draw nowww?” question!

You can buy the drawing game via Samantha’s Etsy Shop or check out Sam’s instagram  – Samitomato  (I am sure I will get instagram soon – when I figure out how to drive it via PC)

Since I can’t even draw convincing stick figures, I stuck to the computer and played about a little with some past photos:

Time to hit the hay.

Cheers

Oh I could have rolled over and gone straight back to sleep when the alarm went off.  I had to seriously guilt myself into crawling out from under the warm doona and get my butt in the car!

The car was pretty much packed the night before and Jeff came with me to get a spot and unload it before returning home to collect the girls.

I got a bit of a weird spot – I got moved from the one I thought I was getting. I really need to remember to call the council and book a spot if I intend on going. (It also means I don’t need to be there quite so early)

Weather wise it actually turned out great again! Warm, mostly sunny and most importantly – no wind!

It got to about 18C (64F) today – but its cooled right off tonight. Right now its 6C (42F). We totally have the fire going tonight.

People were in a good mood today and the atmosphere was really friendly. Lots of people stopped to chat & so many people brought their dogs along for a walk – this thrilled the girls no end as they had to meet and pat each one (if their owners said it was ok of course)

Someone had bunnies for sale! They were really cute. Of course Emma totally wanted one. I figured it wasn’t the kind of souvenir that I should send her home with. (My sister would have had a lot to say I am sure! haha)

I did end up selling quite a good lot of stuff today. The tomato relish sold less than usual, but I sold out of the beetroot chutney and the sweet chilli sauce. Emma totally charmed a customer into buying the last sweet chilli sauce bottle in a performance that was actually stage-worthy! 😀

The raspberry jam was a really steady seller today! Glad I made a couple of new batches!

I sold a few packs of seeds…

We managed to clear a tray of seedlings… hmmmm… now to keep them alive and unchewed until the next market!

I also brought along my new Swear Jar. Sadly I gained no coin for it this time, but I am going to work on that. To be honest I think I may owe it a few dollars already.  I got my ‘Swear Jar Sticker Pack’ in the mail last week and Emma tarted up a nice big jar (optimism) to make it look pretty.

Its all part of the Love Your Sister fund raising campaigns for breast cancer research. One of Australia’s fabulous actors, Samuel Johnson, rode his unicycle around Australia to raise funds, awareness and set a new world record for the most kms ridden as his lovely sister, Connie, tragically has terminal breast cancer.  He managed to travel 15,955 kilometres over 364 days and raised over 1.5 million dollars!!!

Their new target is 10 million dollars and Sam has quit acting until the goal has been reached. I think he possibly almost gave Connie a heart attack with that announcement!  🙂

I feel a little proud as after a facebook post by Sam that had a few rude words (ok – it was more than a few! lol) and then Connie posting to do the correct sisterly thing and tell him off for his language, I made a comment saying that swear jars should be his new branch of fund raising! This made them laugh a lot – but the next thing I knew – They were off and running with it!

Every bit helps when it comes to cancer research – not many of us are unaffected by it these days.

Although now I have my swear jar in the house I may have to give up playing Soda Crush as I don’t think I can afford that kind of moolah! 😀 😀

I sold another pair of ‘cozy cuffs’ but my stock is rather low as I have been busy over summer with other things. Now that its getting cooler I need to get click-clacking!!

These special crocheted cuffs are made by my friend, Nozomi’s mother. They are absolutely gorgeous and waaaaaay beyond my skill level.  Every now and again I sell a pair for her.

Sadly no-one bought a photo-card today! 🙁 Never mind! I got a lot of really lovely compliments so my ego was boosted, if not my wallet. 😀

Overall it was worth getting out of bed, as I came home $189.50 richer! So I am pretty pleased with that. Not to mention we all had a great day out.

Of course, no market is complete without dropping in on Ruby for a late lunch/afternoon tea!

Well – its time for me to be off and make a start on tomorrow mornings sleep in!!

I hope all your weekends have been fabulous!

Cheers