It wasn’t too bad out there today! Both Jeff and I got out there to get into some tasks before the rain sets in from now! (Yes and even another load of laundry done and dried! I am on a roll)(Lets not talk about the folding ok?)
I finished pruning off another bush while Jeff got into the lawn
Was a bit long
While all the mowing and whipper-snippering is going on, the gates are open and the fences down – its heaven for the chooks as they can free range a little further than normal. Its very exciting for them!
Pip also got dragged out from under the doona to get a little sunshine as well
Although his idea of ‘helping’ is to sit on my shoulders while I am trying to prune – wasn’t what I had in mind!
I got about halfway through the Salvia clippings, putting them through the little mulcher
They actually looked quite pretty all chopped up
I started filling up the second of my new composts with the clippings and chippings!
Note to self – must add worms
I did notice the first bin was warmer and showing condensation on the inside of the lid! I figure this is a good sign
Jeff had moved on from the lawn and was making a dent in all the rocks and gravel that had washed down the backyard in the flood and was starting to reconstruct the path. I was getting chilly, so I left the mulcher and started raking gravel.
Its a bit less of a free fall going down this path now, and starting to look a little tidier down the back
In the hothouse, one of the smallest broccoli plants is actually showing a tiny broccoli starting!
These are looking healthy, but they could still turn out to be cabbages…
Its so nice to look back after a day outside and see things looking markedly better!
Flowerdale put on the blue skies and sunshine for us today – she didn’t even bat an eyelid when I – ever the optimist – put on two loads of washing!
I totally got into that salvia today!
Half way there
There is a reason I am neither hairdresser nor stylist!
Is that called a ‘short, back & sides’ ??
There was afternoon left, so I nipped over to Ruby’s and saw she was taking the same kind of liberties with the weather as well –
Ruby has been suffering for a few months with a really bad foot – well, its her toes really. She told me she had been “Very kind to it” (ie she had sat on her bottom too much resting it) but couldn’t resist the sunshine and was out with Margie making a dent in the weeding
This was the weed we were waging a personal war on today
Ruby went inside to sort out the kettle and some afternoon tea, while I filled up the green bucket a few times with the offending weed
The green wheelie bin was fairly full – something that will please Ruby immensely!! It really annoys her to send that bin out to the curb with space in it. She feels she is not getting her money’s worth if its not chokkas!! 😀
I enjoyed going inside for my cuppa and delicious bit of raspberry slice, made by Margie!
I have no particular stories today, but it was just lovely spending time with Ruby after us both having enjoyed the lovely weather. Its like having your batteries recharged and I am sure we are both solar powered!! 🙂
Have a lovely day wherever you are in the world!
Cheers!
PS – this shot is my favourite! I find Ruby takes a fabulous shot when she thinks I have finished mucking about with the camera and she laughs or smiles naturally!! I took the last shot when she wasn’t expecting it and I practically got a finger shaken at me!!
I got a bit caught up today and didn’t get over to see Ruby for a cuppa, so that will have to wait until tomorrow!
Tonight I uploaded the last album for the photo – challenge I have been running on facebook these past ten days – so I thought I would share with you the entries I put in.
Day one was “ORANGE” This whole album looks great when you glance at all the photos and varying shades of orange together!
I found a bright orange fungi down at Dip Falls
Day two was “HOMESCAPE” My made up name for landscape around your home – house or town or area! This was a really surprisingly great album – we have a number of members scattered literally all over the world and it was so fabulous to see where they all called home!
My photo was a rare early morning for me in the fog in our yard!
Day three was “SQUARES” I was running out of time and still nothing really grabbed my attention so I grabbed some sugar cubes in the supermarket and set up my tripod with my macro lens.
BTW disappointingly sugar cubes are not even close to being a cube these days!!
Happily group members had no shortage of amazing squares of their own – ranging from chocolate, to shadows and cleverly set up scrabble boards!!
Day four was “OLD FASHIONED” and you already know in depth how I got my shot. Again the variety of interpretations from group members was fabulous – from beautiful old clunky classic typewriters, to heirlooms and LP’s!!
Day five was “BUBBLES” Oh my what a fun album that is!! Although a distressing amount of bubbles from washing the dishes featured!! Some people had suds, some had amazing free-floating bubbles all nicely lined up (jealous) others had bubbles in drinks.
I settled on a single floating bubble for mine!
Day six was “FROM THE GRAVEYARD”
I find graveyards fascinating! There are some really interesting headstones and descriptions. Its like a small history of people to wander through. Group members have come up with some fabulous shots – some spooky night shots, other poignant glimpses into a past life all quite different and wonderful!
I somehow avoided all the powerlines to get this shot in our run down neglected little old graveyard
Day seven was “WINDOWS” Again – totally enjoyed the variety that people put forward.
Mine was more ‘space for a window’
Day eight was “FEAR” which scared quite a few people. Working out how to go about it!! We have everything from bathroom scales to spiders!!! lol
I was clueless until the night I had to post it and came up with acrophobia! (with my ‘boxmen’)
Do their expressions say “Fear” ?? lol
Day 9 was “BICYCLES” So far some really great shots coming in. Rusted tricycles to sleek new machines!!
Jeff is miffed I only used the shadow of his bike – she is called Betty (Or sometimes “The Other Woman” 😀
And lastly tomorrow, day ten, I have asked for “EVERYDAY OBJECT/S IN AN UNUSUAL PLACE” I am expecting some fun stuff in this one.
Jeff and I spent some quality time at Fossil Bluff taking photos of a portable clothesline! Did we get weird looks?? Oh yes we did!!
I captioned this something like “Laundry day in the country – once I have beaten my clothes with a rock, I hang them out to dry!”
Two ladies that read this blog, Lyra and Amanda, have also joined in contributing photos and it was really wonderful to have a couple of new additions to the challenge. They have put in some wonderful images and we are enjoying some sights from a different part of the world!
This is the sixth time I have run one of these. Usually around 30 people join in, give or take a few. Some group members have been in every single one too, which is lovely!
Its all quite relaxed and people seem to have a really good time.
We are voting on each album, and in a few days we shall see who comes out on top this time! oooooo – the suspense! 😀
Actually – the surprising thing is to most people, but the hardest thing about the challenge is choosing where to put your votes!!
Hope you have enjoyed this odd collection of photos!
Well… Screecher was clearly feeling better, because I found her wandering, bold as brass, up near the house! No idea how she got out. All the other girls were where they were meant to be!
Snack timeThe eggs get really mucky in winter!There is one ‘working’ nest, the other two look like this! Little scruffers!
The fire was well overdue for a clean out – so I got my bucket and got to work
Full!
I took the ashes down and threw them in the main compost. I decided against putting them in the new ones, because my best friend told me how she did that and the ashes weren’t quite cold and set her compost bin on fire!! I decided to err on the side of caution!!
This is NOT a job for a windy day!! (Its not so fabulous to step outside and get a face full of ashes!!)
Now our fire is beautiful again
Makes winter worthwhile!
Speaking of composting things, I decided to chuck the extra food scraps that the spoiled chickens ignore into the Gee Whizzer and get them nice and fine to hurry the composting along
So I went and fed the worms
If I am going to be honest, it looks like someone threw up in here….
A lot of my bulbs and rhizomes are coming up already. I feel its a bit early since we only just started the second month of winter!
Found these on top of the soil!! Will relocate to new home
The Day lilies are looking good!
Lots of iris well on their way too
My Protea is looking so nice at the moment. Plenty of big bold flowers!
Bud
The photo below was taken the day after our flood. Its a bit hard to see, but the garden outlined by the driftwood on left has half of the mulch washed away thanks to the flood
Newspaper showing where mulch should be!
I was impressed to see all the dirt smoothed and covered over yesterday. I thought my fabulous husband had done a bit of random gardening for me. Turned out it was the chickens!! On their accidental day out yesterday they must have had a lovely industrious time in that garden!! (Although I suspect all my worms have long gone!!)
A good job done by the chickens!!
I finished off my day by making sausages in pineapple gravy, draped over mashed potato and fresh broccoli for dinner…. and a chocolate self saucing pudding for dessert. 🙂 Yum
If you are not Australian, you may not know we all headed to the polls today to vote on who our next Prime Minister is going to be. (Who really probably has a good chance of being replaced during his or her term anyway, as has been the trend of recent years!!!!)
Nevertheless – my “Rainbow of the Day” shone up over the polling booths which was a lovely distraction from politics!!
I was with my cousin, Fiona (from yesterdays Fridays Footprints post) and we were two happy little tree hugging greenies together! 😀
On the way home we drove past one of those fabulous random country things – a young fellow playing the bagpipes by the highway for his family selling $2 pumpkins!! Fiona insisted we go back for a photo (and a bunch of pumpkins! 😀 )
Fabulous!
Back home I had a little wander through the yard to say hi to the chooks and give them some scrap bread
There are a few of the girls that like to snatch directly from my hand
Apparently I had left the gate open this morning and there were chickens everywhere that they shouldn’t be when Jeff got up! They must have had a wonderful morning!! Ooopsie!
I had gotten up at 5.30am!!!!! Clearly the brain wasn’t up to remembering things like ‘gates’ that early. Jeff should know better than to ask me to do complex tasks before 9am
Foraging for scraps
Our Old Girl Screecher was looking very poorly this afternoon… She wouldn’t have a bar of the bread, which is very unusual. Was quite worried that, at her age, she might be heading down the slope.
She was on the nest rather than the roost when I tucked them in. I thought I would remove the eggs from under her as I hadn’t collected them today and thought she would be more comfy.
Well… I put my hand on a warm, shell-less egg!! Ew.
A really weird wobbly egg!!
I hope she feels better tomorrow!!
Only scraps left on the tomato plantsHothouse broccoli thrivingSo happy with how the garlic is shooting up!! Will have to get some seaweed mulch soon!Barrel of self seeded lettuce… do you think I may need to weed??The outside broccoli! We had a feed of this last night and it was SO good!
Paul in handyman mode. Seriously – its just not weird to visit these people and find yourself on their roof admiring the view!! You just go with the flow!!
Usually when I visit my cousins, the White Family, I can always expect the unexpected… like for example going and hanging out on their rooftop, (see above) or on one memorable occasion having one of my international guests run over by a wallaby during a bush walk… 🙂
They live in the beautiful Tasmanian bush, off grid in a house they built themselves and I get a lot of great gardening and other advice from them!
They live by a fantastic little waterfall, Detention Falls and it makes a really nice walk from their place, and a very peaceful place to visit
My cousin Fiona with our guest, Asuka – on a walk into the bush to see the falls
The bush has lots of interesting things if you look close enough
Worms aren’t normally bright yellow in my experience!!
You are greeted with this sign, that all the locals happily ignore, as the area has been part of their lives for generations.
See the small print.A steep climb down is better on your bottom!
Its a fair climb down to get to the top of the falls!!
Its quite the view over the top!
Once a secure seat is found – time for a photo!
Its nice to sit and soak up the quiet
We continued to walk down to get a different view of the falls
Rocky landscape among the scrub
We are not even at the bottom, but from here its a good view of the falls – Asuka checks out how far down we could go!
I love Detention Falls. It just shimmies down the rocks like a lady in a slinky dress!!
Detention Falls is such an elegant waterfallHills peeking through the dense treesStrange little moss art
The walk home is a good opportunity to give Alice, the border collie a good run to wear her out!
Go Alice!
Its lovely to have little secret places to go to, off the tourist track where you can appreciate a bit of nature that isn’t far from your front door!
Well… today I got my revolting weather. Cold, with howling wind and rain. It was also dark and gloomy. Perfect day to schedule in slothing and swanning about.
So – just going to quickly share Ruby’s Apple Crumble recipe, which I haven’t tried yet!
Confession. I have never made an apple crumble!! Ever!!
I have a few apples left so I really must try this one ASAP!!
The awesome tatty repurposed diary – Ruby’s recipe book!
I confess I tease Ruby a bit about her handwriting and how, based on that she should have been a doctor! She indignantly told me she used to get awards for handwriting when she was in school! 🙂
Shirley and I have translated below 😀 (You’re welcome!)
APPLE CRUMBLE
Cook up your apples – there was no quantity given but it will depend on your dish size/depth of how much you need
Spread into baking dish
Then:
1 cup Self Raising Flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons of butter rubbed into flour
Blend the sugar in and sprinkle over the top of the apple
Bake for about 20-30 minutes in moderate oven (180C or 350F) or until golden brown on top.
It sounds so easy I can’t believe I have never done this. Especially owning two crazy over producing apple trees!!
That seriously took me all day to create and get right!
Tomorrows challenge subject is “Old Fashioned”
I question my sanity because, to be perfectly honest – living in a house that is over 100 years old which is full of interesting heirlooms and fantastic old books, all of which I could have spent a few minutes on with the camera, and “Voila” !!
But no – I have to do a total furniture re-arrange, which involved a lot of my muscles to drag the big blackwood dining table out of the way and its not-so-light-and-dainty chairs. Manhandling that big awkward main chair in from the back room, meaning I had to move a whole heap of other furniture out of the way to fit it through!!
Of course the tea set I wanted was in the cabinet that was blocked by the newly moved dining table. So that got moved again!
Then I thought I couldn’t possibly have a fake afternoon tea setting, so I baked muffins.
The house was a wreck!
Shambles!!! Not to mention balancing the camera/tripod on three chairs and having to climb up there myself each shot!!!
When I had this idea, I really didn’t realise how long it would take me to get right. I started with a clean slate and added elements, and moved things around.
Tried different angles
I really wanted to use the old Carltonware tea set my Nanna gave me – this was an early effort
Tablecloth too bright and mantle too bare
Naturally the stickybeak Siamese had to come in and check proceedings!
The new arrangement caused temporary collapse.
I added in my great grandfathers books, actually found some flowers in the garden and tweaked the tea set arrangement.
By this time it was late and the lack of light was a bit of an issue. I realised that the light behind the stained glass had gone, so I had to go out and set up a lamp for the final shot!
Almost there
My delightful husband woke up – rested after his nightshift, wandered through the rubble and didn’t blink an eye!! (Does he think this is normal behaviour??) The muffins were still warm and he was pretty happy to sit down to a cuppa and a couple of fresh muffins (so I gained points there)
Midnight now and most things are back where they came from.
I did leave the mantle pretty much with its new style as I really love the look.
And of course… whats a day in Flowerdale without a gorgeous rainbow to clear away the winter blues??
Cheers all!
Just about to put muffins in the oven when I spied this out the kitchen window!!
Ruby waving her wooden spoons about – since we were talking about baking!
I dropped into Ruby’s early this afternoon to chat about this and that. Her friend Shirley was there and Margie also came in for a cuppa.
The topics skipped over this and that – I shared my news of the photo challenge and how I had bought a creepy ‘anatomically correct’ doll.
Ruby started to smile and then told us a story that my doll reminded her of.
She was five years old and her mother had given both Ruby and her sister, Sylvie, a Kewpie Doll! Very exciting. Dolls and such toys were few and far between. They were little nude dolls and Ruby told us at that age she was just becoming aware of all the body bits she had, eyes, nose ears… and a couple of other holes.
By this time we are all choking into our coffees imagining what was coming next – apparently Kewpie was lacking some vital details, so she got a pin and went to work!!
Her mother was “Not Amused” when she made the discovery!! Ruby was chuckling so hard reminiscing at this point. She said “I thought I’d forgotten all the naughty things I did as a girl!!”
I suppose its no surprise that she made a career in nursing!!
The Rhododendron showing some flowers super early!
We chatted a bit about inoculations (immunisation/vaccinations) as back in Ruby’s early days it was common to be nursing people with polio, TB & diphtheria. Vaccines for diphtheria became available in the early 30’s – Ruby started nursing in 1938.
Diphtheria for most of us is only something we read about in history books. To me it is the name of an illness that we don’t worry about anymore. Ruby see’s it very differently. First there’s the cough, then the sore throat, then the choking. She said it was an extremely cruel disease and the relief was great when they were able to inoculate the children.
A while back she told me to go look for my ancestors in the old graveyard and see the 4 children buried in the family plot. The old graves are in poor condition but I did find a very sombre piece in the local paper dated October 1870 –
The residents of the little township of
Wynyard and it surroundings were very
much startled lately, by the report that a
dangerous and insidious epidemic called
diptheria had found its way to this place
Two boy aged respectively two years and
nine months and eight years, children of
Mr William Peart. were the first suffers
and only lived a week from the time they
were taken ill. Shortly after the death
of the boys, two girls belonging to the
same family died within a week of the
death of their brothers, leaving their
parents childless. They were all buried
in the churchyard at Wynyard. The age
of the eldest girl was 13, the age of the
youngest 6 years.
This was my family! I will get to the council some day and locate their plot.
Ruby went to nurse in Waratah (Small country town which was quite isolated) in 1947/48 and was horrified to find none of the local children had been immunised. Of course she sorted them out pretty quick smart.
The deaths in Australia began dropping off quite rapidly. 4,000 deaths reported in Australia between 1926 – 1935 dropped dramatically to 44 between 1956 and 1965. A great relief to families and the doctors and nurses that had to try to save those affected.
Look at those little winter tomatoes in Ruby’s hothouse!! She is enjoying this experiment!!Self seeded potatoes EVERYWHERE!! Who knows what we might dig up. We haven’t had heavy frosts to kill them yetStill getting a decent feed of her broccoli!
There were whole wards set aside for TB and Polio in Ruby’s early nursing days.
The kids with polio pretty much lived at the hospital… often from areas far away so were without family during their stay. The nurses, staff and other patients became surrogate families.
Polio often attacked the arms and legs but Ruby said getting it in the chest wasn’t unheard of – and sadly very poor prognosis.
Bathing time was extremely busy – bandaging and rebandaging. Lots of kids, usually under the age of 14 years to attend to.
Ruby told us of a gentleman named Mr Record used to organise a team of between 4 and 6 volunteers daily to help at this time of day. They were young people aged between about 16 and 20 and were invaluable to the nurses. Ruby said she never knew how they would have coped without them. The young patients loved the interaction with the young helpers and apparently a good time was had by all – well as good as you can have with polio!
Ruby doesn’t remember anything else about Mr Record, but now, here in this little blog, just a few more people have heard what a kind man with his team of volunteers did to make a real difference in peoples lives.
Thank-fully cases of polio are rare to the point of non existent here in Australia.
I love Ruby’s weather vane!!Small bits of colour in winterThis tree is always a delight!
As we stepped out the back to say goodbye to Ruby we were greeted by this magnificent double rainbow over her yard!
What a treat! The colours were so strong that even Ruby could see and enjoy it!
Fabulous!
I hope you have enjoyed a ramble down memory lane with Ruby!
