Rain Rain & More Rain

Hi!
Its getting VERY squishy underfoot out there at the moment!
Sometimes there is a break in the rain.
I did spend some brief time in the garden (with Flea) to cover the purple garlic

Flea did manage to get in and tromp over a few plants before I spotted her!! Sigh. The whole garden at her disposal and…
Anyway, I wanted to cover it just in case squeezy rabbits get in and take a liking to the shoots

The white garlic is poking up now! yay!

The mulched potato patch has stayed free of weeds… funny to see potatoes popping up in winter though! They are super keen

Poor spring onions! Still living on the stump!

Celery… has been going in soups and also picked another batch for more celery salt

Every time I go out the back – I cause a stampede!! If one sees me, they all come gallumping up – then bellow at me.

A few of the braver ones are looking for treats

Plenty of grass over our side at the moment…

Share and share alike…

They get grass, I get cow slobber

Thats a long reach…

A few little flowers are out here and there

…

There are recipes for using fresh aloe in soap which I would like to try

I’d also like to dry then soak the calendula petals in oil before making the soap… apparently it colours the soap really nicely

I have a jar of dried ones already but they’ve faded a bit… thinking if I go to the effort I should use mostly newer ones. At the moment there isn’t a lot of calendula about though.

Speaking of soap… this was the bar I made out of the leftover soap mix the other day. I really like the wiggly stripes

A few hearts for good measure

I tested out an essential oil.. rose-geranium. Its lovely and so far its holding the fragrance (a lot of essential oil fragrances get killed by the process so I don’t use them a lot (expensive to use if you can’t smell them!))

I didn’t really get this design right… as with the rose fragrance oil, this ess oil made the batch thicken reasonably quickly.

Oh well… the colours are pretty even if the design is a bit wanting…

Today I put together a soap that will have the ‘shimmy’ pattern – hopefully. It was meant to be for a workshop tomorrow for people to cut and discover the design.
Unfortunately its been cancelled. There were only two people booked (friends) and one is sick so Sharon is planning on a pajama day and scoffing the food for lunch.
I am tempted to go out and help. (What are friends for anyway?)

Oh, I went to a local workshop that teaches people how to make baskets in the traditional manner. A lovely Aboriginal lady took the class.
It was cool seeing all the examples of baskets made with natural fibres of local plants

I got a reasonable way along with twisting my leaf strands and started the bottom of my basket

I have to go into our garden and see if I can find suitable leafy plants to continue.
I do plan to return next week to do some more.
If I can master some nice sized ones, I thought it would be a unique way to present the soap in a gift pack.

Thats about all the news from Soggy Tasmania!
Hope everyone is having a grand weekend!
Cheers!