Foggity Fog Fog Fog

It seems that the south of WA has been very foggy lately.  We woke up to this pea souper this morning, it didn't clear until after 11am. 

 Eerie and beautiful

 It's rather chilly too

 Even a fog enshrouded Acacia fimbriata in flower is a beautiful thing

as is the Silvereye enjoying nectar from the flower of the Moonlight Grevillea behind the shed

 Our little Navel orange tree has surpassed itself this year, look at all that fruit!  It needs to stay on the tree for a while longer though, they are still a bit sour.

The garlic is starting to grow.

Here is Pawly watching what's going on.  He is so named as he was very very poorly as a joey, but he's okay now.  I think his growth was a bit stunted but he starting to fill out now as a five year old.

 This is the mess of the chook yard's nets, they were ripped to shreds by the recent storms and are full of huge holes.  We are going to take it all down and replace it with wire to make it a lot stronger and more permanent.

 We had a ripper hail storm a week ago

 The blueberry plants are appreciating the cold snap, and this variety has put on a magnificent show of colour with its foliage.  Interestingly, only one variety is doing this, the other has still got green leaves. 

 This is my African Violet that was grown from a cutting.  It is very happy sitting in the kitchen window and is rewarding me with lots of pretty, frilly flowers.

 This time of year is good for cooking and stocking up the freezer.  These are Steve's apple and rhubarb pies, it was hard to find space in the freezer amongst the containers of soup, curries and cottage pies that I'd been busy doing.  Nothing better than grabbing dinner out of the freezer for a quick meal.

 Neo is happy, he loves it once we start lighting our fire to keep the house warm.  Here he is atop the bookshelf, his Man Tower, and refusing to put on a cute face for the camera.  He is a very stubborn cat when it comes to photography! :-)

 We dashed up to Perth overnight as it was present giving time!  Happy Happy Birthday to Riley who is now eight!  Riley chose Timezone as her birthday outing so off we went, walking through the park to the shopping complex near Paul's house to  watch a frenzied hour of fun.  This is a basketball hoop shooting thing that the girls enjoyed.

There is another birthday coming up too, our darling baby boy Paul is turning the BIG 30 in a few weeks!  We feel old!  ha ha

I crocheted Paul a lap blanket, I was amazed to find a multicolour yarn that had all his favourite colours in it.  And it's gradient yarn that has lovely gradual colour changes, so it was very enjoyable watching the colour movements as I crocheted it.

 At the beginning of the year, Steve has a lump of sheoak timber and an idea in his head to make Paul a box.  This is the start of the many hours of routing to create the holes within.

 Lots and lot of smoothing, measuring and routing continued

 And this is the end result, isn't it beautiful. 

 Sheoak has the most magnificent grain, photos just don't do it justice.

 And this is what's within when the doors are opened.

 A nice bottle of Glayva - a whisky liqueur, two etched glasses from the Torbay Glass Studio near us, and a little piece of family history - one of Steve's father's pocket watches.

Happy Happy Birthday to you dear son xx

Until next time.... xx

Vroom Vroom

My goodness it's been a strange few months, life is only just starting to slowly normalise once again.  It's interesting how when being told a major organ in your body is playing up how it screws with your head, not to mention the tramping back and forth to appointments and dealing with horrible side effects of new medications.  In summary I have a heart that likes to beat to its own very crazy rhythm and the cardiology gurus decided that it would be better for my health to make it behave itself.  So, after many tests and trials of medication and then a procedure that unfortunately failed, I am now on another medication which thankfully is more agreeable.  More appointments to follow but hopefully we have found a status quo.

Anyway, moving on.  In the last blog post I had only just picked the olives, since then they have sat in brine for some weeks, and today was bottling day.  First I amassed all the bits and bobs that were needed.

 Into each sterilised jar I popped a sprig of rosemary, a slice of lime and a garlic clove, then in went the olives to an inch from the top.  Then I filled the jars with a mixture of 2/3rds 5% brine and 1/3rd apple cider vinegar, then added a centimetre of olive oil on top to stop any air getting to the olives. 

 17 wonderful jars of our very own, home grown, Frantoio olives! Technically Frantoios are more of an oil olive, they don't have a huge amount of flesh on them, but this was the first olive tree we bought when we knew no better, and it's the one that is fruiting.  We have two Kalamata trees but they are still young and haven't started fruiting yet.  The Frantoio olives are still very nice to eat, they have a nutty sort of flavour, so we are looking forward to sampling them in a month or two.  :-)

 Steve was also busy in the kitchen, cooking up some of our Granny Smith apples for making pies for the freezer, yum!

 This is a nice shrub in the back garden, a cherry guava, and I like the fruit very much.  A lot of people don't but I enjoy grabbing a few fruit from the bush when I go out the back.  I have to share the fruit with the birds, they are very partial to them too, and that's fine with me.

 There's nothing I like better that bee bums poking out of flowers.  These happy bees are having a marvelous time collecting pollen from my Kunzea.  This pretty pink Kunzea is known as Solomon's Pink.

 I'm still trying to get the perfect photo of the Red-Eared Firetail male.  This one is a bit clearer.

 ...and this one shows his profile.  They spend most of their time on the ground foraging around, I'm so happy that they are in the back garden now.

 Even though the weather is totally bizarre this year, we are starting to get the usual beautiful sunsets of autumn, except they are late.  I love the gorgeous red glow of the setting sun in this one.

 ...and the wild look of the clouds whipped up in the sky with golden glow of the sun behind.

 This was an afternoon when lots of people were burning off and there was a lot of smoke in the air, which ended up turning the sun pink.

 We decided to have a day out yesterday and took ourselves into Albany for the 2018 Albany Classic, a day of car racing around the streets of Albany town.  We parked down by the water and crossed over the railway line on the pedestrian overpass.  This is a photo of Albany's new silo art.  I am trying to like it, it is certainly different.  Steve thinks it looks unfinished and needs some background.  It is meant to be some sort of Leafy Sea Dragon.  Most people, including us, were unaware Albany even had these!  We were expecting something more well known, like whales perhaps.  Most people we know are not that impressed with the subject choice.  Anyway, it's better than a plain white silo hey. 

 We wandered up the lower end of York Street, admiring the shiny and lovingly maintained cars.

 Look at this beauty.  The main streets of Albany are closed off and become a racing track, it must be a massive effort to bring in fencing, concrete walls, remove the roundabouts and all other many tasks to bring the event to fruition.  The setting up happens overnight, as does the clearing up, to hats off to all who make it happen. 

 There are all sorts of races for differing types of vehicles, here's an older one roaring up Aberdeen Street.

 These ones are heading up Grey Street.

And for those of you that like car racing, here are a few videos we took...
These are a line of cars heading out for their particular race.  We were very taken with the beautiful, white, XK120 Jaguar coupe, it's all lovely and round,  in the middle of  this line-up.

Race in progress.  These cars have just roared down York Street, and have turned up Grey Street, left turn up ahead then they will tear down Collie Street.

Steve took this little video, his favourite car is in the race, I think it's the fourth car, a white one called a Shelby. 

It was a great day out, the weather was perfect and we toddled off home with throaty car sounds reverberating in our ears, the whiff of exhaust in our noses, glad that we'd made the effort to go.  :-)

Until next time...xx