Back!

Hooray, we have our replacement modem and are once again connected with the world.  :-)

Well, what is there to say about the last week except weather, weather, weather.  Rain, ferocious wind and hail on continuous repeat.  Our shed held up brilliantly, and our only damage is a couple of trees down on our boundary.  We didn't even lose power which is saying something, we fared better than a lot of people in Perth I think.

It has been rather chilly.  Her Majesty is faring well though, apart from a quick dash outside for a wee, she rarely ventures out from her warm little nest, wallowing in its comforts.

 

Last week I spent an afternoon bottling the olives that have been soaking in brine for a couple of weeks.  Look at this, 52 jars of olives, yeehar!  We'll leave them for a month now then see how they taste.  They are in 3 parts of 5% brine and 1 part white wine vinegar (except for some that have cider vinegar when I ran out of wine vinegar, I wonder how much difference it will make?) and a variety of additions such as lemon pieces, garlic cloves, rosemary, thyme, chilli and coriander seeds.  I hope they are nice!

We are impatiently awaiting the delivery and construction of our new water tank, should be in the next few days.  Was meant to be 2 weeks ago and when we enquired as to the hold-up we found out that the local installer had decided to leave Albany to work in the mines!  So there is a team coming down from Perth to install ours and two other tanks.

In the meantime, we finally went and bought a water pump for our existing tank a couple of weeks ago.  Up to now we have only had gravity fed water, which can get a little tedious when hand-watering plants with a trickle from a hose.  Check out the water gushing from the hose now!

And this is the pump, a Davey pump, 35 litres a minute.

Steve has been busy building the final section of the vegetable growing area.  The fencing is all done and the beds are prepared and planted, and the pièce de résistance is the old kitchen sink for a fish cleaning/vegie washing area.  Steve built a framework for it and it empties into a thing called a food digester, which is sort of like a compost bin except there is a big basket section which is underground.  There the fish guts and skeletons can sit and rot down, enriching the soil but at the same time being (hopefully) stink-proof and vermin proof.  There is no tap attached to the sink, but we will run a hose down to the vegie area and set up a tap from that.  Here is Steve proudly displaying the sink, with feathered friends in the background.

Speaking of feathered friends, our family of six magenpies are amazing, they spend hours fossicking through the leaf mulched paths and planted beds in the vegie garden, sifting through finding bugs to gobble up.  They are very meticulous in their onslaught.

And when they have had enough of bugs, they warble at the door of the shed until we give them their rolled oats.

We have been blessed by the visits of friends recently.  Anne and Ian popped in with their friends John and Kim who have settled in Perth from Maine USA (sorry, forgot to get a photo!).  My friend and previous co-worker from Princess Margaret Hospital, Dot, happened to be at a quilt camp five minutes away, so I kidnapped her for a few hours to show her our little neck of the woods.

 And Steve's national manager from some years back, Peter, popped in with his wife Wendy.  They are from Victoria and are on a driving holiday around the country.

 Lovely to see you all! :-)
Ok, I think I've caught up with all the news now.  The rain has stopped so I might wander out and see how the plants have all fared overnight.