Birds Eye View From A Drone

The wildlife is showing itself more and more as we head deeper into spring.  Voldemort spends a lot of time sunning himself on the arm of the settee.  Did you know that King Skinks love banana?  I throw him a couple of small pieces most days and he gobbles it up.

 There are a lot of kookaburras around at present, sitting motionless waiting for a snack to show itself.  I guess they are nesting and feeding hungry babies?  I like this photo as it shows my bank of clivea that are bursting into beautiful orange flower.

 This is Coco the Quenda or Southern Brown Bandicoot.  We were really surprised the other morning to see it scoffing the wrens' desiccated coconut just outside the back door.  Normally it does the rounds outside the house just on dark, we always know when its around as Neo starts darting from window to window watching it.  This one turned up at 9.30 in the morning.  I love that it has coconut all over the end of its nose :-)

 I'd love to know if it's male or female.  Apparently the female has a backwards facing pouch, to keep the dirt out of it when she is digging.

 Here's a little video of the Quenda.

 I've been busy in the kitchen making hordes of sausage rolls amongst other things.  This picture shows the filling being put atop the pastry sheets before brushing the edges with egg and rolling them up.

 All cooked and ready to be bagged up for the freezer.  When I make them I do it enmasse, nothing more satisfying than knowing there are over a hundred of them in the freezer, healthy homemade sausage rolls, ready to pull out for a quick lunch.

 Steve, who is the bread maker of the house....we have a bread making machine, has been experimenting with making bread rolls lately...they are SO GOOD!  Surprising really as it's the same bread mix to make either a loaf or rolls, but it seems to taste better as rolls.  Which is not necessarily good as we scoff far too many of them!  He went a step further the other day and had a go at making focaccia.  It came out of the oven beautifully crusty, the only thing we did wrong was leave it a bit too long before eating it, so by then the lovely crunchy crust has gone soft.  It still tasted really nice though.

 We welcomed the arrival of eight family members on Saturday, so I busied myself earlier in the week with finding spots for enough beds and making them up warm and cosy as the weather is frankly crap at present, cold and very very wet.  This is Michelle's bed, it's actually in our walk-in wardrobe!  We named it Harry Potter's  Cupboard Under The Stairs and Michelle declared it to be very comfortable and cosy :-)

 I love taking shoe photos when there are loads of people here.  They were all rather soggy actually and were drying out.  Stevie and Riley and I had huge fun on Sunday afternoon playing in the creek despite the weather.  We took off our shoes and rolled up our pants and stomped around, wriggling our toes in the sand, flinging mud around and made excellent dams.  It was very good fun :-)

 Paul brought his drone with him, here he is with the girls driving it with a little remote control. 

 We were amazed at the footage from the drone, it's wonderful!  Here is a still shot of our place.

 And a still shot of the vegie patch, chook yard, orchard and my front fenced garden.  We were amazed to see how straight all the lines are.

And here is a video from the drone.  Absolutely amazing!

 And finally, here is my ta-dah moment, my crocheted blanket is finished, it is on our bed and I just love sleeping underneath it!  It kept me busy over the whole of winter. :-)

Until next time.... xx