One Lonely Apple

I'm sitting here at the window, snug and dry in my ugg boots, watching the rain run off the top of the water tank.  Winter has certainly arrived, it's freezing cold, the wind is howling and it is wet!

 A photo of the water tank level shows that it has increased dramatically in the last few weeks, excellent, we love a full water tank.

 This is something I hadn't expected with our new blinds, they do a grand job of stopping the driving rain coming straight at the house, but they also get this pretty sort of iridescent sheen to them when saturated with rain.  It only takes a hearty gust of wind and it all falls off, but it's pretty while it lasts.

 We donned our wet weather gear and had a property wander a little earlier, here is Steve all rugged up.

 And what did we find?  We found a flowing creek at long last, hooray!  It's been very late to start this year, testament to the dry autumn we had.

 Here's Growler and her joey Pixie, watching as we did our creek walk in the rain

 

I love this plant, this is the new growth on my Karri Oak, or Chorilaena quercifolia, a large shrub that is endemic to Karri forests.  I planted this one in my garden about 6 years ago, it took a good 3 years to settle in but it grows really well now and the birds love it as it has small but nectar filled white flowers in spring.

 This is Grevillea olivacea, Orange Glow, growing in the same little front garden as the Karri Oak.  Same again, it took quite a few years to become a happy plant and this is the second winter that has produced a huge mass of winter flowers, beautiful.  This is a very large, dense shrub and the wrens love it, they spend a lot of time deep within, it keeps them safe.

 And of course, the winter flowering favourites, the acacias.  Mine are Acacia fimbriatas, I also have Acacia Cyclops but they are not quite flowering yet.  Such a lovely cheery show, and they smell so fresh and fragrant.  The bees are in happy, buzzy heaven.

 As the weather has been a bit yuk, we've been doing inside things.  Steve came home with a 10 kilo bag of pickling onions for only $8, so we had to put those to good use!

 After much chop chop chopping and cry cry crying, we were ready for action.

 We have five big jars of pickled onions,

 and eight jars of caramelised onion chutney.  Now we have to patiently wait a month for both to mature before we can sample them.  :-)

 Egg production has been very slow the last six weeks, averaging one a day, but it's interesting how a couple of days with some sunshine changes that very suddenly.  Today we found three eggs, good stuff.  I want to make a batch of lime butter as we are drowning in limes, and now I have enough eggs to do it, yay.  I found out the other day that I can freeze the lime or lemon butter, that is really good to hear as it urks me that it only has a limited life in the fridge, so that solves the problem!

 This photo of a forlorn tiny Sundowner apple is a statement proclaiming the very last piece of fruit from this season in the orchard. We have had a constant supply of fresh fruit from the orchard since just after Christmas until today, a fact that I am thrilled about as we carefully planned our orchard and the various varieties of stone and pome fruits so that we had continuous fruiting for six months, and this year anyway, it worked extremely well.  And we now have citrus in abundance so it's all good!

 And now I feel justified in pulling out my stock of apples that I dehydrated a few months ago, when we had a glut of fruit.  What a lovely way to continue with eating our own fruit, I love dried fruit and find it hard to only have a little!

 Continuing on with the inside activities, I am still crocheting at a furious pace.  A secret crochet mission has just been completed, more about that later, but for now I have made a start with the scary scary task of trying to crochet myself a cardigan.  It's a big learning curve making a thing that has to be a specific size!

 And here's the start of another new project, lots of colour in this one

 I thought I'd have a go at making a crocheted rug using fabric scraps.  It's slow going as it's hard work on the hands so I shall pick it up every now and then, but I rather like the concept, and using something that is technically rubbish for a useful purpose always pleases me no end.

 I've done a bit more on my embroidered oven cloth

 Steve was dabbling in the shed and he found a half finished woodwork project.  He'd put it away because something about it was frustrating him, but he is looking at it with new eyes now.  It's meant to be an open book, the other way up, but he got stuck on how to create the look of the open pages.  But he had a thought to display it this way up instead, and as I have always loved how he did the cover, I think this is splendid idea.  He's got some more playing to do with it but I am happy to see it resurface again.

 I went back to Bunnings with the non-working hedge trimmer....it ended up being a faulty battery so they gave me another one, and all is well.  We also added a reciprocating saw to the power tool collection.  We've had a little play with this during some brief sunshine, it does a great job of pruning and also cutting smaller pieces of firewood that are a bit small for the chainsaw.  So with this and the hedge trimmer which will whisk through the softer growth of the overgrown plants, when I finally get my arse into gear and get out there, the garden should look spick and span in no time :-)

 And as is the way, you can always find a positive in life if you look for it, so through the cold, windy and wet weather, we are blessed with the most magnificent of sunsets.  Makes the heart sing :-)

Until next time.... xx