Knitted Knockers

Storms have abounded these last 2 weeks, I think most of the south west of WA has been battered and saturated.  For us the water tanks are overflowing and a few branches down but otherwise unscathed.  Often after a big storm, there is a big swell in the ocean, and the thing to do in Albany when there's a big swell is to visit The Gap and Natural Bridge.  As it turns out, big swell day was also our Embroidery group day, and as The Gap is only a 15 minute drive from Embroidery, I kidnapped three of the ladies, and we wagged embroidery for an hour and nipped out to see the ocean.  The day was bright and sunny, giving a beautiful view over the Natural Bridge, but you could hear the undertones of the rumbling and whooshing of the power of the ocean swells.

Turning around and looking towards The Gap you can see what a 7 1/2 metre swell can do.  Can you see those tiny people on the platform of The Gap, absolutely dwarfed by the humungous spray coming up from the deep.  It was so exhilarating and majestic to watch.  

 One of the trees alongside where we park our cars has been slowly growing a  very large branch that was leaning towards the cars and we've been a bit worried about it crashing down and squashing them, so Steve decided the branch had to go.  He didn't relish the idea of being up the ladder with the chain saw, so he took the opportunity to test out the limits of the new reciprocating saw, a much safer option.  It did a darn good job, slower than the chain saw, but with the same result of the removal of the offending branch and keeping our cars safe.

 I was driving home along Cosy Corner Rd the other day and I just had to pull over and photograph this beautiful sight.  That rainbow ended in the cow paddock, just past where the cows were grazing.  So pretty.  I scanned the paddock for the pot of gold but the leprechaun that guards it must have hidden it well.  :-)

 We visited Goode Beach earlier this week and had a nice walk.  Halfway along the beach, where the sand meets the bush, you come across this stone marker, with the plaque telling you that this freshwater spring was discovered by Captain Vancouver in 1791.  The spring runs constantly I believe, and generations of Albany children have spent busy days at Goode Beach, trying to change the course of the spring with buckets and buckets of sand, but the spring always prevails in the end and goes on its merry way as always.

 We also stopped at Misery Beach, a tiny, beautiful beach with perfect white sand and an amazing view over the beautiful King George Sound.  I love the light in the photo, shining through the clouds gathering over the water.

 And this is the view from the path to the carpark, showing a bit more of King George Sound.  I am trying to find out the origin of the name Misery Beach, so far it has been suggested it was so named in whaling days, as this beach used to get offal washing up from the whaling station nearby.  I thought I had also read something historical about a group of people being marooned on the beach and as there was no fresh water, had a hell of a time.  I need to spend more time on this to get the right answer, I love a good mystery!

On Thursday mornings I go to a craft group at the Elleker Tavern.  Usually we just do our own thing, but this week we all helped out with a good cause.  What do you think you are looking at here?  No clue?  We were stuffing knockers!  They are called Knitted Knockers, and they are made for ladies who have had a mastectomy.

The organisation Knitted Knockers Australia , has volunteers knitting soft, comfortable boobs for mastectomy patients to pop into their bras to regain some shape.  They are given to patients free which I think is a wonderful wonderful thing.  One of our Elleker crafters, Robyn, is a member, so she came to craft with a pile of knitted knockers that required stuffing, so that's what we did, stuffed them and then sewed them up. 

So, how many of you staggered out of bed last night to see the Blood Moon?  We kept opening our eyes and peeping out the window, seeing heavy cloud, so expected to miss it, but just before 4am we had a brief period of a crystal clear sky, so we popped outside to see stars everywhere, and a beautiful orange/red moon with a bright bright Mars alongside.  I was too tired and cold to get the camera out so sorry, no photo! 

Until next time....xx

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

Bobble Muncher

This is the face of a naughty cat.  He enjoys sleeping on our bed, and more so since I crocheted this blanket for our bed, it's nice and snuggly.  There is quite a bit of textured crochet in the blanket, and for the most part Neo is very respectful of it.  However, there is a section just in front of his rear end that has bobbles on it, and he can't quite resist those.  He stares them down, knowing he is not allowed to be bad to the blanket,  but eventually he can't resist any more, and attacks those bobbles.  They are looking a bit fluffy from their beating.  This morning while we were in bed with a cuppa, I told him off for being a bobble muncher, and to his credit he did stop.  But Neo doesn't like to back down, so instead he decided to lick them.  Neo the bobble licker, he's a dag :-)

 We had company at the front door this morning, Lucy came right up to say hello and ask please can I have some breakfast?  She is a smart cookie is Lucy, we often find her undercover on the verandah when it's raining. 

 Here's this morning's breakfast club, having a munch on some lucerne chaff and wheat.

 Here's the chickens and Spuddles the duck.  They are thoroughly enjoying eating cabbages at present, I cut them in half and leave them in the yard, and they have a lovely time tearing it to pieces.  The yolks of their eggs are so beautifully dark because of their extra diet of cabbage.  Steve has broccolini growing in the vegie patch, and I pull off the lower leaves for the girls, they love those too, any brassica family foliage is much appreciated by the girls.

 These galahs are very cute but they are also a pain in the arse.  My goodness there are so many of them around here, most days we have 40-50 and they make quite a racket.  One thing I will say in their favour though, is that they dethatch our grass magnificently, no need to do any vertimowing on our grass!

 We finally got around to pruning the fruit trees.  This is a very respectable looking almond tree now, it was probably three times the size of this before I got to it with the cutters.  This is an odd tree, it grows rampantly in spring,  the branches grow really long, the foliage is lush and it sets loads of fruit.  But it can't seem to sustain what it has grown, and by the end of summer we find the ends of the branches die back and a lot of the fruit and foliage goes dry and falls off.  It gives the impression of perhaps not having enough water, although all the trees are irrigated and they all get the same amount.  This year we decided to prune it back really hard so it wont have quite so much of itself to maintain, if that makes sense.  If you are wondering why there is a pile of old wood under the tree, we do that to stop the chicken from digging huge holes.  They are very tenacious with their digging, to the point of exposing roots sometimes! 

I toddled off to Bunnings the other day and invested in a not too heavy, not too light  cordless hedge trimmer to make the work of pruning shrubs a little easier.  I have some osteoarthritis in my right hand these days and find using hand pruners rather painful after a while.  So I think this will be good.  I was hoping to play with it yesterday, BUT, the bloody thing wouldn't start!  We suspect there is a fault in the battery or the charger that came with it, as the battery didn't seem to charge, so I will have to take it back and get it swapped.  Oh well, I can look forward to playing with it next week instead.  :-)

 While I was in town, I popped into Spotlight and stashed up.  This particular yarn, Lionbrand Heartland is one of my absolute favourites but it's expensive so I rarely buy it.  Yesterday it was half price...happy dance!  I want to have a try at crocheting myself a cardigan with the blue yarn, I've never made an item of clothing before and would like to give it a go.  I love the colour, which is more turquoisy than the photo shows, so it's something to look forward to.

 I've been gathering up a healthy collection of non-plastic grocery bags.  I already had a few of the green shopping bags from Coles, but I also crocheted a couple and sewed another one.  As I only shop once a week or a fortnight, I need to have quite a few bags stashed up ready for all my groceries. 
I am a person who believes strongly in reusing things and thus was very pleased with my light bulb moment when I realised that I had a pile of about 10 used calico flour bags.  We buy our Lauke bread mix in 10kg bags, and these calico bags come with handles and a drawstring - perfect!  I've been testing them out at Coles the last few weeks, they are longer and skinnier than the standard grocery bags and thus wont fit on the frame thing they use to pack groceries, but I've been happily offering to pack my own groceries and its been fine.  I feel so virtuous reusing the bread mix bags.  :-)  
Now of course, the biggest problem to overcome is to remember the take the bags into Coles with me, and not leave them in the car!  I suspect we will all do this to begin with :-)

 On the embroidery front, I've been making a couple more oven cloths.  My first one, the light one bottom right, is usually very grubby because I don't have enough cloths to wash it regularly, so I cut some denim from my stash of old jeans in the sewing room, and started prettying it up. 

 Denim matches my kitchen tiles really well, so the old jeans are a great, free resource for sewing bits and pieces. Plus it's thick so I don't have to stuff it with too much more weight to avoid burning my hands.

 When I arrived at our embroidery group last Tuesday, I was very taken with this scene looking over the water towards Albany town.  There was a break in the heavy cloud bank, and the sun was shining through directly onto one tiny little cloud low in the sky.  I thought it looked really pretty.

 And then there is this magnificent sunset, looking through towards Denmark, with the red light shining onto the waters of Wilson's Inlet.  Breathtaking.

Until next time....xx

The Moon, She Hid

Our attempt at losing weight continues.  We are trying to walk as much as we can, heading down to Cosy Corner at the crack of dawn some mornings.  This was last week, very early with rain clouds gathering, so beautiful.

 It brightened briefly as the morning progressed, the oyster catchers were scurrying around, waiting to see what the wave wash brought them.

 Then when we were at the furthest point of our walk, the heavens opened.  We got absolutely drenched.  It was rather fun actually although we had to take care with climbing back over the rocks....we laid bets as to which one of us would have to be airlifted with a broken leg, but fortunately we both remained unscathed.  Here we are back at home with Steve putting on his best unimpressed face ha ha

 A few days later it was the night of the super/blue/blood/eclipsing moon so we toddled off back to Cosy Corner about 7pm, admittedly with a generous lack of excitement as the whole day was really cloudy.  As expected there was a massive cloud bank completely covering any sign of the moon rising, but instead we were blessed with the beautiful sunset colours on the rain clouds.  We admired the photos of Perth people's view of the moon on the news the next day, you had a great view up there in the capital!

 Our garden continues to bring forth its harvest.  The runner beans are starting to tail off now, the tomatoes are just revving up, the rhubarb is a constant glut, the Bramley cooking apples were the first off the little tree, and our chickens continue to be marvelous girls and reliably give us 3 or 4 eggs a day.  The peaches came to an end last week, 10 kilos is nothing to be sneezed at!  The next tree with ripening fruit is the Italian Sugar plum...they are small, oval, purple fruit that are often dried to make prunes.  This is the first year we've had these so we are rather impatient for them to ripen!

 A big pot of rhubarb and Bramley apple stewing, yum!  Our diet dessert is a blob of this with a blog of home-made yogurt, very nice.

 For our records, photo of the water tank level at 1st February, just over half full.  It's going according to plan. 
Which is just as well as the *&%$# bore pump shat itself AGAIN, this time it wasn't iron bacteria like last year....we had just done a $200 water treatment to eradicate that.  No, this time a tiny piece of something that looked like fibrous root had got inside the submersible pump 50 metres underground, jammed in the impellers and wrecked a couple of them, causing the stupid thing to cease up.  It's just come back from the repair shop and is now behaving itself thank goodness. 

 The garden has coped with minimal watering whilst the stupid pump was away, the more delicate things got a sprinkle from the hose with rainwater.  I thought I'd take a photo of these lovely flowers.  Mum, do you remember giving me this plant as a gift about three years ago?  It's a dwarf Canna with beautiful, bright, orange flowers.  It sulked for the first two years and I thought it was going to die, but this year its roots must have found a nice spot underground as it has grown massively.  It's such a cheerful looking plant.

 I was messing around on Google Earth today, first time for a couple of years, and I was thrilled to see that our area has really up to date imagery.  We reckon this was only 3 months ago and we are mega impressed with all our bits and bobs around the place.  I told Steve he should be well proud of himself with all his construction and fencing, it looks great hey!

Until next time.... xx