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

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

Of Tomatoes and Harleys

It's been busy this month!  Steve has finished his lovely little coffee table.  Isn't it beautiful, She-oak has the most beautiful grain.  He even made a couple of coasters too.

And here is Chief Appraiser, Madam Lucy, giving the table her undivided attention ha ha.

 We have gazillions of tomatoes ripening so I've been chop chop chopping them for various recipes.  I've also done a few jars of dried tomatoes in olive oil, time consuming but worth it as they are delicious.

 Gallons of tomato ketchup cooking

 And loads of chopped rhubarb about to become jam.  That is a recent discovery - rhubarb jam, it is rather delicious and tangy.

It never looks quite enough after all the hours of preparations and cooking, but here is 3 litres of tomato ketchup and 5 litres of rhubarb jam.  Not to mention the big containers of bolognese sauce that I made the week before that are now safely tucked away in the freezer.  The next big batch of tomatoes I will simply chop and freeze as is, very useful for cooking later in the year.  It's all very satisfying using produce in different ways, and knowing it can be used over the year when the growing season is over.

 We've both had birthdays recently so have treated ourselves to a couple of meals out. 

 Here we are at the Emu Point Cafe, a lovely venue that never disappoints with their food.

 Emu Point is a beautiful place, so picturesque.  Here's Steve looking at the channel from Oyster Harbour into King George Sound.  I used to fish here when I was a kid on holidays, wonderful memories.

 We've had visitors too!  Firstly Steve's cousin Terry came down to stay with us.  Here he is with his beautiful Harley Davidson motor cycle, specifically a "Fat Boy Harley", I never knew there were different types!  He and the South West chapter of the HOGS (Harley Owners Group) came down to have a ride to the Porongurups with the Albany HOGS.  It was great to see you Terry :-)

 And we've just said goodbye to our dear friends Angie and Andy who came to stay with their lovely friends Marty and Judy who are here from England.  It's always so nice seeing people enjoying our kangaroos and little birds.

 We had a gad about town, including a visit to the stunning Wind Farm, one of my favourite places in Albany, the scenery is beautiful and the paths are really well maintained.  You can stand right under one of the turbines and marvel at its power and listen to the deep and powerful "whomph" as it rotates.  Not to mention the fact that it supplies Albany with 85% of its power, yay for green energy!

 Above we have Angie and Andy, and below are Marty and Judy coming up the path.  It was lovely to see you all :-)

 Other visitors were of the unexpected kind.  For a few days we had these two rams wandering around, in and out of our place.  I think they live on top of the hill and take advantage of old, broken down fences to have a bit of an explore. 

 And of course we have our residents who we love dearly.  Here is Patience curled up on the grass outside the front door, enjoying the last rays of sun.  It's like having a pet dog :-)