Well, that was a bit of a shock!
Went down the paddock to pick some plums, thinking one of the 4 trees would probably have enough plums for the 6th bucket of plums, thus far, about to be cooked up.
I sat under one hanging branch and picked...and the bucket was full! What the...?
There are another 10 or more branches left on just that one tree...and another possible 3 buckets left on the branch I picked from.
Help, I'm drowning in plums...
Amazing!
Another big pot of plums to cook tomorrow.
Today I plucked a big container of Elderberries, cooked them and will bottle the juice as juice for winter. Apparently it is very high in good things!
Picked another bucket of tomatoes. Every day now I'm gathering a bucket of tomatoes.
So I keep a few out to eat fresh, and just rinse the rest and cut them in half and pop into the boiler with no water and cover and slowly bring to the boil, turn off the heat and cool, then pop into the freezer in jars...to be used however I need later on.
So, today, Sunday, I finally completed laying the bricks for the last bit of garden path...and it looks great, I think.
Did the mowing thru the week, in between rainy moments...a bit of a gooey mess, but at least it's all done.
Will have to get a whipper snipper for next year to keep the edges neat. There is a concrete mini wall around the paddock, about a foot high and then the wire mesh etc goes up from there. It looks so nice when all the weeds around it, are cut back.
Hoping the man to build the shed comes this week and starts the frame, now the cement has cured.
I need all the extra furniture out ASAP, as I need to complete the front room this month.
Last week, I took my beautiful French cream, terrylene curtains I had in the first house I built in OZ in 1979, into the seamstress to hem the side edges. It was originally for a 10 foot, (3 metres) long window, so I cut it into 3 pieces and have the perfect beautiful curtains for all three, 1 metre long windows in the front room.
She also is hemming and lining the family room curtains, red gingham, and a few other odds and ends for me, so am finally getting stuff out of the cupboards and boxes and on the windows etc where it all belongs.
One thing I just realised...again...is that when part of a building is completed and starts to be pretty habitable, it is no longer a construction zone, it becomes a blessed maintenance zone!
Dohhhh, more work!
So, now, on top of the fruit and veggies everywhere here right now to preserve for later on, veggie and flower gardens to care for, painting, adjusting stuff, shifting furniture etc, mowing to do, I have to do blessed house work too! Gotta get me a hubby!
Now I know why I moved so much in the past. This cleaning every day, stuff, is not exciting work...
Building, creating, planning is fantastically exciting to me...but over and over same 'ole, same 'ole, is not my thing. I'm definitely a pioneer, not a settler. I like to build, create and make things nice for others to settle into.
Anyways, I am very grateful to be able to do all this over here. I still have the cottage to complete in Oct-Nov and then later next year start the big room...
After the big room is completed, I'd like to get something going down the end paddock.
Was going to build a place with round corners...but when I went back to my big old farm house in OZ last year, the Munster House as everyone called it, I was once again charmed by its grace, character and fabulous lines...more sort of Englishy, than the one I intended eventually building here.
But plenty of time yet to decide what will suit best when everything is neat and tidy.
Will have to find a cleaning lady a few hours a week soon. It takes too much space in my mind to be thinking of damp mopping under the beds every day, keeping the windows clean, dusting, yada yada yada and so on! Not complaining, just sayin'...
The weather has been pretty comfy for me, for summer over here this year. The house has only reached 26C inside 2 times this year, the rest of the time it has been around 23 to 24 C inside...Finally learning how to manage this type of mud brick building in the heat.
It's lovely at the moment, crickets...or cicadas... chirping away out there, a frog in the down pipe croaking every now and then, a cool evening breeze wafting in through the open, screened windows...the fridge quietly humming away in the corner bulging with it's load of frozen goodies...cat and kitten, loudly purring away on the verandah and dog down the paddock barking at her 8.30 pm doggy visitors as they are taken for an evening walk with their dog walkers...while I chomp on a mouth full of local home grown walnuts...It doesn't get much better than this!
My very arty sister sent another awesome DVD to me which I received yesterday. It has lovely pics and stories of the pups and kitten from birth til' they all went to homes. I really miss the little critters. They were so loving, so gentle, I loved them...but not to keep. They wrecked most of my flower gardens, 3 out of 4 ...Not happy Jan, but I did enjoy the puppies so much.
Mother cat and kitten are so funny...all the time stretching and running up poles and trees, the clothes line posts...anything that goes up, they are up it.
Dog plays with kitten a lot too. They are good mates.
OK...will try and load some pics from the past week from the phone now and get this blog out tonight if possible.
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| Cute new haybale art at the end of my street. Theme...garden bugs,pets and bees! |
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| Lady Bug... |
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| A dog, I think! |
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| A cat? |
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| Looks like a rooster? |
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| Freedo the Frog, called Jake |
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| I wonder if it is a gopher? |
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| Booking her in for desexing this week! |
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| Finally some sort of order... |
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| I have a family of 5 people coming for the weekend of 18th August for 2 nights...They came. |
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| The room comfortably slept 5 people |
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| The lovely pink roses are not as big as they were 2 years ago... |
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| Neighbours gave me zucchini, squash, peppers and a huge bucket of carrots...and a bucket of tomatoes... to add to my own overflowing containers of tomatoes! |
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| More tomatoes... |
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| Lovely yellow plums growing on the footpaths in Tizafured... |
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| Blackberries and crab apples, picked from the footpaths on my morning jog... |
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| Just toooo delicious...I love the colour. |
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| So many plums this year...This big pot only filled one of the white dishes above. |
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| Breakie coming up!...Fresh farm eggs and tomatoes...Just cook toms, with no oil or water, with lid on, until they come to the boil, turn off electricity add the eggs and cover for a minute or so and cook till soft. |
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| More pickings next day. |
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| Zucchini spaghetti. Can eat it raw in salads, or heated in whatever you are cooking. Do not cook it...only add at the end of cooking and heat through only. |
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| Elderberries... |
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| After pulling them off the stems and ready to cook...in a litre of water only. Makes good elixir. |
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| Cottage cheese, flaxseed oil and some plum spread to make it look pretty... Very good for cholesterol balancing, I believe. |
Wow, that was 6 weeks ago, that I started this blog!
Could not get the pics to upload, but a workaway girl from USA came to my rescue near the middle of August and now all is good to go!
She was here for 10 days and sorted out the cloud pic storage thing for me, so after a bit of fooling around just now, I have found how to locate ALL the pics!
Paulie will be so proud of me!
Then I had 2 awesome young ones from England come for just under a month and we achieved a lot in that time from the last week in August to 18th of September
They did a lot of fiddly jobs and finally attacked the blessed windows in that few weeks too, and have now gone back to uni and a job in England...and I really miss them. So funny, listening to them chatter...in pommie talk!!! At least I could understand that foreign language...hehehe
More on the kids next blog.
Anyways, this will be all for now, so, catch you all a lot sooner next time!
Cheers,
M
xxx
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