Next Year Tomorrow.

It's nearly 9:30pm, last day of December, 2018.  I'll be going to bed soon and when I wake up it will be next year.  How exciting is that!

2018 wasn't a bad year for us, in fact it was pretty darn good.  We didn't do much, didn't go anywhere, didn't achieve much at all but we are all reasonably healthy and reasonably happy and that is enough.

Next year though, 2019, I'd like to do more, go places, achieve stuff...still be happy and healthy but just add that little bit extra to life.   I wonder if we/I will.

I miss blogging and wonder why I don't.  My memory isn't much chop any more and blogging was a way of being able to see what I did do, where I went...haha,  maybe I did go exploring, had wonderful days out and achieved great things.  Maybe I did it all but just don't remember because I didn't blog about it all.  You think?  haha.  No, it didn't happen like that. 

The gardens aren't doing much, chooks keep getting out and scratching them up.  Grass keeps growing up and through them all.  We still have too many slaters.  I am still too lazy to get out there and fix it all.   I'm still volunteering down at Vinnies.  Still too scared to go on any adventures.  And next year it may all stay the same but I think there will be a few changes, we'll see.

Now though, it's bedtime.  How many reading will stay up to see the New Year in?  How will you spend the 1st day of 2019?   I hope you all have a great night and next year is good for you.

Raining. Snakes.

Well it's still raining here, the cat is still staying inside where it is warm and the dog went home for a bit but then came back for a few days.   He was here today, the yard is still ankle deep in water and he was still outside in the wet and cold. 

I had a friend visit today and as she was leaving she says to me "is that a snake?"  I doubted it, middle of Winter, cold, wet, not snake season...But yeah, it was, it was a small, 12inch maybe, tiger snake, laying on the wet grass on the driveway.  And alive.  With the dog sniffing around.  I grabbed the dog, friend grabbed a shovel and snake was relocated.

Friend said there may be more around as they may be coming out of hiding places because of all the water and that does make sense.  And there is so many hiding places as the grass is long and weedy as it hasn't been cut for a month or so because of the rain.   But I never thought that we'd have to look out for snakes in this weather.

Dog was picked up this afternoon and has gone home for a bit.  He will be back here sometime next week.  I hope no more snakes come out.

As soon as we get some sun and the grass dries out enough I am going to be out there mowing it all down!

Raining. Cats and Dogs

It's been raining, lots and lots of raining.  Our yard is ankle deep in water.  But hopefully all the dams in the area are filling up so there will be plenty of water come Summer. 

And I am dog-sitting again and feel bad when it is cold and wet and he is outside.  But he is an outside dog and I have been told by the owners not to let him in.  He used to be able to come into the sunroom but then Billie came.  Billie is a cat and Booker doesn't like cats.  Well, Billie doesn't like dogs either and as the sunroom is now a part of Billies area...poor Booker.  But last night there was thunder and lots and lots of rain so I locked the cat inside and put the dog in the sunroom.  Today, the cat needs access to sunroom so dog will need to be outside.  Where there is a back patio roof he can be under, on the mat where it is dry, or there are sheds he can go in.   If he wants to, though I think I want him under cover more for me than him as he sleeps out in the weather a lot when he is here and his owners say he does the same up there. 

Today, I'd rather be the cat, home and inside under cover where it is dry and warmish.   Not the dog who is outside where it is wet and not warmish at all.   But I won't be here, I am at Vinnies again.  And I have no gas for a hot shower when I get home and the fire went out so I too will be cold when I get home.  More like the dog than the cat. 

I Got Lazy.

Two more days and it will be July.  That is half a year gone already and so far I have achieved precisely nothing in the backyard.   I was picking capsicum and had heaps ready to pick but someone left a gate open.  Again.

So since the sheep got into the backyard I don't have anything growing, nothing to pick anyway though the capsicum stalks that they ate all the leaves and fruit off may grow leaves back.  Though it's been a few weeks now and they haven't yet.
And I say nothing but mean vegies.  I have no vegies to eat.  We do have oranges falling off the trees and there are a few chokos left on the vine but apart from that, nothing.

Husband has cabbages and caulies though so I will eat those when they are ready.  Luckily I found the sheep before they had time to find those too or he might have been a bit cranky.  He has set up his own garden beds towards the front of the yard as he was sick of *my* gardens being over run with grass and weeds.  And his do look good and they were the only ones that fed us with cucumbers and tomatoes during Summer.  Mind you, he does get out there and spend time working on them too, so maybe that is what I have to do.   But, if I did have a fantastic vegie crop and the sheep ate it all I would have been a lot more upset with them and the person (me!) that left the gate open. 

I am getting lazy, should say got, I have gotten lazy and it is much easier to go down the shop and buy stuff.  I don't like not being able to go outside and pick what I want but evidently not enough to get out there and do something about it!

But I will, when it starts to get warmer and not so wet.  Until then, I will be lazy.

Honey. Garlic. Unite!

We have just made a batch of honey infused garlic.  Or garlic infused honey...Not sure which but it smells great and after 20 minutes the honey already has a slight garlic taste.  I need to leave it out for a few days then will keep it in the fridge and use it to ward off colds and other Winter ailments.

Picture to come. 

Oh Dear!

Oh dear.  Really?!  29th March and I haven't been here for months.  I always intend too, but don't.  But will...

I have been busy, not sure what with but I'm pretty sure it's been productive stuff.  Or Facebook, I do waste too much time on FB now.  And I am still volunteering at Vinnies and do seem to be there a lot more than my rostered 2 days.  But I like it and it gets me off the computer.

We are now into Autumn, the heat is over for another year so I should be able to get outside more often.  Though it is dark now when I get up, not that that has been the reason for the last 5 months...Hmm, maybe I am getting lazier in my old age.

I haven't much in the gardens, we have tomatoes, capsicums, pumpkins, chillies ready to be picked and eaten but not much else.

There are potatoes out there if we want to dig for them, sweet potatoes too. 

Most fruit is finished but we now have Mangoes!  Picked 6 fresh off the tree last week.  The house smells of mango and they taste really mangoey,  yep, that's now a word.  This is our first year of getting these so pretty pleased about that.  They are husbands trees, he wanted them, he bought them, he planted them, he picks them...Sadly, he doesn't eat them, not many anyway.  He had 1 last week, then went away to work and has had none since.  I have had 2, gave a couple to the daughter and have 3 left...hmmm, my maths is not working, maybe he picked more than 6.  I am sure there will be more out there too so luckily family will be here over the weekend and they may like them.

I am due at Vinnies soon and have heaps to do before I leave, see, I am busy, so better get a move on.  Hopefully I'll be back here in a day or two.

December!! Really?! Bum!

Hello. 

Yep, December already.  How did that happen?

Homemade Boot Polish

We have had a few wet days.  Very wet.  Husbands boots are wet, my boots were wet.  I put them in front of the fire to dry out then gave them a clean and rubbed them over with shoe polish.  The next day I wore them and they are wet again.  What I needed was a protective coating, a beeswax coating but I have tried to rub straight beeswax on boots before and it was all too hard.  haha  See what I did there?!

I needed something to mix with the beeswax to keep it soft and rubinable so onto Google to see what others had to say about it all.

I found a recipe for boot polish, it looked simple and even though it was early and cold I decided to give it a go.    Recipe said I needed beeswax.  Yep, got that.  And Olive oil.  Ummm, no.  No oil.  But wait!  Yes I do have oil.  I had the remains of the 20 litres of old cooking oil that we collected from the café for treating Scaley leg mites on the chooks.  Too manky too use?  Not around here!

And because it has been so cold the inside fire was burning.  Bonus.

I used the axe to chop a chunk of beeswax off the lump I had outside.  Chopped it smaller as I only needed 2 tablespoons of the wax.  Took a 1/2 cup measure and put water in the jar and marked it so I knew how much oil I needed.  Outside to the chookpen and poured in the oil, back inside and put the jar of wax and oil into a pot of water on the stove. 



Waited until the wax had melted, took pot off of the stove and put it onto the sink.  Outside to let the chooks out and feed the sheep.  Back inside only to find that the wax had hardened in the jar and was unpourable and the jar was too deep to get the wax out.  Clever...not.


Put the pot and jar back on the stove to remelt the wax mixture, this time staying inside and having a hunt around for some tins to put the mixture in.   I have more than a dozen of the tins that I wanted to use...somewhere....Finally found a couple, poured the melted wax into the tins and let it sit and set.  Looks good and no manky oil smell so that's good.


I used a rag and rubbed the mixture into a boot.  The left foot boot, the one on the right in the photo, is the boot I did first.  The wax rubbed into the boot, making it look dark.

Put wax on the other boot, let it soak in a bit then rubbed both boots over with another rag.  The boots are darker than before I used the polish but I haven't worn them outside yet so don't know if they are protected from the wetness of early morning grass.  I will try them out soon and let you all know.  

I haven't done husbands boots yet as he has been wearing them all day but I will try and get his done tomorrow before he puts them on and ask for his opinion tomorrow sometime.  Not that he will have one.  To him boots is boots, whether they are clean and shiny and waterproof or not. 

But I had fun.  I made me some bootpolish and it made me smile. 

All Chok(o)ed Up.

It's been wet and cold here today but this afternoon I decided to get outside and do something.  Maybe clean up the shed a bit.  Maybe clean out the chookhouse.  Maybe pick more oranges for the stall out the front.  Maybe put away the stuff that I have been dumping on the table out the back...

Instead I worked on the tank gardens.  There is not a lot growing in them anymore, thanks to chooks and roosters jumping out of the pens and scratching everything up.  Not many plants but still lots of slaters.  How does that work?!  Why are the chooks scratching around and eating all the plants instead of scratching around and eating all the slaters.  Stupid chooks.





The chokos are finished though.  The vine is looking messy.                                                         
I ripped most of it down, fed some to the chooks, some to the sheep.

Some of the dead vine was put in the chookpen to try and stop me from slipping in the mud.




There aren't any more fruit worth eating, all are now old and tough and most are already starting to shoot ready to grow into new plants.  The garden beds are full of these and some have already started to send down roots and get themselves established for next season.  One or 2 didn't even wait to hit the dirt, they were growing as they were growing...

There are 4 tank gardens along here and although the choko vine was growing in only 1 the vine itself covered all four. I have pulled the vine down from over 3 tanks and will get to the last one during the week.  Up the southern end though the choko is mixed up with a passionfruit vine so I will need to be careful pulling it down.

 

 

Once all the choko vine was removed from the fence above 2 tanks it was easier to see what was in the ground.  I found a pineapple plant.  This has been here a couple of years now and not doing much so will need some care to get it to fruit.

 

I cleared out the tank that had asparagus growing in it seeing as that was finished and the fronds were all yellow, brown or dead. I cut it all right down, threw on some smelly water from the comfrey bin and will maybe mulch it sometime during the week.

Chook Killers.

We're on 5 acres and like most people in our block we have chooks.   I have too many, they are not laying, are costing me money in buying food for them and in them eating food for me...but I like them.

 

People around us have chooks.  A friend up the road has a dozen or so.  Over the years we have all lost chooks to foxes.  Sometimes the fox will kill a bird or two and take for food but a lot of time they just kill.  To teach their young how to hunt, practice, just because the are horrible creatures...I don't know all the reasons.  I do know that it is horrible to get up in the morning and find all your flock killed.

I have been locking them up at nights, letting them out in the morning, it is a pain.  I came home early one day a couple of weeks ago and there were feathers out the front.  Yep, a fox had been and taken a chook that didn't make it into the shed on time the night before.

A few days ago daughters partner brought out a rabbit and set the
trap for me. 

Next morning, Bingo! Oh, ummm, not a fox.  Not a feral so Ranger came out and took this one to the vets to check for microchip. 

I set the trap again.  Next morning, Bingo!  Oh, no, another cat.  A friendly one so I let it out.  Then again, same cat.  A soaking with the hose and it won't come back but it had eaten the rabbit and there wasn't much left. 

With not much bait left there was little chance of getting anything but I set the trap again anyway.  Why not. 
And this morning. 
Bingo!!