Author Archives: zefiart

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About zefiart

Blogger, DIY-er, poodle lover, graphic designer, dog groomer, recycler, artist, wonder woman in my spare time.

some good finds i shouldn’t have been looking for

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I was naughty.

I went to an auction.

I couldn’t stay at the auction cause I had to go to work, but I wandered around and peeked into boxes and touched stuff.

Then, despite knowing that I shouldn’t, I put in a couple of absentee bids. Ok. Four. I put in four of them.

I ended up getting 2 items.

One was this gorgeous sign, which I love.

I did some googling. Haywood’s was one of the first large bakeries in Tasmania in the 1870s. Apparently by the 1930s they were claiming to be Tasmania’s largest bakery. I’ve always loved old signs, but at prices of $400 plus, I can’t afford them. I saw this same sign listed on Gumtree for $400 a while ago. I got it for much less than that.

I’m happy.

Its just resting up above the small window in the casita right now, but when I get the chance I’ll be fixing it to the wall properly.

The other item I got was a box of ‘sundry collectables’. Well, it was a whole lot of metal odds and ends. And you know I love metal crap.

Here are some awful blurry photos of my crap. Two very grimey bread tins with some odds and ends in them including metal sink plugs, a spigot, a clamp, some wierd tools… and a gauge who’s numbers move when you move it. I’m sure it’ll come in handy one day.

There was a plastic bucket so beaten up it was impossible to tell what it was made of, full of castor wheels. Some small brackets, what is apparently a pea sheller in the perfect colour for my kitchen, a funny clamp thing I have no idea what for…

This image is a bit clearer… You can see the wierd clamp thing near the tiny strainer. Any ideas what it might be? Its brass.

There’s a funny strainer which I’ll add to my strainer collection. And 2 brass wall mounted candle holders. If I and figure out a way to attach jars with tea lights to them that’s what I’ll use them for I think.

Or I guess they could be used to hold necklaces or scarves… And more mismatched coat hooks. You can never have too many of those.
There were a couple of other metal items of indistinct usage, not included in the pics cause I’d taken them to Wayne for his input.
Lastly in the box was a ‘book’ titled How to Improve Your Bowling by Hugh R. High.

And inside is a lovely old glass flask with two shot cups.

So cute. 
Its in the bookcase now for reading emergencies.
z

small changes in the living room I can live with

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Its no secret that I dislike our living room.

Its not the size, I love the size. Its huge.

Its that nothing in there makes sense.

Like the columns in the middle of the room, holding up the ceiling cause the idiots who extended the house didn’t put in the right beam.

And they’re not even in the middle. They’re off centre, creating 2 areas of uneven size.

Mostly, what I dislike about it is the fact that its all so bitsy. We have mismatched items of furniture, nothing that makes sense and ties in together… Its too busy and messy… and I want a new couch. And the carpet is still salmon.

But I can’t remove the carpet yet (I had hoped to do that over summer, and get a new wood heater as well, but that didn’t go to plan). And I can’t afford a new couch. Which is probably for the best cause I still don’t really know what I want. I know I want leather, brown, classic… an old chesterfield would be great. Or a club lounge. And a gentlemen’s club wingback armchair would be nice. In worn leather.

Then I think a modular type with a chaise would probably fit better in our space.

I hate recliners – they’re so ugly, but they’re so comfortable…

In the end I just give up and keep moving things around to try to make the living room more bearable with what’s here now.

Among the most recent of furniture shuffles I thought I’d try a suggestion of Diane’s to stack my two small antique bookcases into one taller piece. I’d pooh-poohed her idea originally, saying the bookcases fit under the window perfectly as they were, that they don’t fit together well upside down… but she had a point. So many of my items were small/low/short. I needed taller pieces.

Then I tried it and I love this new little corner in the chaos that is our living room.

Note the painting of Dancer. I had a nail in the wall… and I had a painting to hang. There you go. 
The old/improved bookcase:

Note the books crammed in the gaps to balance it… I hope no one wants to read those books any time soon…

Its the perfect spot to sit and read or to sit with the laptop on your lap cause its the perfect height and depth of seat.

I’m wondering whether I should redo the bookshelves by colour like in this pin I saw on Pinterest. It looks so pretty, but I bet it’d be hell to locate a book. Our books are a mess right now cause I’ve been shuffling things around, but normally they’re organised by author and topic. ie art books together, dog books together, etc.

Another small but pretty move was the little bookcase I made over a few years ago into the internet corner. I call it the internet corner cause its where the cables come into the house and where, up until recently, the satellite modem and wifi router lived. Its also where the powerpoint is and where the TV lived.

You can see the satellite modem and router on top of the cabinet, and below, you can see our new NBN connection!

We are now part to the modern world, with faster internet! Not to mention a MUCH quieter internet connection! The old satellite modem was LOUD.

So this is what it looks like now – the modem on the wall and the wifi router on the bookcase. Once we’ve connected our VOIP phone the bookcase will move closer into the corner so the wires aren’t so visible.

But just in case you didn’t notice, the barbed wire heart in a base made from curved rusty roofing iron is one of Wayne’s creations.

So there you go. A couple of small parts of the living room which aren’t so bad to look at.
z

‘heap of change challenge’ johnny come lately

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There was one project at the top of my list when I decided to join the heap of change challenge last month.

The office.

Not long ago I shared my office makeover (part 1 and part 2) and the blind makeover. It looked great for about a week.

Then things started piling up. And up.

Soon the office looked like this:

And this:

And this:

Actually, to be honest those photos were taken when I put ‘office cleanup’ at the top of the challenge list. Then I went on to clean up the workshop, got tired, ran out of time, got abducted by aliens… I just stopped. Cleaning and organising that is. I didn’t stop piling stuff in the office.

Every time I came across something I wanted out of the way , I’d put it in the office.

Side Note: Have you ever felt that cleaning is just another word for ‘moving things’? Have you ever considered that you will never have the entire house tidy at the same time cause in order to clean one area, you mess up another with things that don’t belong ‘here’ and there’s no ‘place’ to put them… yet… till you create one for them when you clean the next room.

The mess was a whole lot worse than in the pics, but by not sharing those pics I can keep a little dignity… (ha)

Here it is now. After I put everything in the workshop to sort and find a place for later.

Next week I’ll be cleaning the workshop again.

I even put initials on the filing cabinets. One for me and one for Wayne, in case Z and W wasn’t obvious.

The new/old shop rack is now extra storage for bits and pieces.

There are still a few things to do, get rid of the old desktop computer for instance, but I love the new clean office. So much in fact that I don’t think I’ll ever use it again.

z

an unwanted shop rack

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I’m sharing this quick project now, even though I finished it about 2 months ago… cause I wanted to share it when I had it in the office as I planned.
Of course, I had to clean and tidy the office first, and that was a job I put off and put off and put off and… you get the picture… But its finally done. Its clean and tidy (for about the next 2 days providing I stay out of it).
Who was it that said they get more cleaning done in the 30 minutes before visitors arrive than they get done in a week? That’s me. Only this time I cleaned 24 hrs in advance.
So, back to the shop rack. I found this sorry little cutie at a garage sale and was quick to grab it. It had been painted silver at some stage, not well, and the base was really wonky, but it had wheels.

Note the wonky base. Held on with string and tape.

I cleaned it up, scraped the scunge off it, disinfected it, and replaced the tape and string with screws and nuts. I gave it a fresh spray of silver, leaving the occasional old paint showing through (for character, doncha know).

Then left it sitting in the workshop for weeks, gathering dust and horse hair.

But today its in the office. Its new home.

Now stay tuned. The office cleanup miracle is coming.
z

not too much of a good thing

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There’s one thing you can definitely say about my blog – I never flood you with posts!

I’m a considerate blogger. I don’t bury my followers in post after post, making it hard for them to keep up with all the things happening in my life while they let things in their lives slide.

Yeah right.

More like I just don’t always have interesting things to share. I mean, do you really care that I recently remembered that I know the words to La Marseillaise but didn’t actually know what they meant till I googled it? (Pretty bloody actually.) That I can pledge allegiance to the American flag when I’m not American? That I can quote entire scenes from Monty Python movies?

My brain is full of trivia and stuff.

Not all of it useful.

One of my workmates said she’d really like to look inside my head sometimes, but I’m sure not everyone feels that way… according to Wayne its like an explosion in an op shop in there, and he should know. He has to live with me.

There’s a million ideas and plans in there, all in a jumble. Kinda like a hard drive which saves bits of files here, there and everywhere. The main problem is finding and sorting the bits into some order, then putting realistic timeframes on them. It overwhelms me.

I’m not really good at that.

I’m great at collecting things (thank you Pinterest for giving me a backup for my brain), but not good at prioritizing.

I work in spits and spurts. I get an idea and do it. I get another idea and it remains locked in my head for years till I do something about it, if ever.

Eg: the chests of drawers I did recently which I lived with for years till I felt the need to work on them. The wardrobe (will share soon) is the same. The kitchen shelves… still in my head.

Yet sometimes I’ll get a sudden rush of blood to the head and I’ll hare off and start cutting wood and pounding nails.

And usually these spur of the moment jobs are ones that weren’t even on the To Do list.

So, since I have nothing much to say of value right now, I thought I’d share some pretty photos of the garden before things hibernate for winter.

Succulents in a rusty galvanised bucket.

Armeria in a rusty ammo box with a metal poodle.

A rusty seat with some succulents I tossed a corner near the garage.

A rusty bin with succulents.
A steamer pot with an interesting succulent. 
Have you noticed I have a lot of succulents? They’re the only things that survive the hot sun on the porch. One project on the muddled To Do list in the hard drive that is my brain is a shelf outside the kitchen window for my succulent collection…
Ok. That sentence actually made sense inside my head…
The cute timber shed garden patch is beginning to look like it was meant to be there.

I’m inordinately proud of my delphiniums. I got the seeds and when nothing happened I tossed the pot into the garden. A year later I got flowers!

Another surprise was the nigella which appeared near the garage this year though I never had it before.

The old wood heater from the shed is now a home for many succulents, on top and inside.

Our yard might not be the prettiest one around, with the weeds in the lawn and the bald spots where I poisoned them, but I love my flowers and the little pockets of rusty pieces I’ve created.
I enjoy my garden.
z

the last chest of drawers

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Among all the ups and (mainly) downs in my life of late, I thought I’d share something creative and good.

You may remember that when I overhauled the ugly pine chest of drawers a few weeks ago I mentioned wanting to fix up the smaller one to match. Here is an old photo of the two chests side by side in the bedroom as they had been since we moved here.

That top doesn’t actually belong there. I found it in an op shop a long time ago, unpainted and missing its ‘bottom’. I thought I’d make a shelf out of it for the mud room, a spot to drop keys and stuff. I even made a shelf to go on top of it but I never got around to putting it up where I had planned.

Here it is when I first got it and after I’d put some paint on it.

My original idea was to somehow make it into a spot for my jewellery, which is why its on top of the smaller dresser. I even made this mock-up to see how it would look.

Luckily, I decided against that. I just wasn’t sure its what I wanted to look at.

This is what it looks like now (its actually quite straight, the photo makes it look wonky… not that there’s anything wrong with that…):

I obviously don’t stage my photos. There’s a cord between the dressers for the fan. It was hot…

So, what I ended up doing in the end was finding a frame that fit between the posts, or whatever you call them. The one I found was perfect as it was, I liked the white washed colour so I didn’t paint it, just added birdwire.

I then used some small metal brackets to attach it to the posts.

Everything was painted the same shade of off white homemade chalk paint that I used on the other chests of drawers, was distressed a little bit then waxed with clear wax.

Till I started reading DIY blogs I’d never heard of using wax over paint. I thought that’s what you did when you inherited granny’s furniture. But, being the gullible follower adventurous type I am, I bought some to give it a try… and I can tell you I love the satiny feel it gives painted pieces!

Lastly I changed the tiny wooden knobs. I didn’t try to match the black cup pulls on the drawers although I had black round knobs which would have done. I wanted something special… like these little crystal knobs.

Instead of displaying jewellery, I opted for photos. That way I can look at them as I lie in bed on lazy weekend mornings. (Ok, a couple of favourite necklaces have made it to the frame, but most other stuff is out of sight.

A leftover coat hanger wire heart I made a long time ago for some of my windchimes now frames photos of my mom and dad courting and on their wedding day. I love those photos.

Below that I have two old photos of my dad as a toddler with his mother and sister, and one of me as a 3 year old holding my brother while my favourite cousin PG sits beside me.

I have photos of mom as a child as well but want to frame them along with other old photos I brought home on my last trip to Greece.
I also added my favourite card, given to me by my dearest cousin Zefi (aka Little Zefi), her daughter Marouso, and my Aunt Marissa. The card says ‘Having a place to go is home, having someone to love is family’ and its not just that sentiment that means so much to me but the messages inside. Its the best card ever.
Anyway, I realised I’ve said nothing about the chest I finished. Not much to say really. I painted it with the same paint as the other, larger, one. I distressed it a bit, then put the same cup pulls on it to match. Looking back now I wonder whether I should have put handles on the small top drawers to match the top drawers on the large one… but eh, its done now.

There they sit, together, opposite my side of the bed. I like the way they look now. So much neater and calmer that what I had to look at before, the yellowey pine and too neat white mismatched look.
Just a reminder. This is how it looked before:
And this is how it looks now:
I can live with that!
z

a wonky barn door

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It seems doors are all the rage lately on blogs.

Last week Donna at Funky Junk Interiors shared this wacky door, and I love it!

And today I saw Angie at Knick of Time had made a mini barn door which is absolutely gorgeous:

Before I knew doors were going to be the trend I made my own shed door in the casita. Up till now we’d had a half door, bottom only obviously (top only would have been plain stupid!) between the casita entry and workshop. Since I sometimes put the poodles in there when grooming customers arrive and leave, I needed to close them in better.

I used to leave them in the house, but with open windows in summer I’m afraid they’ll knock out a flyscreen or three. I won’t let them meet and greet cause they’re very protective and won’t let people into the yard unless I’m there to let them in.

So I decided to keep them in my workshop. The theory behind the top door was less vision = less barking. Turns out it doesn’t work quite that way, but hey, we now have a more gap filling door than we had before!

You’ll notice the crooked gap between the two doors (I blame the door frame, it must be crooked)… the way the timber runs in different directions… the holes in the plaster where the poodles tried their paws at remodelling… Its all part of the charm.

Disclaimer:

I didn’t actually MAKE this door from scratch. I used a door from an old chicken coop I’d demolished when I bought my house in Fentonbury. Since then I’d used this door and its matching partner as ‘keep the dog out of the bedroom’ gates in Fentonbury and here.

So, I basically adapted what I had to create the top part of a door for the casita.

Since the door is heavy, I needed some T hinges which I had to buy. I didn’t have any the right size. I then had to cut a couple of pieces of timber so that the hinges had something to actually attach to. The door timber isn’t that thick.

I kinda like my added bits. They’re sort of like the patchwork of Donna’s door, just not as neat or charmingly random as hers.

I used a hook latch to secure the upper door to the chalkboard dog lead organiser. Since the top door has to swing opposite to the lower door (long story having to do with light switches around corners), I have to keep it open unless its in use to keep poodle eyes from seeing too much.

Since the only time I need to access the lead organiser is when I’m grooming, and since the poodles are usually locked up at that time, its not a problem.

To keep it closed I used a tiny bolt I had in one of my collections and simply put a hole in the door jam.

Easy.

A bit wonky but I don’t mind. I can make a better door if I want. Just look at the door I made for the phone station. I just didn’t want to this time!

In fact, my next door project will be more like Donna’s or Angie’s if I can get the right balance between wacky and neat.

z

ripped off – an angry post

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I am angry, in case you haven’t guessed it.

On Wednesday afternoon I lost my wallet and some lowlife found it and went on a shopping spree using my cards.

How did they do that without my PIN? Paypass and Paywave of course! This nifty newest convenient way to shop! Now, for purchases under $100 you don’t need a pin! You just tap and go!

The problem is that ANYONE can tap and go with your card! And to the scum of the earth like the people who found my card, this was wonderful. All they had to do was make sure they visited as many shops as possible in the shortest time possible (before I realised my wallet was missing) and make as many purchases under $100 as they could.

I left work at 3pm on Wednesday as I had a meeting to go to. On the way I stopped at the house of an old guy who sells plants in his driveway, just around the corner from work. I’d been by in the morning and had him set aside a ton of plants for me.

I parked the car, picked up the bags of pots, paid him and put the pots in the car, leaving my wallet on the car and forgetting it there as I drove off.

I’ve never done something this stupid before.

I was at the meeting by 3.20pm.

By 3.20pm the lowlife scum had already found my cards and started their shopping spree.

First they visited Woolworths where they made 4 transactions on the one card. Then they had lunch at Banjos. Then the bottle shop for booze, and the gas station for fuel.

From there they went into the city center and visited Target, Jetty Surf, Red Herring among other places and made multiple purchases on both cards.

Then they went to Moonah to another bottle shop and Harris Scarfe.

From there to Glenorchy to another bottle shop (all up over $200 worth of booze), the shopping center where they made multiple purchases in many shops.

Their last stop was the Bridgewater McDonalds where their $66 dinner purchase was declined.

All in all, in three hours they visited 20 or so shops and, between my Mastercard and my Visa, they got over $1000 worth of stuff.

Not bad for THREE HOURS work.

And all in transactions under $100 each.

I think that surely, if I was a shop assistant and saw someone using the same card for multiple small transactions, warning bells would go off. And my credit card is bright orange, not a common card at all. It stands out. I read a forum on this subject and found comments from people who work in shops where they’ve suspected something was up – in most cases they just let the suspects pay and leave without notifying the police or bank.

While this was going on, I had no idea my wallet was even missing. I had my meeting, then drove home, stopping at a friend’s for a visit. I heard my phone beep, saw a message to call BankWest but planned to call when I got home. When I got home I fed the animals, mowed the lawn and totally forgot about the message.

In the morning I remembered and called them – getting online at the same time to find $500 worth of transactions I had not made. That’s when I realised I couldn’t find my wallet. First thought was that I’d forgotten it at the plant man’s place, but later on I remembered putting it on the car.

I immediately called Bank West and cancelled the Mastercard. They had suspended it by then, however not before $736.63 worth of transactions had gone through.

I was angry, upset, disbelieving, violated. Maybe its cause I’m honest and honest people just don’t think like that… we can’t see ourselves doing something like that so we’re surprised when others do.

I had a playdate for Romeo with a couple of other poodle friends but I stopped at the police station to report the lost wallet/stolen wallet. After all, the wallet contained everything! They said that since the cards had been used it wasn’t just a matter of reporting a missing wallet, it was fraud. However, without transaction details they couldn’t make a report.

It wasn’t till I was at the playdate and said to my friends “at least they can’t use my debit card and access my savings account without my PIN” that I realised they COULD.

And did.

Cause of course my debit card is also a VISA card and it has paywave.

So on the phone National Australia Bank. I wanted to know if they’d used that card. Without being able to answer the security question (what automatic deductions do you have on this account – I knew I had one but couldn’t remember what) they wouldn’t give me any information. Even when I could tell them exactly what my last purchases were prior to losing it, and what payments went in there regularly… Cause I may have been the person who’d stolen the card.

Like the person who stole the card would care about anything other than a balance! Just a simple Yes or No answer was all I wanted.

I was in the city without access to the internet so I went to a friend’s house and logged on to internet banking… . About 10 transactions on that account, approx $250 at that stage. I printed them out for the police.

I couldn’t print out the Mastercard transactions cause they’d closed that account already. Bank West sent me a list. This list had transactions on it that hadn’t been on my online banking in the morning.

They visited 20 or so places and made over $1000 in purchases… All because they could use Paywave and Paypass without a PIN.

(I keep saying ‘over $1000’ cause I’m not sure of the exact amount.)

When I asked the bank to give me a card without the tap and go feature I was told that no one makes credit cards without it any more and it cannot be disabled.

At least with National Australia Bank I was able to get them to issue me a plain debit card, not a VISA, as my replacement card… no chip, no paywave.

Everyone says “hey, you’ll get it all back, the fraud protection on the cards will cover it”. That may be so… but if they’d had to use a PIN this wouldn’t have happened at all. I wouldn’t have to wait 4-6 weeks for my money to be refunded.

I’m angry. I work for my money. I have 3 jobs. It was very hard for me to save to the point where I actually had some money in my savings account and I’d paid out my credit card. Now I wish I hadn’t bothered! If there was no money in my account and my credit card was still maxed out, they wouldn’t have been able to go shopping with my money!

Not long ago credit cards here went from signature to requiring a PIN. I thought that was a great step in security.

Then they bring this in. I just don’t see how this can be more secure.

I’ve done a ton of reading and its all about how fast and convenient this new system is, how much faster and easier we can now spend our money, how its much safer cause no one can scan your card when its in your bag, or duplicate your magnetic strip… That the new chip technology gives each transaction its own unique number or some such, giving the new cards an ‘added layer of security’.

Like this:

What about security?

Although you can make a contactless payment with up to 4cm reach, most credit card companies require you to tap your credit card for the transaction to go through, ensuring you don’t pay for another person’s sale. Even if you do accidentally tap your credit card twice on the terminal, you won’t be charged because every transaction generates a unique authentication code which cannot be used again.
The wireless technology can be concerning because no pin or signature is needed for a sale to be processed. Not to fret – all NFC cards use the latest chip technology, which come with secure encryption (cryptographic key) technology to protect you from thieves who might try to ‘scan’ the wallet in your pocket.
There’s not much stopping a thief from hitting up the shopping centre with purchases under $100 at different outlets but as with other payment methods (e.g pin, signature), most credit cards provide a zero liability policy. This means that you will be covered for any unauthorised transactions, with 100% reimbursement. Some providers state that you must notify the institution immediately in order to get your money back.

Source

Now have a look at this article by the Financial Obudsman Service… particularly look at this line which baffles me:

A customer can only be held liable for unauthorised contactless transactions if:
1. Their card was misused, lost or stolen. 
2. They knew that their card was misused, lost or stolen.
3. They took an unreasonably long time to tell the card issuer about the misuse,
loss or theft of the card.

HUH?… how else would there be any unauthorized transactions on your card if it wasn’t misused, lost or stolen????

If you’re not tired of reading, most articles about this flashy tap and go system are upbeat and positive, like this one. Some, like this one, are a bit more balanced as they include the cons, but again, its more about the positives.

Personally, having just been through this violation, I fail to see the positives.

I fail to see how not having a PIN is in any way a more secure way to do things.We should have the chip and a PIN, which is how I use my cards. That’d make sense.

Maybe we just need to be given the choice on if we want our cards to have a tap and go option.

Maybe banks should let people make up their own minds and let them enable or disable tap and go, even it must be available on their card.

I’d like it disabled on my cards please. I know a lot of people would like that too.

I should have replacement cards in a week or so and my ‘dispute’ should be resolved (favourably I should hope) in 4-6 weeks. Till then I just have the fun part of replacing my driver’s license, library card, membership cards, health insurance card, medicare card, etc.

z

who let the dogs out?

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To look at them you wouldn’t think butter would melt in their mouths. They’re so pretty, so cuddly, so loving.

You’d never guess that lion hearts nest inside their curly chests.

Many’s the time I’ve come home to find dead chickens, birds or ducks in the yard. Or occasionally woken up to the unpleasant task of burying a wallaby or possum.

I’m not proud to say that the carnage count includes rats, mice, a goose and even a bandicoot.

While we try to keep our yard critter safe (poodles in – critters out) we sometimes fail. And you can be sure the poodles are there to rub that failure in our faces every time.

This is one aspect of larger dogs with a high prey drive that I dislike. I know its natural – they hunt. Its what they do. I have to accept it, I don’t have to like it. Especially when I’m the one finding and disposing of the bodies like an accomplice after the fact.
Neighbours see me out in the paddock with a shovel, looking furtively over my shoulder as I dispose of the evidence, and they worry if they need to be concerned for Wayne.
At least toy poodles didn’t have a chance of bringing down larger prey… a small bird, a mouse, a skink. But with standards the hole you have to dig is much bigger.

Up till recently, all bodies retrieved were intact. No blood, less evidence.

At least, I’d tell myself, they’re neat killers – one grab around the neck, a good shake and its curtains for the critter who had the misfortune to step inside our yard. No mess.

Very befitting a poodle.

Just the thing to be grateful for: intact corpses.

Except for one memorable occasion when I came home with a friend to find Romeo parading round the yard with a duck head in his mouth. The rest of the duck was still intact though… just minus the head…

Way to impress visitors.

So, you can imagine how disgusting it was to wake up on Sunday morning and find what looked, at first appearance, to be an intact dead pademelon, only to find its guts lying next to it. Outside its body. In a neat little bundle. Barely a mark on it. Like someone had carefully opened a birthday present.

Yup.

Disgusting.

Then, this morning, I woke up to find a single feather and some guts on the footpath.

Great.
I might be good at identifying animals, but even my abilities were stretched to identify this one from the inside out.
I think it was a native hen.
I have no idea how it got in the yard. The poodles leave things alone out in the paddock, but anything that comes in their yard is, literally, dead meat.
sigh.
z

not quite the mediterranean

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Its hot today. It was hot yesterday too. I don’t do well in the heat… All I want to do is lie down and sleep. I probably will after this post…

Its been a good day though cause we went for a dip at a local swimming hole.

Only took us 5 years of living here to learn about it.

I’ve never been one for swimming in rivers, even though I swam in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers way more than in the sea for the first 10 years of my life. Back then we lived in inland NSW, far from the sea, and rivers were the only option outside the public swimming pool.

One thing I dislike about rivers is the dark tannin stained water, the murky black depths. I’m never comfortable in water when I can’t see my own feet, let alone the bottom.

Ok, I’m being unfair. The water was clear and I could see my feet, but it was dark and I couldn’t see the bottom beyond a certain depth. That gives me the creeps. I mean, when you’ve been spoilt, spending as many summers on a greek island as I have, you get kinda fussy about the water you immerse yourself in.

In Greece beaches are usually crystal clear, sandy and blue. Rivers are dark and scary looking to me.

Take a look at these images for instance (I got these off the net cause I can’t access my original blog and all my photos are on the external drive that went to meet its maker, figuratively speaking.)

Not quite the same is it?

Enough of that now. I’m making myself homesick.

Still, the river was beautiful and peaceful (till the hordes descended with their anklebiters). It has a beauty entirely of its own.

Despite my many years of Paros beaches (and being Greek), I’m also an Aussie country girl. My childhood memories are of living in country NSW. The Australian landscape speaks directly to my heart… which is why I choose to live on a farm and not in a city.

And lets face it: wet is wet!

When the river is closer than the beach and its too hot to move, that’s all that counts.

At least there are no sharks in Tasmanian rivers. Or crocodiles. Or piranhas. Basically, they’re pretty safe unless you stupidly dive in without knowing what’s beneath.

We hung around for a while swimming, relaxing, reading. I went in till I got all pruney and even though we were in an area of shade, I think I still managed to get a bit too much sun… hence the headache.

Not quite Paros, but it’ll do. 
z