Category Archives: garden

yeah, no…

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There’s a very common expression here in Australia which kinda doesn’t make sense when you first hear it…
“Yeah, no.”
You hear it everywhere. Confusing? Not really. Its pretty simple – it means “Yes, I hear you, but no, I don’t agree.”
Merrill said it the other day and that’s when she realised she’d been living in Australia too long. I, on the other hand, have been saying it for so long I’ve lost track…
The weather has cooled down a lot since since the heatwave of last week which left me in a puddle in front of a fan and an evaporative cooler. On Tuesday I had to stop painting when the paint flew off my brush in the wind. And yesterday it was downright cold outside.
Today its meant to be 20-26 degrees, overcast and possibly some early showers… I hope for no showers as I want to get out and start painting again. But its still pretty cool and very windy. 
How do house painters do it? If I was a house painter I’d starve to death. I think I’d only be able to work about 10 days out of 365…
Speaking of painting, I started a commission yesterday since it was a non-house-painting day.
This is a portrait of a friend’s dogs. I’m doing this in return for 2 adirondack chairs and a matching table which her husband makes. Cool swap huh?
This is stage 1 of the portrait:
And this is one of the chairs he makes. Mine will be painted solid turquoise and will sit on our deck facing the dam.
We visited their house on New Year’s Eve for the first time. She has a cute little ‘secret garden’ thing happening which I love.
A cray pot with a cute tiny ivy growing through it houses a family of wrens. I took some of that ivy but I don’t think any of it survived the heatwave… 😦
A few cute weathered fence paling bird houses hang in arbours or off trees.
Cute fountains here and there..
Driftwood sculptures and washed up marine objects decorate the garden – what else would you have in a seaside cottage?
I better go outside and check the wind strength vs my ability to keep paint on my brush.

z


day 25 – a day off

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And by that I mean a day where I slept in till 10am.

I no longer can sleep in till 10am. Not usually. On work days I get up at 6am and on weekends I feel the need to get up almost as early just so I can get things done.

Gone are the days of sleeping in till 2pm when I’d been out late the night before. Nowadays a late night is 10pm.

Getting old sucks. And I really needed the rest.

When I was young I’d hear about people working 2 or 3 jobs and I’d think “No thanks! One job will be enough for me when I grow up!”

And here I am now… 2 jobs and countless hobbies which keep me busy all the time.

No wonder I’m tired.

I had planned to go to the Royal Hobart Show today to help with poodles, but I was just feeling too average to go. Average sounds so much better than ‘icky’ and really, it implies that the rest of time you feel fabulous!

So, I slept in. Had brunch instead of breakfast… then pottered on down to the casita where I played with paint for a while.

Ahhh. That’s the life.

And its been raining all day so its been the kind of day where you just want to take it easy and listen to the raindrops on the roof.

Meanwhile at least a few things in my garden are growing. Here is the clematis. I planted 3 things on that trellis, this is the only one that survived.

Here are my prize flowers. I just love them! Granny’s bonnets or aquilegia.

 My purple daisies.

And my gorgeous baby snowball bush (vibirnum). Billy’s bush.

I’m not going to bother with what I did and didn’t cross off the list today cause, basically, I didn’t cross anything off!

Rest wasn’t on the list.

z

day 6 – taking it easy

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Today was a day ‘off’ for me.
That means I didn’t do any work. Nothing but indulge myself, doing what I wanted to do.
I didn’t even look at the to do list, but I did manage to cross one item off it! I took our corner TV unit up to a friend. That’s something I’d had on my weekend list for about 5 weeks now. I decided that instead of spending time to paint it, they needed a new tv unit, so I would give it to them.
This achieved two things. Its one step in decluttering and reducing the projects I have to get to. 
It also added a few more brownie points to my karma.
I believe in helping out when I can. Which is why I suck as a business person. I’m more likely to give things away than to sell them. Great for karma. Not so good for the bank account.
What I did yesterday:
I visited Kelly and dropped off the tv unit. Had coffee and a muffin, played with their dogs. Explored the old homestead on the property they’re living on and scored this little beauty.
I don’t really know what it is. The ‘grill’ bit is too wide to really cook things on, but it looks like some kind of camp stove for big steaks. Its gorgeously rusted though, so I know I’ll find a home for it. Or Wayne will find a use for it.
I then came home and wandered around the garden thinking how much it needed mowing and took photos instead of taking out the mower. I created this little garden bed after Billybear died and put in a pom pom bush (viburnum) and some colombines (grannie’s bonnets). The pom pom bush is looking great. We’ll get flowers this year. What better flower for a poodle than a pom pom bush?
Please ignore the weeds. I think the only reason we have a ‘lawn’ is that weeds look green.
The colombines are looking great too. I can’t remember what colour seeds I put in that spot, either white or dark purple. I so want a cottage garden but I’m a useless gardener.
This is how the hydrangea bed looks right now… The hydrangeas are growing beyond the photo, but its a mess. My gardening style tends more towards interesting ‘objects’ in amongs plants that survive my hit and miss gardening methods, than flowers.
 
Then I had a massage. 
NICE.
Then I picked up a friend’s daughter to babysit while she went out. We got dvds and chinese and had a great night.
What I didn’t do:
Take out the lawn mower or brushcutter. Plant the agapanthus we were given. Do any projects on my list.
At least I got one thing crossed off my arm long to do list. And speaking of arms. a day off and a massage has done it wonders. Well, its improved it a bit. Lets see how it holds up to grooming tomorrow.
z

pretty garden (well, not quite)

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I absolutely fell in love with the garden decorations I’ve seen on Pinterest.

I wanted them.

I wanted a pretty garden like that…

See, our garden is NOT pretty. It’ll never be pretty while we allow horses in it. At the moment we have to feed Dancer in the yard cause the boys eat her food. She also enjoys a nibble of the grass. And stomping on my pathetic excuse for a flower garden.

I guess I have to decide what’s more important… spending quality time with the equines, or a pretty garden.

I’m working on it.
 
Anyway, I admired the baubles on Pinterest.

I looked at them.

I decided I could make something similar.

I had a few odds and ends around the house. I found more at op shops. I got to work.

The first ones I made were made using two of my cheap poodle ornaments and some candlesticks.
I liked them. I put them in my pathetic little flower garden (before the frost took its toll on my plants) and they looked great for about 2 weeks. Then something (or someone) knocked one down and broke the poodle.


I glued the poodle together, but I discovered the glue I was using (supposedly will glue anything to anything. hmph) was useless. So I tried superglue.

Lesson: do not buy $2 dollar store superglue. You may as well use flour and water.

But I know that now. Not when I was making these things. Here is what my coffee table looked like for a week.

I don’t do things by halves.

After they dried, I put them on a bookcase to wait till the weather improved enough to put them outside.

Naturally DJ knocked them over. Broke 2 of them and proved that the glues I used were not up to the challenge.

I fixed what I could, then took the survivors and put them in the garden. Or whats left of it.

Its really not easy photographing them all at the same time and not getting the muddy cement and the water tanks in the shot.

Maybe, come spring, the bushes will come back to life and flower. And the pretty decorative jewels will add to the beauty of my garden.

Till then, they ARE the beauty in my garden.



If they last till spring I’ll take more photos.

z

corrosion

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The hakea is flowering! When I planted it I was told it wouldn’t grow in Fentonbury cause of the cold.
Or, if it did grow, it surely wouldn’t flower. Spectacular isn’t it?

Its been a really busy week even though we’ve had a week from work. I can’t explain it. Its just been flat out. I seem to have been out for one thing or another almost every single day, grooming dogs which were either pre-booked or spur of the moment bookings. Looking after animals and Wayne and the house of course.
Somehow, through all that, I managed to do a bit of my own creative stuff so I have a few small projects to share over the next few days when I get a chance to photograph them.
This is where I ask your opinion, oh my few friends and readers, what should I do with the stuff I’m making? Should I sell it on etsy.com or should I try to sell it locally through a shop in town?
Or keep it?
Ok, keeping everything is out of the question. There’s only so much room in our home and I’m actually thinking of what I can get rid of to streamline our lives somewhat.
Some stuff I am tempted to keep and some of it I’m sure I’ll end up keeping cause I won’t be able to part with it. However, a lot of the items I’ve been working on were made with selling in mind. When I make something for a specific purpose for our home, that’s when I’ll keep it.
Or at least that’s the plan.
I’ve been collecting stuff from tip shops and wherever for a while now with the plan to use them to create stuff for our home and to sell. Some of the bits and pieces I’ve collected will be hard for me to part with, but part with them I must.
I already have an etsy shop which I plan to update and revamp – not a big deal given I’ve never really used it!
Anyway, your thoughts on this serious matter are welcome at any time as I share the various projects…
Meanwhile, I just thought I’d give you a quick update at how things are at Wind Dancer Farm. 
Wayne is better. Well, he was better till last night. I think he was so much better compared to how he had been that he overdid it and is now back to being really sore.
The antibiotics for his chest seem to have done a great job and he feels a lot better for them. Here’s to avoiding pneumonia! However he’s back to not being comfortable in any position and pacing. sigh.
The dogs are all well and happy though Mischa and Barney were not too pleased I cornered them and gave them a bath the other day. I also gave Montana and Romeo a much needed clip and wash so right now all the canines in the family are soft and sweet smelling. (Not that the poodles ever smell bad!)
Yesterday morning we did something we rarely do any more. Used to be (back when Wayne was trying to win me over) we’d lie in bed with the dogs in the morning and just ‘be’. I love that time. Since we moved in together and the bank has tied us together, Wayne has felt secure enough to banish the poodles from the bedroom. 
Hmph.
Interesting… notice how the poodles are on MY side of the bed?
But yesterday morning while he was bringing coffee in bed I let Montana and Romeo in and they joined us on the bed. I can’t even begin to express how much I love having them on the bed with us. Cosy. Warm. Secure. Its like everything I love is right there with me.
We’ve also been social this last week. I picked Merrill up from the airport and we had a lovely lunch at a swish restaurant in Salamanca. I visited Ginny and Richard and the lovely Harvey and got to meet his new girlfriend, Tess the kelpie. We were invited to a BBQ at a friend’s house down the road and I scored a leather cowboy hat out of that. 🙂 Chris came up to visit and has been staying over the last few days. Yesterday I made gluhwein (Ginny and Richard were doing Christmas in June, so why not join in?) and Merrill came over and we ate cheese and crackers and watched dvds and laughed loads. 
In fact, maybe that’s why Wayne is sore again. Too much laughing over the last few days.
Chris has a new nickname for Wayne. Over the years Chris has had a growing list of names for Wayne, but this time I think he hit on one that even Wayne had to admit was a gem.
Corrosion.
And its not cause Wayne loves metal and rusty objects…
Its cause he’s like corrosion: he slowly eats through everything.
ROFLOL!!!
You gotta admit, as far as nicknames go, this one’s a keeper!
z


in the trenches

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It was a disaster waiting to happen. I mean, we knew it was coming… we just stuck our heads in the sand and hoped that if we pretended everything was fine, that it would be fine.

When we first moved in over a year ago now, we had a problem with the plumbing. The shower started to back up, the sink wouldn’t empty and we got smelly as we waited to the plumber to come fix the problem.

It turned out the pipes under our house were all 1/2 the size they needed to be to carry away grey water from the house. We found a nice plumber who came and replaced all the pipes under the house for us and said he’d be back to replace the rest when we dug them up in the yard to the sullage pit.

Obviously, we didn’t do that. We thought ‘if it ain’t broke’ and carried on like ostriches till the water started to back up again. Last week I timidly said ‘Wayne, if I tell you something, will you promise not to yell?’ Of course he yelled. Words I can’t repeat for fear of being sensored.

But the fact is, we knew it was coming.

So, poor Wayne spent 2 days outside digging up our entire yard. This time, for once, he didn’t accidentally hit a water pipe – he was actually looking for water pipes!


What he hit this time was the phone line.

I wouldn’t have minded, but imagine all the calls from New Delhi telling me I won a cruise to Atlantis if I just buy $50,000 of aluminium siding I missed!

Wayne tried to tell me it was my fault. He said it was all the long distance phone calls I made which stretched the line and wore it out.

This afternoon it looked like WWI in our front yard, trenches everywhere. We had 2 Telstra trucks here as men crawled over the yard trying to find the fault in the line.

Its fixed now, so thats a relief. I would have missed the call from a nice man trying to sell me a new mobile phone otherwise.

z

Me and hydrangeas

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I’ve had a busy week. Since when do I not have a busy week? I wish I had 54 hours in each day… Then again, Wayne says that if I did somehow manage to find another 30 hours in each day I’d soon find another 82 things to do which would take at least 41 hours to get through.

Math has never been my strength.

The photo is my first and only white cosmos flower. How was I to know you need a ton of them to produce any kind of display? I bought one little plant from a street side vendor and here it is. A single flower.

Gardening has never been my strength either.

Did I mention the hydrangea fiasco?

After admiring my hydrangeas in their pots for about 3 months and debating the pros and cons of planting them here or there, I finally made a decision. I’d plant them there. There being along the side wall of the small timber shed behind the house. It has a small gravelled area on which I’d been keeping my potted plants, a kind of plant nursery if you will.

So I moved building materials from the side of the house, the perfect spot for the plant nursery to relocate to. I moved pots to the new spot. I moved pebbles to the side. Found weed matting (of course). Cut through that. Then I dug a hole. Plonked in potting mix and hydrangea #1. Repeated the proceedure for hydrangea #2.

At hydrangea #3 I hit a snag.

As I dug there was a sneaky odour of oil. Pebbles seemed a bit sticky. The weed matting darker in colour, heavier…. You got it. I’d struck oil!

I wish.

What I found was the dumping ground for gallons of sump oil.

Who on earth dumps sump oil on the ground right behind their house? The previous owner obviously.

Then he covered it all with weed matting and pebbles, creating an illusion of garden beds to be which a gullible sucker like me would fall for.

I started digging up the oily soil and lugging it out to the area behind the garage where the soil had already been oil soaked. I was soon aching.

I haven’t been out there since. The plan was to do a bit of digging and moving pebbles at a time. After a few weeks of small bouts of work I’d have the area dug out, a hole a horse might disappear into, buy new topsoil, filled it up, plant in hydrangea #4 and finally have the garden bed I dreamed of.

Right now I’m wishing I’d put them in large pots.

Other than that I’ve been well. If you dont count the fact that I’m kinda too scared to eat anything other than toast or chips cause of a dubious tummy. What? They’re dry!

I came down with some stomach thing on Wednesday and it isnt entirely settled. Its getting there. Wayne has no sympathy. He has the constitution of an ox. He’s probably the only man I know who could go to India and drink the water without getting sick.

On another note, the new chooks are great. We’re getting so many eggs now (and me not currently eating eggs) we are getting a build-up of eggs in the fridge. Wayne is ‘in love’ with his girls.

Speaking of Wayne, he’s really been getting into some DIY and craft stuff himself lately. I must take photos of some of the things he’s made but here is a gorgeous little bird house he made me out of old tin cans. He hung it on the trellis where, one day, we’ll have flowering climbers and a gorgeous nook to sit.

He also made an alien robot to guard the house. It stands in the yard with its laser beam and its knife, ready to challenge any intruders.

I really want to try making some robots. When I have some time…

For now I think I should concentrate on actually finishing the jobs I started last weekend. For instance, put away all the stuff I moved out of the office to make it Zefi-friendly. I still have some boxes in the living room, some on the porch and the vacuum cleaner has been sitting in our ridiculously small bathroom since last weekend.

Before I get on with any more of my projects, whether new or unfinished, I really need to finish the office, clean out the living room and find homes for all the displaced craft items in my workshop. I had gotten a good start on the workshop. Its in the casita (the small old house/shed on our property where I groom dogs) and its my space for my tools and where I’ll be doing my bigger, messier craft and DIY projects. Wayne is not allowed near my tools any more. First time he used my circular saw he cut through the power cord and he’s never lived it down since.

Better go. I have a big weekend planned.

As usual.

z


Before and after

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This is the before photo of the vegie patch. Not before-before. When it was 4 beds of weeds. About halfway through the weeding process, 2.5 beds done, 1.5 to go.

This is the vegie patch a couple of weeks ago, overgrown with growing things that we actually planted on purpose. Well, minus a few that were either eaten by bugs or threw the towel in on their own. The corn is currently almost as tall as I am and the runner beans have grown up the trellis and are sporting red flowers. Who knew.

 

I’ve just been feeling so lazy lately… I have a ton of things I need to or want to get done over the holidays, but I just can’t motivate myself to do anything at all. Maybe I just need a rest for a few days, then I’ll get back into it.

…That’s what I’m telling myself.

Wayne’s daughter Caitlin is visiting us and its nice to get to know her. So far Wayne’s taught her how to drive the 4×4 up on the hill, we plan to put her on Ben for his first time being ridden and I think he’s planning to get her to chop down a tree after that, then stock us up with firewood for winter.

Ok. Only joking. Caitlin can’t ride, and though we’d love to get someone onto Ben who’s lighter than us (Wayne suggested I buy a clydesdale!) I don’t think it’d be fair to use Caitlin as a guinea pig. As for the chainsaw, I don’t think anyone can prize that baby out of Wayne’s hands…

I’m actually really looking forward to getting back to working with the horses today. It’s been weeks. And I have a new saddle to play with. We bought a hybrid – that’s a confused saddle, not quite Australian stock, not quite western. Its a Wintec so its as light as a feather (compared to Wayne’s western). I’m hoping Ben will like it. I believe my butt will like it fine.

I really can’t wait to start riding Ben. And Wally sure needs the exercise. All the horses are round as a whole number thanks to the shortage of grass around here. A visitor thought Wally was pregnant! Besides the grass and the hard feed they all get (cut down to one meal a day now), Wally scoffs the best bits out of his feed bin, then runs up and eats the chook feed too. Its a miracle he isn’t laying eggs with the amount of layer pellets he’s eating!

We could use the eggs.

So, they could use the exercise. As could we… Seems like lately we mark time between one meal and the next. Right now I have scones in the oven… with strawberry jam and that double thick cream you can stand a knife up in. YUM.

And tonight is pizza and movie night. I’m making pizza and we got dvds in New Norfolk. Wayne got 3 movies about centurions, romans, swords and heads being chopped off. I got Red Dog and Water for Elephants. You know which I’ll be angling to watch tonight.

Let’s hope the scone are edible. First time I ever made scones they were hard as rocks. This time I’m making them using a Country Women’s packet. Just add water it said. Easy as pie. We’ll see.

Better go check the oven.

z