Getting married?

This one kept Heidi busy all last week, as you can see there were heaps of roses. I just hope the customers were happy with the finished beautiful cake.

Remember this place?

It has had a side addition put on, otherwise it looks almost the same. It has changed hands a few times since we left, was for a while a Childcare centre, as we hear sometimes from our former neighbours, who stayed put!!!

The Earthquake in NZ.

It is hard to imagine how awful the scene in Christchurch must be. This lovely Cathedral which we visited in 2008 on our last holiday in New Zealand is now the tomb of at least twenty people and is in danger of collapsing completely. The middle photo is another lovely building opposite the cathedral so I expect that will be badly damaged as well.

The Corn is as high as an elephant's eye

 

and I hope it will grow right up to the sky!!

It is coming on, now apparently I have to go and do a bit of hanky panky, the male flowers are at the top, and the female flowers are the silky bits now appearing round the forming corns, so you give the males a bit of a shake up (I will love doing this) and that helps the corns to fill out a bit, sounds familiar!!

You may think that this all sounds a bit corney (no pun intended!)

As one door closes...

 

as the old saying goes! Some of the lovely ornate doors I encountered on my recent holiday.

PS I am still waiting for the next door to open!

Value adding to my Breakfast!

 

I start off with my 'Karlo' muesli, then add lecathin. To this comes a couple of spoonfuls of a good cereal, then half a banana (Ken gets the other half, bananas are going to get rare in this household over the coming months!) To this I add a few chopped nuts, then the yogurt, not Lite, not healthy, but lovely unhealthy good yogurt (I justify this cos I only have a small amount!) Then come the blueberries (high in anti oxidents) and the watermelon. Then comes the espresso coffee which probably negates the whole bloomin' lot! (But I love it!!!)

Evandale

 

Evandale is the Penny Farthing Capital of the World! Every year they have Penny Farthing Races there and competitors come from all over the place. The year we were there, with sister Helen, an Englishman won, so not only do they play good cricket (sometimes) they also play good croquet and win Penny Farthing races. Can't say I would feel that comfortable so far off the ground. I like the adoring look on the dog's face.

A Frog he would a'wooing go!

 

Hey Ho says Rollie! Don't know any more of that rhyme but when Heidi sent this lovely photo I had to share it with you (and you, and you) Isn't he great, he landed on her kitchen window and stayed around for the photo shoot. Look at all his beautiful markings, and how does he stick to the window like that? He must be fitted with some sort of suction pads.

All things yellow!

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I had a surprise whilst mowing the lawn, suddenly I caught a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye! It was a sweet little canary, obviously someone's pet, but after several attempts to catch it, unfortunately it flew off, hopefully not right into next door's cat! It was quite tame, and let me get quite close, but alas not close enough.

And then our sunflowers have poked their heads above the fence again, beating neighbour Debbies sunflowers (again, second year running) Next year I think we should encourage all the cul de sac to plant a sunflower, just for fun, they look great.

Collage

 

This is an experiment, and it shows what I have been up to today!! I baked some bread, a regular occurrence these days, it gets easier every time I do it, AND it tastes good too. Then I went out into the jungle, whoops I mean the garden and discovered the plums are just ripe for the picking. We had two new plum trees last year, one did absolutely nothing and these are the fruits of the other. On further investigation I discovered most of them are just ripe so we will be enjoying them over the coming days.

Then I thought I would 'bandicoot' a few volunteer potatoes, I did not plant any this year but obviously last yer I did not do a very good job of harvesting them so I got heaps of potatoes, enough for us (and Heidi) to enjoy for a while. (Bandicoots are small Ozzie creatures who like to dig up things they are very sweet and you are lucky if you have them in your garden. Unfortunately household cats do not like them and do their best to get rid of them during the night, so all household cats should be securely locked indoors at night but uinfortunately not all cat lovers agree!!

Then I did a bit of succulent potting up into some groovy cups my neighbour gave me, and I have some groovy succulents, I particularly like the red spiky one which has taken to being divided very well, it is coming up all over the place. Please excuse the cobwebs (maybe you won't be able to see them on this collage, so don't bother to double click or look through the magnifying glass!!

Oh yes, I nearly forgot, I helped with the painting! We have decorated Ken's study, after grandson George took up the carpet and sanded and polished the floor, it looks very smart and Ken will be moving back in soon. Watch this space for a photo.

A beautiful rainbow

 

Because we have a continual slide show coming up on the computer all the time I get the opportunity to refresh my mind about some of my photos, and when this one came up I could not resist putting it up to show you, it was on a ride out New Norfolk way and shows the hopfields and all their nice straight rows. If I remember correctly, Heidi was with us on that particular occasion. Yes, in fact it was Mothers Day and she and I had been out to see the Platypus, so it was last April.

Visit to Longford

 

 

We went up to Longford for the weekend to visit Sue and Tony who used to live down here and Sue is one of my girlfriends who used to meet with us once a month. They live in a quiet little town about fifteen minutes from Launceston and we had a good weekend with them.

What a beautiful garden

 

 

 

 

We went over to a neighbour for afternoon tea and had a look round her lovely garden, the roses and the hydrangeas were partifularly impressive and now is the time for the agapanthus, they line the streets everywhere and we always remember it is time for T & M's Wedding Anniversary when the agapanthus bloom because when sister June and I came out here for their wedding we were very impressed by the beautiful show of blue or white agapanthus everywhere and went to great lengths to smuggle back with us some bulbs, only to find that we have agapanthus in England too, we had just not noticed them before!!! Oh well!

We took the back road home

 

 

 

and stopped off on the side of the road to collect some grasses.

The Western Tiers (and a dead tree)

 

Thought this was quite a good photo.

Wedding Anniversary AND Fiftieth cake

 

As we didn't get to see any Newhams on his real birthday we took the opportunity to call in at the 'House in progress' and see how they were getting on. Good job Mandie doesn't look at this, she would kill me for putting it on, I am sure, but at least it shows that she WORKS!!!

PS The Cockerel on the cake is actually Tim's own Cockerel, photo taken by me and published on the Blog a couple of months ago.

Paul's Fiftieth!!

 

 

 

 

Yes, how time flies when you are having fun! Heidi made Paul a cake with a photo from his and Tim's Christening (note Tim is the BIG one on the right held by Jane and Paul is the SMALL one on the left held by Linda) We had a little tea party, with scones and homemade jam, down at Dru Point and the boys had a great time letting off steam on the swings and things.

February

 

 

Here are your pictures for February and who are those shadowy figures in the foreground?

Apricot Jam

 

Its that time of the year - again, must say I was very impressed with the ten kilos of apricots I got from Evandale market, now I am trying them out in my new 'food dryer' which I got from a garage sale for five dollars!!! Will let you know the outcome when they are all dried and shrivelled and hopefully not too dscoloured (but healthy!)