mid winter activity

July 26 2016

I am still spending 4 hours or so in the bathroom every day putting on the mosaic tiles!  There is not much to say about this except that it is chilly and wet outside so there is little to distract me.  We force ourselves out by 9am every day because animals have to be fed or milked and two hours later I am very happy to retreat indoors until the evening feeding rounds are due to start.  It is probably the right time of year to do the tiling job.

The cooking also has to be done.  Pumpkin soup for lunch today.  We have eaten all the cauliflowers now as well as the broccoli. There is too much celery and silver beet to make any impression on but spinach, turnip and parsley are good. I have discovered that raw turnip is nice grated or lightly steamed. We still have lots of turnips but the swedes are not ready yet.  The chooks are laying well, despite the cold and the goats are still giving enough milk to make cheese twice a week.

On Sunday we had dinner at Bo’s house with her family and parents in law.  The latter had just come back from a cruise and then a holiday in Queensland. They were not impressed with the cruise and did not seem particularly happy with Queensland.  At least we were able to thank them for letting us use their unit in Dromana.  We definitely enjoyed that.

Bo is busy preparing for the Yarra Glen Festival of light but she also had to get in a submission for funding the event next year.  Silky helped by modelling lanterns for the local newspaper.  Now that her kids have settled down in education and are more independent Bo is trying to work out how to restart her career life. At present she is looking into music therapy.  She got her doctorate in Music research and her last masters in opera performance but now she is returning to her childhood talent and bringing her guitar playing back up to date.

When she was about 16 she sold her horse and brought a second hand Gibson guitar that we all know as Gibbo.  Unfortunately it was badly damaged when her young brother accidently dropped a gun on it. (This is a very rural story).  She had attempted some repairs but this week we took it down to a specialist guitar mender who works from a shed in a back yard.  It was almost impossible to get in the shed because it was chock full of guitars in hard cases piled up like bricks. People were arriving with more guitars all the time but he reckons Beth’s will be back in action by next week.

Luckily for me the repairman lived very close to Garden World and we had lunch there and a look around.  It is orchid season and the place was full of the most beautiful orchids imaginable.  What a wonderful experience. There was also a display of geodes taller than I am that were cut in half to display a lining of amythist crystals.  Garden world is basically a garden shop but it is actually a really enjoyable display of all the things I love.  I came away with a poor orchid that had made it’s way into the ‘has been’ stage and some colourful bromeliad pups.  Too much temptation for total resistance!