This evenings walk

I was going to show a bit more of yesterday but I rather liked the photos I took this evening of my walk. First the entrance to the garden from the farm yard, a strange year, but then no two are alike and I wish the scientists would remember that, and that it is better to look at long term cycles, like 50 to 100 years, not 20 when pontificating on what the climate is doing.
I sometimes think farmers have a better idea than any one on these matters if their families have lived in the one place for generations.
Enough!!
The calves are increasing in numbers, these are the older ones out in the paddock and here is one alseep by the fence tucked down in the long grass, she didnt even want to look at me when I took her photo.
On the hill behind the house in a dam enclosute is one of the Welsh Mountain colts, one we bought to tuck away and see how he went over the mares, Owendale Theo, he has had one mare this season and maybe a few more next.
Finally a not terribly good photo of a Nankeen falcon, (Sorry, It is a kestrel, not a falcon, I dont know what I was thinking when I wrote that.) these small falcons are slowly coming back, they were almost decimated by ddt in the '60's, I had a pet one when we were first married, such a nice little bird. This one was making typical hawke noises and I looked for him, high in one of the trees and I wasnt sure how well my photo would come out. I was surprised and pleased.
I think if you click on them they will enlarge.

Yesterdays photos

Well not exactly but here are some I have found, unedited else where. Not to see if you can see them.

A day playing with India Flint

I was lucky enough to spend a day playing at eco dyeing with India flint over at Yankalilla yesterday. India, who is a world wide acclaimed artist, has been funded through a grant to run a series of workshops, the first of which was dyeing the flags for an installation. This was held in well known local artist Karen Hammats studio, isnt it just the best hobbit house? It is a gallery as well as a studio and oh how I would love one like this. I think about 12 of us gathered yesterday to work as India put it "magic" and magic it was to unroll those bundles of silk we had placed eucalyptus leaves into, tied with string and put in a pot of hot water with more leaves and simmer for various times. and see what had happened to them. I am going back tomorrow to do some more and then over the week end we sew them together(tomorrows pieces). I am planning! More eco dyeing and I will try various leaves we have here and see what happens when I have time. I have already found an old pot. I know where there is another small copper, what fun! So the gallery, a dye pot emptied of our bundles, the line full of fluttering magic flags, and finally my flags, I was so pleased to get this amount of colour. My second flag which was tied around some iron is still steeping, to be unrolled tomorrow. I had to miss out on a 5 day workshop with India last year as my mother was in the last stages of her illness so this has been such an added bonus. On top of that John had a good days fishing yesterday so there is fresh fish for dinner tonight, a small whole baked red snapper.

A short walk from home

No walk by the sea this week end, John had a nasty cut off the top of his foot and it is still quite tender and he doesnt fancy walking so I took myself for a short walk around the road and the farm. It is so green, I really cant remember seeing the area as green as this in March
for many many years.
So the first photo is looking back as I left the house to the back door area, the rubbish bins hide behind the door you can see, and the path leads up to a shed and into one garden where an aged pug resides in what was once the old laundry and also to the right of the shed into the walled garden, where the black pug lives. I have to keep them seperated as one is male and one female, and the little black girl tends to dig holes in the back of the very old dog.
I went down past the dairy and the stables, looked at the weanlings and then turned down the road where the manchurian pear in the paddock divider is turing red, early signs of autumn, then down further to look at the main creek where it passes under the road, full but muddy but with lovely reflections, there was an older bridge there once but this is a newer one.
As I turned to come back I took the photo of the neighbours just to show how green all the paddocks are.
Not a long walk but far enough for protesting knees.

Autumn is here

New calves, the first of about 400, actually there are more but these are the only heifers so far. A red and white and a black and white holstein.
The mares and foals have spent the summer on these paddocks and now the calves go onto them.
I saw this fungi while walking yesterday, I think they may be a type of puff ball but I loved thier little skirts.
Still cold but a flash of sun every so often. I like our mild winters normally but this really is a bit early, I think the weather man says it may warm up for a while next week. I just wish they would stop daylight saving earlier, here we are not to the end of it and the sun doesnt come up till nearly 7.30, it is ridiculous. John is worried that we may dry off for a month or so, not good for pasture repleneshing.
Ever know a farmer who is happy with the weather?

The Girls

Dressed and ready to go hopefully to be sold at Textile Forum in Ballarat.
I put my alien girls undressed on my other blog, last night Millie thought the green one looked like Mummy! At three she should know better.
I have had one of those days, finally to myself and would you believe I spent half the morning trying how to work out french knitting on my clover spool, I have eventually got my head around it, one of the troubles being that the instructions were so small I couldnt read them and had to look on the net.
I then decided this afternoon that I really did need to master herringbone stitch in beading, so unpicked and unpicked but I have finally worked it out, the flat one, heavens I dont think I can do circular peyote let alone tubular herringbone.
I need to have much bigger beads as I really cant see terribly well I have spent a lot of the day sitting and freezing, I have finally had to put on a heater it is so cold.
Just done my feeds and had a small walk with John who had a nasty cut off his foot so doesnt want to walk far, we have some new calves, the first of the season, foals are being weaned, and their paddocks are now about to become calf paddocks.
Its all go once it rains.

Wintry conditions

Yesterdays walk around the base of the Bluff, cold and damp with occasional sun, I dont think these fellows were catching anything, today wetter and colder so no walk.
Oscar making the most of the colder weather on our bed.

Misty and cold

John had stuff to do in Victor but I went in with him so I could have a walk, well we both had a walk, there was low cloud and quite a strong wind blowing, we needed caps and jackets and decided to walk over the cycle bridge to Kent Reserve, not the other way we often go around the point.
There were two yatchs anchored in the bay and there was a strong current running in the river but it wasnt going out to sea as we thought it would be.
You can see how strange the atmosphere was, not normally like this at all.
I am of course not doing what I wanted to do, I have been looking for a work book I knew I should have and couldnt find, always frustrating. I have finally found it, with a heap of other workbooks that I should look at again, why is it that you think you have finished something and suddenly you need to find it?
Better go and get done some of the things I promised myself I would do and havent!

More of yesterdays walk

We didnt manage a walk today but cleaned the house instead, then when we thought we might go out it started to rain.
So a few more photos from yesterday, I love the mix of sea and granite boulders and plants along this walk, the wattle is a bit early, it is usually out in winter or late autumn a t least, the spurges grow on the sand and at times get covered in sea water.
I have finished off my 'pocket' to send to The Thread Sudio, Dale has this year challenged us to make a pocket, it is due in on Friday and I have been very remiss and even thought about not doing it but suddenly a vague inspiration struck so I made up something that I hope will be acceptable. Of course I packed it and forgot to take its photo.
Now that the house looks a bit more respectable I want to get on with a whole heap of stuff and I need to clear the tables in my work room, having the extra bed in there is a pain but it does make me try and keep things a bit tidier.
I dont think I will be going any where this week as the following one looks messy, nice messy but still messy. So a week more or less to myself, woopee!

The sea this morning

A very rough and tumble sort of sea with surfers out in it around the point off the Sandy Beach at Pt Elliott, it was hard to get them catching waves but I did just with one, I was also shooting into the sun so that made it even more difficult.
I took dozens of photos, you may see more in the next few days. It depends on what I do and what photos I take.
We had a lovely walk, I had been shopping at the market and John had collected the papers, very cool for this time of the year this morning but it warmed up this afternoon, supposed to rain tomorrow but who knows the forcasts have been a bit haphazard.
I have painted a green and ochre body and they are hanging in the rose out the front to dry, you may see them when I have finished them.
We went out to dinner last night, it was very pleasant but I got cramps in the night so my nights sleep was not as I would have liked it.
Apart from the walk I have had to put hoses back on and do some watering, and I have washed, why do men seem to want tomorrow the shirt you havent washed!
I have also been cooking, I stuffed some lovely mushrooms for lunch and stewed up some rhubarb and apple and then made a soup, for dinner tonight I am marinating some beef to go on skewers, we havent had that for ages and we may even sit outside to have it.
John has just come in to tell me we had two kangaroos right in the horse paddock by the back gate, they dont usually come quite so close but I suppose with no Jake any more they are getting more confident, not that I want them quite that close. As John said, he was quietly admiring the huge pumpkins on the vine and looked up and there they were.

In the garden and wanderer butterfly caterpillars

A few more garden photos, I have been busy doing non interesting things today so these photos I took a day or so ago will fill the gap and make me feel that I do have a garden out there.
the weather has become very autumn like, usually in March we have very hot weather but not so far this year. I will be glad when daylight saving is over as it is pitch black at 6.30 am these days.
My datura has had a bit of a hard time lately, but is flowering beautifully and the perfume in the evening is superb.
I threw out a handful of pumpkin seeds a few months ago and the vine is spreading out into the paddock and this is one of a number of huge pumpkins that are growing, I hope there are enough to keep me going with pumpkin soup through the winter. I thought they were Japanese pumpkins but this looks more like a Queensland blue so maybe I kept a mix of seeds. John wasnt going to grow any this year, but I love pumpkin soup and roast pumpkin.
T he flowers on the non edible red passionfruit aor passionflower perhaps I should call it are out at the moment, for something that looks so tropical it is amazing how well it grows here and in a lot of cases spreads too far and wide. It is the bane of Johns life as it grows into the trees and somehow he has to cut it back.
Finally, the other day when we were walking at Kings Beach I took a photo of all the wanderer butterfly caterpillars on this cotton bush, now did I put this up before? Well if I did it is worth looking at again as their colours are magnificent, worthy of the butterfly they will become.
I remember going to the silk museum in Japan and being amazed at the different coloured silk caterpillars there were, some were striped rather like these. I had only ever seen the white ones we had as children (well and as an adult when I grew them on mulberry leaves).
Poor Japan, one feels so helpless in the face of all that suffering.

New books and the garden

I am so tired, after the last few days it has been a relief to be home doing some book work, now I would like to curl up and go to sleep but I have things to do.
On Tuesday I had a full day painting class and what I did is on my other blog, then I raced home fed us and went back in for a beading class.
Yesterday was on the whole dreadful but had good bits in it. We had to be in Adelaide all day for hair and dental appointments and also to go to a lecture in the evening, in the midst of all of this at home my very favorite little mare was found in a very distressed way and had to be put down, I was terribly upset as I couldnt get home to her to say goodbye, there was no point as she had to be put down quickly to put her out of her misery but even so I am afraid my dentist got the brunt of my miserable feelings and the fact that I hate going to the dentist any way and was really sick of being treated like a child who cant clean my teeth, in no uncertain terms I told him that as I had done all he asked perhaps my teeth or mouth were to blame at which he finally grudgingly thought there might be something in it.
I was really in no fit state to go looking for books to fill the lovely voucher my sister had given us for Christmas, but as the shops were in receivership I knew I couldnt waste the money she had spent to give them to us, and very luckily she had given me one that worked at another bookshop as well, so although I had to pay a $ for every $ on the voucher I came home with these two magnificent books, I would never have bought them otherwise, I have another African book by Angela Fisher called Africa Adorned which I love and this one is just as magnificent with wonderful photos of textiles and beading and there are so many ideas in it.
The top one, is just incredible, the photos in this are wonderful stunningly beautiful photos of the interiors of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic huts, now 100 years old, it is like a museum of hardship and Edwardian resourcefulness, in a lot of ways although not in such extreme conditions brought back memories of our farm when I first came here, the things used and made out of everything, nothing wasted, I still have things in the shed that bring back these memories, stuff Scotts party left behing on the last fateful expedition still there. If you ever get a chance to look at this book do, talk about wabi sabi!
A shot of my garden with the sedums and garlic chives giving it a beauty I didnt think these plants could give and the other evening we had another one of those skies I had to photograph, an eerie light which transformed into this.

Well I had better feed the dogs and wonder about what to feed us as well, John will be late back from meetings and hungry for proper food as last night it was the ubiquitous finger food!