While walking Max

We went a slightly different way, looking for interesting and different things to take photos of.
This is at the back of the pine forrest behind the house from the new race that has been put through for the cows.
A lovely old tree stump with sketching possibilities, a tangle of dead branches and trees and the view through the pines, dark and mysterious.
Pussy tails blowing in the breeze with dry dock heads behind them.
Will I ever do any thing with them? Perhaps one day but they were nice to find and photograph.
It is still damp, actually quite damp today although not as cold as it has been, my arthritic hands are playing up.
Off to make them do something.

Doing a bit of this and that

This has to be the ugliest doll I have ever made. Millie thought she might like it, I still havent got it to her so goodness knows what she will think when she sees it!
I think the problem is that the cheeks are up too high and look like mad eyes which are up even higher.
I also made a heap of paper beads today, and a couple made from ice cream wrappers that I had used the iron on, wasnt sure if they would work but they seem to have been ok. They are the silver ones.
I usually make beads from fabric or tyvek so these were a new thing to try out. Not sure why I have never used straight paper before.
I cut up a sheet of paper I had under where I spray and paint stuff so lots of interesting colours.
I am walking and doing mundane things like house work, ;;my toe is being a bit uncomfortable but I am perservering with no dressing on it, trying to get the callous softened so it will not be there in the future. I may be being opomistic, we will see.
It has been beautifully cool but I guess it will warm up again soon. Not wet so I am moving hoses again.
Max and I are still enjoying our early morning walks, we see at lest two pairs of kangaroos each morning, usually a mother and child, the females at this time of the year will have a smaller joey again in their pocket as the others are weaned. They are usually to far for me to take photos but it is lovely to see them.

Collage of today

Here is a collage of where we went to lunch. The flying fish at Pt Elliot, the view around Pt Elliot and snaps of our lunch, this table looks straight out onto the beach where children were having surfing lessons. All great fun and we walked back to the car to walk off some of the food!
Oh and my toe is now supposedly better, no more dressings, no more doctors visits. Hooray.

53rd Wedding Anniversary

Who would believe it!!
We look younger every year in these photos.
Off for lunch, nicer than dinner these days as we go where we can sit and see the sea.

Wild skies at Goolwa

John and I went over to Goolwa this morning, we had a coffee on the beach near the first photo, lots of wild surf and the skies were looking interesting and in some areas quite threatening.
The last photo is of the River Murray taken with the bridge overhead.
We went to see about three exhibitions, including the one with the lovely books that I had seen a week or so ago, I am now home making a few small concertina books.
We kept an eye on the skies and finally J said he thought we had better start ot go home.
We hit a very heavy thunderstorm about haldf way home, luckily the hail was not large as there was no where to shelter.
At one stage it was very hard to see and then just as suddenly we were out of it.
Since coming home J has been mostly on the roof making sure that what rain falls goes into the rain water tanks. It is now very windy but we have had about 10 ml which will make the garden a bit happy.
Would have liked not to have had the wind but these sudden cool southerly squalls are wind driven.
So nice to be out and about, but equally nice now to be home and working on these little books.

Magpies and memories

While J and I walked the cliff top this morning this magpie was catching the odd worm. We have two varieties of magpie in Australia, the black backed and as you can see here the white backed. These are our local ones.
They are capable of eating lizards but seem to prefer worms. When they sing, or carol as we call it the sound is quite beautiful.
We have several families around the garden and close farm area here, they can be a bit nasty during mating season as some get it into their heads that we humans are an enemy and they swoop, you can get a nasty hole in the back of your head if they hit you, luckily we have not had any swooping magpies close here for a long time.
I remember as a child at my grandmothers cottage in the country having to wave a large leafy stick every time we went to the outside loo (dunny) in the mating season as there was a family of swooping magpies with a nest in the large gum tree under which the loo stood.
Talk about outside loos!(the smell, phenol and ashes and cut up newspaper!!) and wood stoves and kerosene lamps and the Coolgardie safe to keep food cool and getting ice from the bus in a wheelbarrow to put in the zinc lined ice chest. A water bag hanging on the veranda full of water to keep it cool.
Water got from the well with a rope and bucket when in the summer the rain water rain out, the jersey house cow for the best cream.
A wash in front of the fire at night and a bath once a week, children last, no wonder I dont like baths (that scummy water almost cold by the time the rest of the household had finished, the so called bathroom was freezing cold in winter, hot in summer).
Yet as a city child I loved those school holidays with my grandmother.
No fans, no electricity even, my grandmother who had come out from England was a tough person, yet she had known a very good life in the UK.
A fantastic cook, she made the lightest sponges in that wood stove and I remember her lemon curd (always made to sell at fetes), pavlovas and helping her to make butter.
In her day a beauty with some decidedly odd family history( not sure how many marriages or non marriages she had!) I often wonder how she coped with it all.

Today and yesterday in collage

I had to go over to Yankalilla yesterday to collect a necklace I had bought at a gallery and I took Max with me in the car, he sits in the back seat but tended to whine a lot on the way and was desperate to get out, I need to teach him a few manners when it comes to that.
I took the dirt road through the end of the valley and took the photo of the sign into Back Valley, also a shot of the road as it wound down to the valley floor and on a higher ridge this huge and lovely Banksia, it is a tree not a bush. Please click twice to enlarge these photos.
I am going out with Max at about 8 am at the moment so I can see where to put my feet and not fall over!
We walk approximately the same way every morning but this morning I headed across to the end of our swamp which abuts our neighbours. The reeds are growing tall and looking magnificent. I know the thistle is a weed but it was looking lovely and I may use this for more drawings in my sketchbook.
Their piece of swamp is largely untouched so I took a photo of it with reeds and ferns and in the back ground our very brown and crisp looking paddocks.
It is amazing how quickly every thing starts to look so brown and dry, well not amazing really as we have had very little rain for the last few months and probably dont expect much this month, or March unless a cyclone of the WA coast decides to head down our way.
We are off to Adelaide this afternoon, and then back to McLaren Vale for a 100 year celebration of D'Arenberg winery to night, I hope my fine clothes still fit and I can find some shoes to wear!