All posts by aussiebarons

Fredag

Svenska under bilden.

We are both feeling down in the dumps.Our bodies are tired and our minds don´t agree. No dishes were done, no laundry either but we did a lot of pruning on our trees.The two Yellow Guavas, one of the Mulberries and a Lilly Pilly. This tree we pruned a bit last year and it was in July. It lost tons of green hard berries. Jen made them out to be some kind of Lilly Pilly but could not find out which. This year when we had pruned it good she found some ripe Magenta Lilly Pillys on the ground. So it we have two Magenta Lilly Pillies.  That is great. Also just found out The Magenta is and endangered species which means we probably should try to propagate some more somewhere on the parcel. After having pruned a wallaby came along and sat among the branches on the ground. Jen was gathering some of the good looking leaves for tea and said to the wallaby it could eat the leaves, hahahahah, The wallaby jumped along a bit and sat down to eat off the Guava leaves. When we both went inside to have a cuppa´ it came onto the yard and ate from the weeds in the grass! How cute! After tea we cleared out all branches to the meadow and sorted the bigger chunks of branches in one pile and let the others just lie spead out. We let nature help us and dry the leaves to drop off and later be sucked into the lawn mower and spread on the compost heaps. the Patches look fine. We also measured out our two new patches for the spring. Tomorrow we will start digging them out.

Vi känner oss båda lite nere. Våra kropparna är trötta men våra sinnen inte är överens med kropparna. Ingen disk gjordes, ingen tvätt heller men vi gjorde en hel del beskärning på våra träd.Två gula Guava, ett av mullbären och en Lilly Pilly. Detta träd beskar vi lite förra året och det var i juli. Det förlorade massor av gröna hårda bär. Jen fann att de var någon form av Lilly Pilly men kunde inte ta reda på vilken. I år när vi beskar det fann hon några mogna Magenta Lilly Pillys på marken. Så då vi har två Magenta Lilly Pilly träd. Det är bra. Också fick reda på att Magenta är en hotad art vilket innebär att vi förmodligen bör försöka att sprida lite mer någonstans på vår mark. Efter att ha beskuren kom en wallaby och satte sig bland grenarna på marken. Jen höll på att samla några finare blad till te och sade till wallaby´n den kunde äta bladen, hahahahah, då hoppade wallaby´n längre bort och satte sig att äta av Guava bladen. När vi båda gick in för att fika lite kom den in på gården och åt ogräs! Hur söt! Efter fikat rensade vi bort alla grenar till ängen och sorterade de tjockare grenarna i en hög och låt de andra ligger precis utbredda. Vi låter naturen hjälpa oss att torka bladen att släppa och senare sugas in gräsklipparen och spridas på komposthögarna. Grönsakslanden ser bra ut. Vi mätte också våra två nya grönsaksland för våren. I morgon kommer vi att börja gräva ut dem.

No frost! Jen woke with the bad back ache, it’s been eight days now, and took the day off after most chores were done. Mick joined her.

So inside work got done. Baked bread in the new pans. The old Danish big ones are loosing their black coating more and more. Straight into our stomachs no doubt. We bought new pans.

The bread came out well but not perfect. For some reason the oven died at some point. So bread got baked, then banana bread and macadamia cookies. All set now for coffee brakes. Still gotta make some more Key Lime Pie.

Pancakes for lunch and then a lot of dishes to be cleaned. Did some raking below the house and watered the patches. Something has started to eat on the Basil so arranged Parlsley all around it. All the Chinese Granat was eaten in patch 1.

Doing some macadamia nut outer part removal every day as they start cracking up.

Oh yeah tried out the Guava tea. Very odd taste. Not like Guava fruit and not like grass.

Drying Guava leaves
Tea is in the jar
First taste

 

Another Winter Wednesday

A giant dishwashing, split wood, lunch. Sawed up the rest of the tree we took down yesterday then split the logs at home. We now have wood for a couple of weeks to go. We found 2 lizards in the logs and put them in the lomandra with some grass over. Dinner of lamb, rice and a homegrown grapefruit each. No rain but very cloudy. The ground is still very wet.

Yesterday while out cutting down trees we found black berries on a vine. We have seen them before and searched books and internet a couple of times these last years but not found them. Today we found them on the net and they are Kangaroo Vine and are edible. Great. Tried half of one berry. It was super tart with a wiff of sloan berry. Read than one can make jam on them. Gotta try this. Not much written on this otherwise and everyone had copied someone else but not tried it themselves it seemed. See if we can get some pics another day.

Just any winter Tuesday

We went to the bush after breakfast. We cut down 3 trees and cut them up. One tree we only cut up half. We will do the rest tomorrow. There is one huge tree that fell over the road in the drought. We have been cutting it bit by bit. Maybe our chainsaws are too small now. Home for lunch. More cutting after lunch. Then home again and have tea. Then we started chopping up the wood. We took turns. Sometimes we must take a break for Magnus to eat some ants that came out of the wood. We had two meetings in the bush. Greg came and honked in the morning. In the afternoon Jay came by and waved like crazy and looked very happy. Some wine and pasta for dinner.

Rainy day

No frost in June this year. That´s nice. But we need some sun. Veggies started out nicely but needs a bit more of Nature´sTLC.

Made Key Lime Tart. Just waiting to taste. 4 egg whites left over. Mick is making Coconut foam thingies.

Started trying to crack the black walnuts. Think I am getting some kind of hang of it but think they need to dry up a bit more like the macadamias. So I will leave them a bit longer. The trick is to lightly smash them on the right side and then they should come out nicely.

Anyway while they are drying a bit more it´s time to shell off the macadamias from their green soft outer part and let them dry a bit more.

A pademelon came all the way up to the house and jumped into the citrus grove. We had not seen them in a long time but they are back now.

Since it is raining a lot of clothes that needed mending and had piled up got fixed.

All is well in Comara.

Ingen frost i juni i år. Det är trevligt. Men vi behöver lite sol. Grönsakerna började bra men behöver lite mer av Nature’s vänlighet.

Gjorde Key Lime Tart. Väntar bara på att få smaka den. 4 äggvitor blev över. Mick gör Kokoballur (kokosbollar på isländska).

Började försöka knäcka de svarta valnötterna. Tror att jag har kommit på hur man gör men tror att de måste torka lite mer som makadamianötterna. Så jag kommer att lämna dem lite längre. Tricket är att lätt krossa dem på rätt sida och då ska de komma snyggt ut.

Hur som helst medan de torkar lite mer är det dags att peta av makadamierna sitt gröna, mjuka yttre del och låt dem torka lite mer.

En pademelon kom hela vägen upp till huset och hoppade in i citruslunden. Vi hade inte sett dem på länge men de är tillbaka nu.

Eftersom det regnar så blev det tid att laga lite kläder som börjat bli en hög.

Allt är bra i Comara. O yum nu får ja slicka skålen!

Another day on the job

Jättetvätt på morgonen. Efter middagen började jag klippa gräset. Började  nere vid bäcken. Hann upp till tvättlinan. Flyttade på de gamla rören från gamla vattenledningen från bäcken, sen flyttade på fyra stolar, sen fyllde på bensin, sen fyllde bensin från stora dunken till lilla dunken, sen var det dags för solen att gå ner bakom bergen så då måste tvätten in annars sätter den tunga daggpunkten in och gör den fuktig igen. In med tvätten alltså och in med bensindunkarna och in med två av stolarna som är tyg och metall. Sen var inte all tvätt torr så måste hänga upp den ena blöta pläden över vedspisen. Då åkte hela konkarongen i golvet och skruvarna ur träeet och då kom Mick in. Han hade varit uppe vid takförrådet och dragit upp lantanarötter.  Alltså in med stegen och montera upp torkanordningen igen. Men först en kopp te och kolla hoppisarna som började komma ut ur vrårna. Och sen tillslut en dusch och en kopp te till.

Did a humongous amount of laundry this morning. After lunch mowed the lawn. Started down by the creek and worked up toward the house. Had to move some branches. Got to the laundry line. Had to move the old pipes from the old pipeline from the creek to the tank. We intend to try and use them to hang netting on for one of the new patches we have measured out. Mowed a bit more and had to move 4 chairs. Two of which had laundry on them. Then the sun began setting behind the mountain and as soon as that happens the dew sets in and the laundry gets damp so down with that and into the house. Then tried filling the small gas can from the bigger cannister. Took soooo long. After all this was done there was no use mowing any longer. Waved to one of the “gravel guys” who drove by. Took everything inside and put away pans and buckets. Then tried to hang one of the wetter wraps over where the wood fired stove is. then whole contraption came down and just then Mick stepped in. He had been pulling up Lantana roots by the Storehouse. So in with the ladder and fix the contraption and up with the wet wrap. A cuppa on the verandah, then shower and the day is done!

What can be found the fence post?

One day we were sawing up old half eaten fence posts that we had dug up. They were posted oddly under a tree. We put one on the saw horse and it seemed to have a loose heart sort of. It moved away but that is common with termite stricken wood or wood that is eaten by ants. We sawed it and were we lucky! The inside that moved was this little bottle! Who put it there and why? We will never know. Someone must have set it on the post and with the years it rotten down to the bottom. Or maybe put it there not knowing the post was hollow and it fell to the bottom and could not be retrieved. Oh well. Could have sawn right into it with the chainsaw. Scary!