Haha lazy Willie Wagtail is stealing insects from the spiders web! Or is there a nest up there??
The garden is full of birds flying here and there eating from the nectar giving flowers.
Hard to take pics because they are up there in the tree tops against the sun.
Woah, just seeing two Rainbow Lorikeets in the Silky Oak! Nice having them around. They can get quite friendly. We are keeping an eye on our patches too. We might have to put netting over 3 and 4 by and by.
Here is the only dill plant that made it but we have harvested so much dill from it it is uncanny! 
Below is the Macadamia blooming and there are lots and lots of insects flying around fertilising it.
On the other hand the Guava is faring miserably. Something that we cannot see is eating all the leaves.
Lazy morning by the fire.
Did September cleaning and vacuuming.
After lunch we started working on the vinyl flooring in the dunny-to-be. Cut the corners and decided to glue half of it tomorrow. Half so we can move the dunny from the verandah. And only half because we have to make a drain for the shower and sink before glueing the rest. Looking forward to this.
After that we raked the garden behind the house which was full of leaves again.
Still have the sliver and the Pecan square to rake and remove branches and twigs.
But things are looking up, really. The beans and radishes are sprouting and some other things which we are not sure if it´s weeds or veg´s.
Woke up and from the verandah saw one of the big Wallabies licking a very red spot on his stomach. It was sitting down on it´s tail which was sticking out front sort of instead of backwards as usual. Jen spoke to it and it did not jump away. The two big ones are a bit shy otherwise. Went in and had brekkie. Later it lied down in it´s side. Now we got nervous it was sick and maybe would die. We talked to it a couple of times and it looked at us but did not jump away. In the evening it got up and jumped away and ate some. I hope it´s back to business. We planned our day´s work: the dunny and raking the back yard but then our plans got thwarted because it stunk in the storage. The cans with beans we had conserved had yeasted and run over and gotten mouldy and stunk prawn and fish. One of the bottles of lemon juice had leaked a lot and mould loved it. So instead of following our plan we picked the innards of the old fridge apart and cleaned them and sprayed mould stuff on. Poured out our beans on the compost and did not do much else. Sometimes days are like that.
Started making curtains from some old fabric we found. It is fabric from an old medieval dress Jen sewed once.
Today is a beautiful day. We took a cuppa with us to the creek while the laundry was beeing rinsed. Two big black cockatoos came along and shreiked at us a little and flew away. We think they might have a nest close by.
Maybe this is the last frost morning! Hoping so.
Made chicken in milk a couple of weeks ago and saved the liquid. Today we mixed it with chicken meat and had for lunch. Tasted neither orange nor milk but tasted very good anyway.
Mick sowed the rest of the seeds that should go in pots first and we will sow what goes straight in the ground tomorrow.
We are sowing a Quandong tree:
Someone is burning their paddocks on the other side of the mountain and it makes the sky hazy. Last days of burning now before 1st of Sept.
Eve dinner will be some chinese ginger stuff we´ll put together.
Still cold mornings and evenings but soooooon!
Today, the 20:th, we have lived in Oz for two years since Greece.
Now it must be spring! We were outside most of the day in t-shirts!
This week we have sown lots of seeds in small empty butter containers and have them in the little net seed house.
We have sown: lettuce -three kinds, parsnip, radishes, shallots, broccoli, basil -2 kinds, and spinach. Also radishes outside in patch 3. We are still weeding patch 3.
We have now made a sowing plan in Excel for our coming year. We will note when to sow for the first time and then we shall see how often we shall sow or can sow after that. Two more squares are planned too, one for corn stalks and one for artichokes.
We have written down companion plants too but that bit will have to wait until next year. We cannot take on too much at the same time, right!
There are also still veggies growing so today we harvested one super large Swede, fit for fodder we know but still edible, broccolini, dill and probably the two last and quite small cauliflowers, oh, and two red beets.
Citrongräs, Broccolini, Kinesisk kål, Blomkål och små persiljor växer här.
Swede/kålrötter och en ensam dill
The dill is bouquet dill and very nice. It´s the second time we harvest from the same plant. Dill is definitely a plant for our winter time.
Yesterday we made rösti on a mix of roots. It was yum! We both can´t wait for our new seeds to grow!
Of course we have ongoing work all over like mowing, working the patches, pumping water, picking up branches and twigs after each storm or high winds and rain, getting wood in the bush or arranging logs to dry. Clearing different areas again.
Next big step is moving the water tank and getting all the pipes into the house in the correct places and on to the veggie patch. One of our neighbours is giving us their drip hoses so we shall pick them up and install one day in the veggie patches.
Now, when we have a cool season and many plants are dormant, we can walk to many places like down to the big red cedar without being too vigilant about snakes. We have plans to make a bench and nice sitting area there and maybe clearing the bush down to the beach so one can sit and contemplate life over a glass of something nice.
Going in to B to dump the trash at the recycling centre and posting the census and a letter to the ATO for a stamp to send to Greece to prove that we live here. How does that prove anything? The Greek authorities and our lawyers are the pits. They can just call the council in K and the tax people in AU and check that we live here instead of making us get stamps and pay out of our noses.
Anyway. We got on our city clothes. Jen let her hair down and the weather has been fine a couple of days. The postman (lady) came through without a hitch so we thought we could leave the chainsaw at home.
More than halfway through lo and behold a tree with a gazillion vines wrapped around it! Good thing we had the machete with us and gloves. So just started hacking away and pulling off the vines until the tree was free. That nicely hanging hair in face and mouth and dirt on our city clothes. Phew! Snatch strap on tree and pull it aside with the ute. Road free after maybe 30 min! Not a bad job! Then on to the village.
Had a cuppa at the General Store and had a nice chat with, haha, shows – the postman’s father! Small world!
Vi rensar . Där ligger det en massa grejs.
Gräs och gräs och gräs!
Och där kom allting fram och ligger snyggt. Nu gäller det att inte låta det växa igen!
Composts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now we rearrange.
No 1 is now resting and we put all the grass mulch there so we can use it for the next kitchen compost. No 2 is now the working kitchen compost. No 3 is resting clearance compost and no 4 is working clearance compost. Across the road we have put all bigger branches and trees that we are taking out of the citrus grove.
Before pic of citrus:
And ongoing:
We have a lot of work on this ahead and hope it will be worth it in the end.
This is how big it is. There is a paper road going through the middle.
Went to town to do do errands and buy food yesterday.
We took the road through the bush and saw so many fallen trees from the last storm. We have been so lucky that the wind came from behind the mountains. The mountain took the brunt of the storm and spared us. Soo lucky! When we got home warm winds came through and the evening was very warm. It had been 25 plus during the day.
Mick went to the eye doctor to get new glasses. The doc and Jen got into a discussion and poor Mick was sitting there wondering if he should just leave or stay.
A couple of days ago we found an old piece of very long fabric from when Jen sewed some Viking dress. We checked and it fitted perfectly as curtains in our bedroom. We hung it in one window to see if we really like the colour and we doo. The super old curtains from the bedroom will now be hung in the livingroom so we bought new dowels for that (very long thin poles of wood).
The slab house is becoming more and more like a home. Most furniture is down. More and more books are being unpacked. The photoalbums are unpacked. We are redistributing repacking stuff also and putting the boxes back up in the roof project