On the garden front

Lets get this straight right from the beginning....

 I DON'T garden.

It's not that I don't like garden's but more the fact that I've never been interested in growing one myself.  

The few times I've decided that our garden looks bloody terrible and have a go at doing something about it a toad usually jumps out at me and then it's takes me a few years to have another go.  (Having a toad phobia is not good when you live in Queensland!)

Lately though I've been having a bit of a change of heart.  I'm a little tired of our garden looking so terrible and get a bit depressed about it when I drive in the yard.  I realised that hubby wasn't going to do much about it unless I gave him a little push and that push would require me to be out there in the thick of things.

We don't have a big yard and there are existing garden beds which only needed cleaning up and putting some plants in.  

I decided to begin in the front yard which gets the full brunt of our Queensland sun as it faces west.  That means I only garden in the morning while the house provides some shade and I need really good, hardy plants that not only need very little TLC but can tolerate the full sun and heat.

We also need plants that will grow up and hide the fencing we've had to put up since we got the dogs, especially May since she escapes any chance she can get.

My lovely Mum has come over to help me clean up the garden a bit.  She LOVES scratching around in the garden so it seems that's one gene I didn't inherit.

As for the planning of what I wanted to do I enlisted the help of my Mum, sister and our lovely neighbour whose garden puts me to shame.  Planning is something I can do!

The above garden looked terrible and most of the shrubs and trees really had to go.  They had pretty big root systems and the water mains goes straight past where they're planted so we decided to pull everything out.  The gerberas that were in there could stay as I decided they grow and flower with absolutey NO looking after at all.  They're great plants for me.

Hubby was home for a few days and I'd already cleaned up a few areas and had drip fed him on his daily phone calls about what I was doing.  He was prepared to do a bit of gardening work when he was home this time.

My sister and I headed to a lovely nursery and bought some Azaleas for the garden in front of the house.

While we were there my Mum turned up at my house to help and between her, my hubby and the kids, the rest of the gardens had a cleanup.  Hubby hooked the shrubs with the deep roots up to the ute with a chain and pulled them out so that job got done pretty quick.

We've broken up the hippeastrums that were found throughout the previous mess of a garden and planted them in various areas.  We've planted the azaleas and some succulents to help complement the geraniums already thriving.

The front garden that was an overgrown mess now just looks like a dirty mess.  We've replanted the gerberas and some hippeastrums and next time I head to the nursery I'll buys some pots of colour and I think we'll keep this as a flower garden since the water mains go right through it.

It needs some cleaning up and a bit more work but it will look great once it's established.

Hubby goes back to work in a few day and then I'll get into another few sections.  He can't stop me from doing them if  I do them when he's not here!

Anyway, my Mum and sister are both very happy to help me do what I want when he's not here so he'll have 3 of us to contend with when he gets home!

xx Susan

The weeks zooming by...

I have to take my new phone into be repaired as there have been issues with it since day 1. While backing it up and uploading photos I realised that it's been awhile since I've blogged and even though I haven't been super busy, life has been trundling along all the same.

Wednesdays mornings are still taken up with knit and natter at Mary Cairncross.  We're in for the long haul there and won't be going back to our houses for our get together's in any known future.  As my sister Sandra said, when it was at her place she'd still look around and think about the floor that needed sweeping or other things she needed to do.

Bugger the housework!  It's coffee, good food and extremely wonderful company.  

There have also been some rainy days with torrential rain all through the night then all day again.  The mountains couldn't be seen either and we thought we'd be washed back down the hill on our drive home.  It was LOVELY!

Of course crafty stuff is still being done amid the eating, drinking and talking.  

I have been a bit lax in the circle area of things and am a bit behind but I think they're looking pretty good.

We're trying to get into the habit of meeting my sister and nephews after school on a Wednesday at one of the local parks.  It's a great chance for the kids to get together on a regular basis these days for an hour before going home to do the dreaded homework.

We're really lucking that within about a 10 minute drive we've got a few amazing parks and playgrounds so we've got plenty to choose from and a variety of very different playgrounds.

Skippy Park is not for the toddlers as the equipment is geared towards older kids, not to mention the 1.1km bike track that goes around it as well.

There's climbing webs, flying foxes, tree trunks, a couple of swings and things for the littlies and other more tactile areas like hills and gardens and things for the kids to run through.

They are all desperate for the new slide section to be finished...

Hubby and I are continuing doing things together when he's home mid-week and the kids are at school. 

 There was the usual standard shopping for things we needed, exciting things like dog food and bulk toilet paper etc.

Hubby did take me out for a late breakfast though which was nice and then on the way home we toured around and explored some areas we haven't been to before (all within half an hour of our home).

School holidays have also started so our days are currently filled with LOTS of jumping on the trampoline, a little movie watching, painting masterpieces and helping Mummy in the garden (more of that in another post).

It's also been ridiculously hot and really humid lately.  Winter is officially only 6 or 7 weeks away but we're having very summery weather.  Relief did come though..

On Sunday I had lunch at the local pub with the girls.  Most of them I had never met before or hadn't seen in 20 or more years.  They were the girls from my sister's primary school class (plus a few extras) and decided that they wanted to start to get together semi-regularly so Sunday was the first lunch.

It was a wonderful day and we're all looking forward to the next get together.  Luckily for me my parents live just around the corner from the pub and since hubby was away I needed someone to look after them for a few hours.

The above photo of the storm building up was taken from their house when  I picked up the kids. 

I LOVE storms and this one was great, especially as it was probably the last one for the season.

Eating out, catching up with good friends and family, a little crafty stuff, fun times with kids, special time with my honey and a storm to top it off.  It's been a pretty good few weeks.

I even had a train trip to Brisbane in all that which was a complete novelty for me.  We won't go into that right now because I was there to support my brother again with the latest of his court cases.  Lets all be thankful that he still has the boys.

xx Susan

A craft room project

In a previous post I mentioned how I had a new project on the boil and gave you a sneak preview.

Yes it's a very blurry picture of corflute or fluteboard or whatever you want to call it.  So apart from Real Estate signs, what on earth would you use it for, especially in a craft room?

Behold it cut up into much smaller pieces (thanks to hubby's trusty knife which I need to put back on top of the fridge before he arrives home in a few days.)

Are you starting to work out what it's for yet?

I'll give you a hint.  It has to do with THIS!........

I've got a pretty good fabric stash right now, not only from things I've bought over the years but from my sister and mother having a cleanout as well.  My mum also passed on a lot of material that belonged to my Grandmother too so I've ended up with quite an abundance of material.

So far it's looking much better and is so much easier to see exactly what I have.  Unfortunately I ran out of fluteboard so I need to head back to the hardware before I can finish what I started.

xx Susan

A candle lit...

For 'Dad' Frankland (Brian) 

who passed away today.

It's been over 15 years since I have seen him but he's been in my thoughts many times since then.

'Dad' was a Yorkshireman and our families have been connected for well over 30 years when his daughter and my sister became penpals.  (Well before the internet when writing a letter was the way to keep in touch.)

My sister Sandra has been to England 4 or 5 times now and has ALWAYS visited and stayed with her English family while she was there.

I travelled there with her in my early 20's and was fortunate enough to spend time and get to know these people that had always been apart of my life for as long as I could remember.

This was the only photo I could find of 'Dad' which was taken with me just before my 24th birthday.

You will be missed.

xx Susan

Weekend antics

During the week hubby and I went for a drive while the kids were at school.  There was no destination in mind, just a bit of exploring that took us through nearby national park and through areas we haven't been to in awhile.  We LOVED it and not only because we took the time to spend time doing something we like together.

We also realised that it's been awhile since we've been on a family picnic so we decided that Saturday was the day for an outing.  My brother and his boys were along for the day too so it ended up being a lovely outing (and noisy).

When we first left home there was a shower of rain before we even got to the Peachester range but the weather didn't look threatening.  As much as I love rain, I'm not fond of it when we're going up and down dirt tracks on mountain ranges.

There was a couple of ranges with very windy roads on our way to our destination, the Peachester range and the Bellthorpe range.  Thank goodness for motion sickness wrist bands which we now have a few of for Little Miss R.  My petal only got queasy a couple of times on the trip and really enjoyed herself.  This girl gets car sick on a straight, flat road so the wrist bands are definately the way to go.

After the Deer farm which excited the kidlettes no end, it was into the National forest and onto the dirt tracks.  They began as fantastically smooth, well graded roads.

We stopped for morning tea at the Old Brandon Mill site which we thought would be great for the kids.

We explained some of the old machinery to them and the workings of a saw mill.

The were impressed briefly with it all and the fact that they have great-grandparents on both sides of the family who had bullock teams for hauling timber.

As with most kids though, climbing on things proved more popular than the educational side of things.

It didn't matter whether it was the dog crate on the back of the ute...

...or the crane pivot which proved the perfect place to pose.

After our snack stop it was time to head further into the forest.  The roads became much more narrow and bumpy.  I have plenty of photos where the trees are right next to the car and you're driving through a very narrow corridor along steep hillsides but they're a bit too blurry.  It got slightly bumpy!

The kids loved driving through the creeks of course.

We ended up at Charlie Moorlands near Kenilworth for lunch.  It's much drier there now than when the kidlettes and I camped there last year but at least the walking tracks are open again after the flooding from last year.

After lunch hubby and my brother took the kids for a walk while I cleared the picnic things up.  I then followed on for a little while before realising I wasn't going to catch them up so I backtracked along the path and found a quiet spot to sit and wait.  It was lovely.

We were all pretty knackered when we got home but it was such a lovely day.  Hubby's home for a full weekend next weekend so we'll look at going somewhere different then.  

xx Susan

Snap happy

I grabbed my small camera before to take a few photos and noticed that sometime in the last few days a couple of little cherubs decided to take a few snaps themselves.

There were A LOT of photos of the walls and the lounge but in between there were a few others.

Not sure what happened here!

xx Susan

The week that was

Working on a new project...until a slight problem with the machine put all things on hold. I now have to wait a couple of weeks until my sewing machine is fixed before I can finish the multitudes of projects beginning to line up.

While waiting for my sewing machine to be fixed I'm working on a few smaller projects from recycled jeans.  Lots of fun!  

Last weeks' knit and natter with an industrious scrub turkey working away diligently beside us. 

I've mentioned before that Mary Cairncross is where my sister got married and the scrub turkey reminded me of an incident when in the middle of the ceremony one of them jumped up onto a table and sent the glasses flying!  Nothing says 'I do' like a heap of shattering glass....

Walking back to the car we spied these amazing purple berries/nuts/seeds.  Being completely botanically inapt I have no idea what they are and didn't give them a second though once we left.  They are a pretty spectacular colour though.

A special gift just for me (from myself no less)...

Although the end results were enjoyed by the rest of the family.

Daddy was home for the weekend so we had a slight problem.  I used to have two beaters on my hand held mixer.  Now I have one.  That means one beater and one bowl.  I have two children so guess who missed out.  (The kidlettes have taken on problem solving to work out how they can share with Daddy).

Problem solved:   I am only allowed to bake when Daddy is away at work.

Master M was very quiet which sends off alarm bells.

Cutting a box from the inside out is NOT  a good idea.  Yes he did cut himself but it was only the tiniest cut.  Anyone who knows my boy though will know how he doesn't cope with seeing his own blood very well, even it is the smallest amount.  He survived and I got my kitchen back to cook dinner.

Since I can't sew right now I've got a couple of other projects on the go.

It's more to do with tidying up than anything creative though.  I hope to show you more soon.

That's just a few things that have been going on around here this last week.  

It's Knit and natter again tomorrow although I really think we should find another name for it.  There's LOTS of nattering but rarely any knitting.  I crochet or sew.  My sister usually sketches or does something arty and on the rare occasion crochets. 

Knit and natter just flies off the tongue though but I'm sure we can come up with some other name which suits us and our varied talents a bit better.

xx Susan