spring on the farm

When I lived in Melbourne I'd see photos like these and I'd feel so envious. I wanted wide open spaces, grassed plains where the dogs could run and play. I'm so lucky here. (Lucky you can't see the weeds in photos!)

These are different views of our place from the bottom paddock, looking back towards the house. 

I love our place. Even when its squishy underfoot. It'll dry out soon enough... then we'll be hoping for rain.

Thanks to Google, I now know the difference between daffodils and jonquils. I'll soon forget, but while I remember here goes...

The bottom ones in this pic are jonquils, the top ones are daffodils:

These are jonquils:

These are double daffodils - my favourites:

We also have paperwhite narcissus in a couple of spots but I didn't get any decent photos of those.

A couple of years ago I planted some daffodils and snowdrops along the driveway and they are finally flowering.



The garden is beginning to pop with colour too. Like these gorgeous purple anemones:

In pink too:

There are still lots of empty spots in the garden beds though, where things are yet to grow or have died... When I get around to gardening again I have lots of work to do. More weeding, planting new stuff. Then just sitting back and enjoying the prettiness.

Ah. I love that part the most.

Oh! And the gumtree I thought would die when we dug the driveway run-off trench is doing great! Plus we have two more little gum trees coming along. Love my gum trees!

You can see the little gum tree on the side of the driveway above. One day it'll be nice and big... but hopefully we'll be long gone by the time it decides to fall over across the driveway. Gum trees have notoriously shallow roots and blow over at the slightest huff of wind.

Actually, they don't. They stand up during storms, then fall over on quiet days. At least that's the story our neighbour told us and I believe it. One quiet, totally still day last year, a huge gum tree came crashing down on the slope opposite us.

Its true!

z

poodles and daffodils

Today was one of those days when the sun came out for small bursts. And when it did it was glorious. The sky was deep blue. The grass really green. The air was clean and the dogs were excited.

We decided it was time for a romp in the daffodil paddock.

Romeo ran up and down the banks of the creek so many times. Both he and Montana were covered in splattered mud by the time we were ready to go home.

If you look closely you can see Romeo in the creek bad. All you could see was his tail at one stage.

I love happy running Romeo!

And happy, not so running Montana.

In case you're wondering, Barney was there too. He ran too, believe it or not. Just not with as much abandon. He has arthritis and running too much takes it out of him, poor boy.

Can you see the slipper feet soaking up the mud? When I clipped them off I didn't wash them, just clipped off all the curls and dreds. Montana curls, Romeo dredlocks. Anyway, as I was saying, when I clipped them off I didn't do their feet as they were too dirty to risk my blades. They look so funny, slim all over with clown feet.

You can see the colour of their feet today. Oh well. Its just mud. It'll fall off once its dry.

I have more photos but there are enough in this post. I'll share the other photos in another post, less dogs, more our place in spring.

Don't you miss the silent gaps of no posts now?

z

little paper suitcase

This is just a quick and easy little project I thought I'd share for the fun of it.

I've got photos waiting to be downloaded off the camera but was too busy (sore and tired) to tackle it yesterday so you'll have to make do with this pititful little project for now.

I've made little suitcases before, I even made one out of felt last year but unfortunately I don't think I have a photo of it. This one is made out of a ready meal box. You know the kind: Put the contents of satchel 1 into the container provided. Pour the the contents of satchel 2 over the top. Heat for 2 minutes.

Healthy stuff.

We have a lady at work who loves anything to do with going away on a trip. So I made this little suitcase for her as part of a project I have going where she can decorate her entire bedroom ceiling with 'mobiles' of trip related items (planes, suitcases, caravans, etc).

You can see the 'tear here' strip on the side. Since its going to be up high I didn't worry too much about making it perfect, I just wanted it to look like a real suitcase.

First I glued it shut, then sprayed it with flat white paint. I found some old vinyl in our fabric box and cut the strips I needed for the handle and strap.

The corners, buckle and handle ends were made of plain cardboard. Ordinarily I'd paint those gold or silver but decided I liked them in their natural colour this time.

Cute don't you think?

Not that there's much use for little cardboard suitcase in every day life... Unless of course you made it so it opens and you can keep small things in it, like USB sticks, paper clips, jewelry....

Unless you do this with a shoe box that offers actual storage:

Sorry, no link for that one. But the ones below are way easier and do have links.

How cute are they? I've always meant to make some of those boxes for around the place...

z

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a little gardening and where on earth have i been?

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. Not that the weather has been told. Its sunny one minute, pouring with rain the next, frost in the morning, warm in the afternoon... Pretty normal really.

The garden is confused. Plants flower. Then the frost gets them. So they flower again, The frost comes again and gets what survived the previous frost. Pretty normal really.

The garden isn't the only thing that's confused. Annabelle (the goose) has laid eggs. On top of last year's dead eggs which I never got around to removing from the nest she abandoned.

In fact we're not sure she's actually laid new eggs on top of the old ones or if she decided to give the stale eggs another chance... either way, she's gone clucky. Too early.

The place is a mess. Muddy and wet. Seeds I tossed out are growing and blooming between the frost bitten plants. The grass is growing and the weeds are growing faster. When walking across the yard I sometimes just can't resist picking up the grandpa weeder and 'just grubbing out that obnoxious weed that's just staring me in the face, laughing at me'.

An hour or so later I put away the weeder and go into the house.

In the good news department, my new hyacinths are up. And the tyre retaining wall is filling up as the plants grow.

I put more wire up for the hardenbergia so it can spread across the carport wall.

Even the dogs got into gardening - digging new holes where pretty succulents used to grow.

I'm trying to get the garden done in short spurts, a bit here, a bit there. There's just so much to do. And so little time. Which is why I haven't posted. I just haven't felt like writing, watching TV is all I want to do at the end of the day.

That and exercising my fingers.

With the broken finger now healed I can do almost anything again. My fingers are very stiff and sore and my left hand has only 1/2 the strength of the right,but I'm grooming again and I've started doing things in the workshop again. Finally.

One of these days I'll be organised and have time to do it all.

In my dreams.

z