Day 22 - Hot

Today was warm. We stayed at home keeping inside where it was cooler. Eventually in the heat of the early afternoon the girls were tired enough to go to sleep for a nap without much fuss. Elisabeth in her cot, Maggie next to me on our bed. After a quick tidy up of the living area and kitchen I joined Maggie and napped for the first time in ages. It was heaven.
Unrelated photos from today.


The girls and their trikes. It's love. Maggie likes to turn hers upside down to "service" it, carefully cleaning everything.


After dinner while I did the washing up the girls joined Rob in the flower garden for a feast of freshly picked alpine strawberries and some weeding. Have I mentioned how much we love daylight savings?

Tomorrow is a public holiday thanks to the Hobart Show, so I am looking forward to a quiet day with Rob home.

Day 10 - Michelia

The Michelia hedge is flowering well this year. I love the furry brown sepals almost as much as the creamy flowers.
A quick post, we've been grocery shopping, the double trolley ride is still a highlight for the girls, and they receive a lot of attention as we go around the aisles. A visit to my parents to say hello to Grandma and Gramps and then the girls fell asleep in the car on the way home. So I've unpacked the car and done a few jobs and have lunch ready for when they awake. I even have managed to write this blog post!
Happy weekend!

Day 3 - Flower garden

Thank you for your supportive comments yesterday, I'm glad that I'm not alone in the feelings I expressed. The girls ended up sleeping for 1.5 hours, which was enough of a recharge for all of us to enjoy our afternoon together. I even got to prepare dinner without girls underfoot.


I took a quick walk around the flower garden this morning. Reliving my past Friday flowers posts. Despite not receiving as much attention as it needs, the garden is rewarding us with spring blooms. The daffodils and snowbells are over, the tulips are at their peak and the ranunculus is just starting to get going. The new flush of growth on the box hedge is ridiculously green.


Queen of the Nights in the garden.

Ad Rem tulips.

Golden Parade and Golden Apeldorn tulips.

Happy weekend!

Day 1 - Queen of the Night

Well so far so good. Today I start Blogtober Fest.

We planted tulips in the flower garden over two years, but we didn't lift the bulbs the second year. The varieties have responded to our treatment quite variably, but the tulip that has thrived is the evocatively named Queen of the Night. It has tripled in number and this is excellent as it is our favourite. The deep black/purple blooms look striking in the garden. When Sunday was going to be unseasonably warm and windy I rushed out and picked a bunch for our table. We have been enjoying them ever since, their upright form gradually bending as they continue to elongate in the vase to a more casual arrangement.

Hut Christmas 2013 - lilies

Our garden comes to the party just at the right time. Although I have quite a few white trumpet Christmas lilies, they are usually not ready until January. However, the bold colours of my Asiatic lilies more than make up for that. 

The red ones started a few days ago.

Do certain flowers remind you of Christmas? 

Friday flowers

I tend to feel I need to write a lot for my blog posts to be legitimate. But that's silly isn't it?

I love going back and just looking at what the garden is doing. What we ate. Where we went. 

The sage is in flower, I see it every morning from my bed through the French doors.

The roses have started. 

First Prize. 

Kardinal.

It's Friday which means it's cheese night. The girls both enjoyed the goats cheese on our spring risotto last night. So I suspect tonight they'll want to share our cheese too.

Happy weekend.

P.S. I am halfway through part 2 of our weekend away. 

Friday Flowers

I haven't had many flowers to post recently, but finally spring is on it's way. 

I picked a selection of white flowers for the table last Sunday.

The white garden has stock, candy tuft, honeymoon tulips, gerberas, snowflakes, anemones and poppies. Also daffodils and jonquils but they are too smelly to pick.

Our yellow bed has daffodils in large and miniature size. The blue bed is awash with anemones. There are also orange and yellow poppies and marigolds. 

Speaking of yellow the valley has turned golden with the flowering wattles. A stunning sight in late winter. 

Friday Flowers

24 degrees Celsius? In mid May?

The roses continue to give bunches of blooms and it's only their first year.

This morning I picked red, pink and white. I'll keep the red ones for Rob's mother, but the white ones I stuck in a vase I bought years ago with this very arrangement in mind.

Happy weekend.

A flower for Friday: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

So yesterday afternoon I totally undid any calm or peace I may have felt after pregnancy yoga by my second attempt at maternity bra shopping. The less said about the bra I ended up with the better. In my defence it was the only one in my size in Hobart and I really needed one. (Rob's verdict was not pretty, when I was trying to get dressed this morning, the words "the most horrible bra ever" may have passed his lips, needless to say I have jumped online to find a less grandma like bra this morning and I am just praying it gets here QUICK).

Anyway, I drove home to find Rob had cleaned the whole house and picked fresh flowers from the garden. This stunning rose was next to my bed. Which instantly made me forget the shopping.


I exclaimed over it's colour and form, and how beautiful it was. I couldn't tell which one is was so asked him. Rob looked a bit sheepish, and said "you're not going to be happy about this, it's Limona". I didn't quite get it at first, as Limona is a pale yellow. Rob had to spell it out, they've mislabeled the rose and I've planted it in the middle of my yellow roses! Maybe I shouldn't be so particular about my rose plantings, but this is going to stick out like a sore thumb! May need some rearranging over winter.
This weekend we're having guests over for lunch on Sunday, so there will be some cleaning, baking and cooking to be done.

Snap it {on my plate}

The last few nights we've been enjoying fresh produce picked just before dinner from our garden. The peas and broad beans are abundant at the moment. Last night Rob and I wandered around the veggie garden and selected carrots and parsnips, silver beet and cute mini cauliflowers.

I snapped this photo of the basket before taking it inside.

Rob just cooked them in a little water and butter, so the carrots and parsnips were nice and firm still but the silver beet wilted. We sat at the table and enjoyed every mouthful.

It makes us so much happier when we eat fresh vegetables from our hut garden.


Playing along with Sarah at Faith Hope and a whole lotta love.

Resting and kicking

Sorry for the break in blogging posts. I have come down with a head cold which is harder to shake than normal, so am resting (on doctors orders!)

He could have told the twins though, they have been wriggling and jiggling with every sneeze or cough, and today I even saw a kick!!! Rob was watching too. Cheeky things. It's nice to know someone's having a great time!

I have to share a photo of my first rose to bloom in the new garden, appropriately named First Prize. I can't wait til the others start.

Hopefully I'll be better by the weekend.

Friday Flowers

The grass is taking off at the moment at the hut. Rob spent a happy day in the orchard with his scythe getting the grass down, although I suspect he'll need to be back not before long at the rate it seems to be growing!

I quickly snapped a photo looking from the orchard into my flower garden and onto the hut. It's starting to look really good now, the lilies have started to get growing and my beds are filling up with flowers.


Nigella and Claudia always like to follow us about when we garden, they particularly like to sit on the paths and sniff the breeze. You can see my nicely mulched rose beds (with pea straw) and behind them our happy almond trees.

I think I will see my first rose over the weekend, I've been impatiently watching this bud develop and colour up- appropriately the rose is called "First Prize".

The roses seem very happy in the clay soil, they certainly get plenty of sun and now they are mulched we shouldn't need to water them much. Finally the ranunculi are going crazy, neither Rob or myself can pick a favourite colour, each is so perfect.


Hope you have a lovely weekend whatever you get up to.

Friday Flowers

Today has been a long day.
Claudia woke us at 5am with persistent whining. This is not totally unusual, she jumped up on Rob, yet we still ignored her. She even tried to wake me (this is unheard of, she knows I won't usually get up). Rob looked out the window and saw some wallabies on the lawn in front of the hut and we assumed she wanted to chase them.
The next thing we heard as we tried to fall back asleep was Niagara Falls. Poor Claudia must have been absolutely busting! Luckily she picked the dog bed in our breezeway (with a concrete floor) as a spot to christen when her silly humans wouldn't let her out. We felt so mean.

Then we had to take our car to be serviced, something we always put off as long as we can (maybe we have learnt our lesson here), the brakes haven't been all that great recently. Sure enough they needed replacing, ahem as well as all four tyres. Hmm. An expensive day out for the commodore wagon.

So I wil distract myself and you with pretty photos of the block and garden.

Rob took these last weekend, while I was still snoozing.

I have saved the best tulip to last, the Queen of the Night has just started to flower.

The ranunculus is just starting to get going too.

And these two? They love their early morning rambles in the wet grass, wrestling with each other and munching on fresh wallaby poop.

This weekend I need to get writing, I'm joining in with Sarah's Good Mail Club, so I need to decorate some envelopes and write a few notes. Also on the agenda is spring cleaning the shed and the pantry, both of which have gotten out of control over winter.
What do you have planned this weekend?

Monday's Menu with a side of our Spring garden and Cinnamon tea cake.

I like the ying and yang of this weeks Monday's Menu photo collage. Chocolate cherry cupcakes made with a jar of Bonne Maman cherry preserve right next to a very virtuous meal of steamed greens from the garden. The greens are starting to get going now, we ate three types of broccoli in our soup on Saturday, the ever present silver beet, as well as the tops of the Savoy cabbages.
I can not wait for the broad beans and peas to start. Yesterday we planted some more seedlings and seeds: lettuce, chives, sweetcorn, beetroot, rocket, radishes, and parsnips.

Anyway the menu:

Monday: Baked ziti with silver beet.
Tuesday: ahem, baked ziti with broccoli.
Wednesday: Steamed broccoli, silver beet and cabbage tops with soy sauce.
Thursday: Pork and fennel sausages on silver beet and fresh sourdough bread with home made tomato sauce.
Friday: Decided to live in the moment and headed down to Cygnet for dinner at the Red Velvet Lounge. Rob enjoyed a rump steak, with old-school chips and salad. I had the famous pork cotoletta. We shared a dessert of cherry ice cream and chocolate sauce, and we were back home by 8pm.
Saturday: The big grand final day with our annual consumption of footy food. We ate the footy franks in white squishy buns with mustard, tomato sauce and butter (that sentence confused a few of my international Instagram followers- they eventually worked out I was talking about a hot dog!) I'm afraid that they didn't make for a very photogenic food picture, but they were tasty. We used the remainder in a tomato and vegetable soup.
Sunday: Rob cooked us Patricia Well's Chicken breasts with sage and potatoes (parboiled, then sliced and cooked in butter).

My sister, her husband and my niece visited for afternoon tea yesterday, we had chocolate caramel and almond slice (similar to this recipe but with almonds), those cherry chocolate cupcakes and a simple cinnamon teacake. Which was probably the most popular! See the very simple recipe below.

Cinnamon Teacake {From Women's Weekly}

Ingredients:

60g butter, softened
2/3 cup castor sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup self-raising flour
1/3 cup milk
15g butter, extra
3 tablespoon castor sugar, extra
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
Preheat oven to 160deg C (fan-forced oven)
Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.
Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 5 mins).
Stir in sifted flour and milk with a wooden spoon, beat lightly until smooth.
Spread mixture into the tin, bake for approx. 30 minutes.
Turn onto wire rack, pour over extra melted butter, sprinkle with combined extra sugar and cinnamon. Serve warm with butter.

Finally Rob headed out when it wasn't blowing a gale or pouring with rain (not many opportunities over the weekend!) and took some photos of the flower and vegetable gardens with a real camera. I'll share them on Friday, but in the mean time I'll leave you with a photo of the dogs in the flower garden. Everything is starting to look very green and lush.

Friday flowers {tulips}

Today dawned grey and a little gloomy, especially in comparison to yesterday, which was a lovely, balmy, 24 degrees. About the perfect temperature! This morning I quickly snapped some photos for a Friday post, only with my iPhone, so hopefully the weather is kind enough over the weekend to take some with the real camera too.

I had looked into my flower garden yesterday morning, and noticed that the yellow Golden Parade tulips were looking to start soon, but one warm day was enough to tip a few into blooming, along with the first of the red Ad Rem tulips.

It's so lovely to see them from our bedroom window each morning (although I'm not sure I need to check them at 5.50am thank you very much Claudia).

I now am impatiently waiting for the other tulips to start properly (the Queen of the Night and the rest of the Ad Rem's) and my ranunculus.

I'm already planning next year's spring planting, with more tulips, anemones and ranunculus and some daffodils. We do have some daffodils, but I planted them under the hazel and quince trees out in the paddock. Apparently they are tasty for wallabies so they're not exactly thriving.

Happy weekend.

Snap it {colourful}

I'm saving most of my flower photos for Friday (finally have some flowers to share!)

But in looking for something to share in today's snap it theme, colourful, I couldn't go past my anemones. We have pink, blue and white.

Taken with my iPhone, without a filter, the pink of these is so intense.

I'll be back on Friday with some more garden photos.


Playing along with Sarah at Faith Hope & a whole lotta love.

Winter garden

Sometimes it's good to remind myself of the good things in life, the beautiful things, the furry friends who make me smile.

Of blue sky and sunshine, and a perfect reflection in the dam in the middle of winter.

Or a puppy so keen to please you, knowing that she will get praised for jumping up onto the log and sitting.

These photos are a couple of weeks old, but the garden is not rapidly growing at the moment.

We are still harvesting rocket for salads a few days each week.

The golden shallots are looking promising, I imagine each plant with 6 fat little golden bulbs underneath, and look forward to the harvest in summer.

Our collection of Tasmanian eucalypts are starting to take off on the fence line, hopefully providing a screen one day.
This week has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for many reasons for me, but infinitely more so for my mother, who has had an unwelcome diagnosis and awaits surgery next week. Whilst I try never to take my life and family for granted, every so often something like this will jolt me into realising how lucky I am. That silly things like washing machines breaking down or cracked car radiators that need replacing really are not that bigger deal in the grand scheme of things. To make the most of every moment with those you care about.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend planned. I'm hoping to retreat to the hut, weed some garden beds and help Rob plant the nine new fruit trees we just picked up from here.

Bits and bobs {autumn colour}

I'm joining in a new post theme with the lovely Sarah from Molly's Maison.

She posted a perfect collection of neon pink objects.

I'm adding a collection of leaves from the deciduous pears that line our driveway (they're only just changing colour now!)

The colours were amazing, from green, burgundy, bright red, orange, and yellow.

At the moment the trees are only about 2m high, but they are going to look pretty impressive when they reach their full height (11m).

Frost and Friday Flowers {camellia}

Hello Friday.
Your arrival is most welcome.
Thank you for your lovely comments on my post about my extended visit to the Hobart airport yesterday (and my Instagram followers) it certainly wasn't the end of the world, but was just one of those days you wish you could have over.

What happened this week in our garden?
Our first big frost for the year. We woke on Wednesday to a blanket of icy white.
Claudia demanded to go outside so she could search out dog icy poles (frozen wallaby poop). Sometimes my dogs are disgusting, they are after all, dogs, but still, eww.



We have some flowers in the garden, so I can do a Friday Flowers post. A white sasanqua camellia, Setsugekka

And a tiny pink cyclamen.

Speaking of flowers. My box of roses arrived on Wednesday. It was huge. Inside, wrapped in a big black plastic bag and wet newspaper, were my 40 bare root roses. I can't wait for tomorrow when we plant them out in the holes Rob dug last weekend.


Happy weekend. Another quiet weekend coming up for us I think.

Winter garden {broad beans and shallots}

I could get used to a 4 day week I think!
Just quickly a garden update more for my own benefit, perhaps, than yours.

Despite the cold weather, the optimistic plantings in mid April are growing.

We have a promising crop of golden shallots.


The broad beans are looking happy too.


We have been eating rocket salads for about two weeks now, it's so nice to be able to do that.
The cabbages and broccoli are growing ok, the carrots and parsnips are a little slower though.

We have plans for moving some rhubarb crowns and a fig tree to somewhere which will make them a bit happier, planting out the poor long suffering grape vines, establishing a raspberry patch and when the asparagus crowns arrive, creating an asparagus bed.
We're on the search for some artichoke crowns too, do any locals know of a good source?

In the flower garden the leaves of the ranunculus and anemones are poking through the soil, I've been informed that the roses are on their way from Geelong, and we repotted the gerberas (although one got a bit munched the other night as we had left them up against the hut).

Happy weekend to you.