AN EXCITING GIFT

It isn't every day that husbands give their wives a present of a man but this is what has happened to me. I have realllly needed a hand or two in the garden to 'catch me up' with weeding, mulching and some sorting out. 

And so I have a new man in my life....plus his 'off-sider', an amazing woman. they came yesterday and did heaps, will be back tomorrow. I am so pleased, delighted in fact to see things happening in the garden. What is more they clean up after themselves...and blow the paths and verandah clean. not as I do, heave the weeds onto the paths and verandah as they come out and there they stay until A. either the pile gets bigger or B. until I have another bucket full of energy to complete the task, or C.  my husband gets sick of it and he cleans it up.!

Leonie, as she is called, this amazing woman is a bundle of energy, she has raised 10 children, aged between 37 and 20, has always fostered 2 children at a time, wherever she went she had 12 children following her!!

When she came here yesterday, she had done a night shift, finishing at 7.00am, slept till noon, then mowed her lawns and was here with THE MAN at 3.15. I am looking forward to hearing more of her story!

I have just come home from ten days with Kate at greedy for colour. It is so wonderful to be with my family then and so awful to leave, to have to say good-bye to them all...and it is not only Kate but it is my niece Jodie and her family as well.

 

Looking.....and laughing at pictures on Pinterest

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Special early morning cups of tea with very early visitors.

No photos of Jodie as she had a big op whilst I was there and she wasn't looking her best! However this is her view fro her amazing window seat where I am sure she will be spending some considerable time, looking out on her beautiful garden! By the way, the dog is a sculpture, not one of those really fierce dogs! I LOVE her window seat and always perch there when I visit.

So , now it is home, and that is lovely too.

NEW BEGINNINGS

I have been 'very' absent from posting, months of 'MISSING'. Life just seemed to get in the way and I have had the complications of a new camera. getting to know a new camera is a bit like a new relationship. Very tentative steps to get to know each other, trust has to be worked on and if the friendship is to be a solid one, we need to have some wonderfully positive times together. But at last, with some input from our computer whizz daughter i think I am back in business.
There will be more tomorrow, dinner is calling with very hungry family members so I am off to be the cook.

MY WALK IN THE SUNSHINE THIS MORNING ......AND MY CUSHIION

 My cushion is nearly up to the one I want to cover...then I need to knit or crochet the other side. I have been a bit slack with it but did manage to be the granny watching my grandson play lacrosse on Saturday morning when in Melbourne, bringing it out and getting more done. By the way lacrosse is a great sort to watch, I hadn't watched it before. 

The joy of blossom and my little hellebores.

 A promise of flowers to come.

This WAS a cabbage! Cockatoos again! The cabbages were just starting to heart, one less now. It may shoot again, we will see.

We still have little puddles.....

 

bigger 'puddles'.....

and the biggest and best of all 'puddles'.

'BECAUSE OF YOUR SMILE YOU MAKE LIFE MORE BEAUTIFUL'

This is something Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, mentioned by the Tiny Buddha site. So...perhaps we all need to smile more today and 'make the lives around us, including us more beautiful'.

IS IT SPRING?

We have had a lovely few days and although my photo is not the best I can see that spring is almost here. Not that i would think that today as we have a real winter's day, a cold wind rain blowing in and I am glad to be inside.

But in the spirit of love for my readers, I have just been out to take two more photos I wanted to take yesterday but couldn't as the battery had gone flat...bother..! it is freezing, so cold that the computer actually feels warm.

This is the very last flower on my flowering apricot, right down at the graft! There is a tiny bud as well just behind it, both exquisite. The rest of the blossom has dropped, any remaining would have blown away this morning.

Just at the back of this garden there is a peep of my new camellia, a very pretty pinky red. I am hoping it is nestled away from too much intense summer heat. I do love to see the touch of colour as I walk out the back door or when in the laundry.

 I finished pruning and feeding the roses yesterday, another job done. I always leave them until now as we often have late frosts that can be quite  damaging. we have actually had a good clean-up in the garden as we have cousins from England coming for lunch tomorrow, always a good excuse for a clean-up! It is the house today, just as well we did it yesterday.
Beautiful rain!

........COCKATOOS!!!!!!.........

                                                                                

DO YOU RECALL THIS PHOTO FROM A FEW DAYS AGO? I have loved looking out from my kitchen window to these daffodils, they were a bit of a treat for me as they are meant to be tiny ones.
This morning there were 3 lying on the ground beside the pot! The .......COCKATOOS have  been  at it again!!
They are the most cunning of birds and we had a rogue here yesterday when we were all out and the dogs were snoring their heads off inside the house. They just know when there is something yummy around and will pounce, even to chewing and sometimes destroying western red cedar doors and windows, something that happened to us when the house was being built. 

                                                                              

And this is what is left! lovely to have inside but it is not the same as having my 'living' pot to cheer me when I wash the dishes!! Do you see the tiny tiny daffodil! What a treasure!! I think they were all meant to be like this. AND they ATE the bulbs!!! I wondered and then saw the remains of the bulbs on the ground as well.
  Cockatoos are so beautiful, especially when you see them in a flock, whirling up against the blue sky, pure white with the blue, singing magic. They have a cacophonous shriek especially as a 'choir' and they are NAUGHTY! We often have them around in 'bulk', the first thing we hear in the morning, as soon as day breaks they are squarking, all together now, 1 2 3 and off they go.Today I am very cross but no doubt will forgive them...until next time when they chop off my roses or other treasures.

Now for my dear Kate and Anne  who have asked for a photo of my painting, here is one...not finished yet but well on the way....water lillies I loved when we had a holiday in Port Douglas years ago.

It's on the way!

I have book group tomorrow and for once I have finished the book, THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES written by Edmund De Waal. It is a wonderful story of a collection of netsuke, the amazingly tiny figurines carved by Japanese artists many years ago. I loved it, a wonderful story of this man's family, following the trail of the netsuke collection which members of his family had collected. Very well written. I did struggle with all the names and dates to begin with but then loved it all.

Have a good week every-one, see you soon.

MY CRAFTING SPOT TODAY

  

 The cushion cover is coming on and I am so pleased with the colours. I have played around with the photo and think these colours are more like they should be. I often find my photos are not quite right as far as colours go but I am slowly learning a few tricks of the trade!

 

And the beanies for the Christchurch babies are also coming on. A friend has completed the ones in the first photo and mine are the second. This will be 'it' for a while as I feel a bit beanied out and want to get on with some other projects, painting as well. It was lovely to receive the bundle from my friend and she has loved doing them as well. 

The computer is incredibly slow today and keeps timing out so I'm thinking I have loaded something and am waiting waiting for it to go through when I realize that I have no internet...so no more photos today.

Yesterday I went to a rose specialist nursery and came home with two special treats, a Mutabalis and a

General Galliani, two that daughter Kate often talks about. It is fun for the two of us to have the same albeit in different countries.As a family we love to swap bits fro the garden and it is very frustrating not to send Kate back to NZ with a cutting or two. at least this way we can talk about what our rose is doing!! Now my problem is where to put them, maybe I'll do a bit of shifting first. it is a beautiful day today so am looking forward to getting outside. A light frost made writing this blog first was a more attractive proposition though.

 I hope you all have a lovely weekend as i will, the forecast is good so probably will be outside, otherwise i will go on with the painting I have begun...I may show it later...if I like what I am doing!!

CUSHIONS AND THE HAPPINESS FACTOR

 

When Greedy for Colour stayed a few weeks ago we went shopping to Spotlight and bought cushions for our beigey couch. With her encouragement we came home with these lovely cushions which are just right for our sitting room, brightening up the energy of the room. Sadly the photo doesn't show them to the best advantage as we have a very grey day and I DO want to write a post.When the sun comes out I will try again. 

I had been knitting but felt like something else  to enable me feel more energized and creative, especially when Kate was horrified to hear I wasn't doing anything. So... out came the wools and I began the granny square  cushion. It does have more life than it shows here so I will definitely take more, again when the sun comes out.

Doing the crochet also has inspired me to knit beanies again. They are for such a good cause, the Christchurch babies but you can only do a few at a time.Talking about the beanie,s a friend has begun knitting for the babies too and we will have a parcel to send off next week.

There  is no doubt though that creativity inspires creativity. It just needs to happen especially for the happiness factor!

 

Some snippets from the garden, these definitely add to the happiness factor too.

We have had nearly an inch of rain this weekend, making everything really squishy outside, puddles again. If only I didn't have the 'mother voice' always at the back of my head as I am sure I really would like to take off my shoes and socks and splash through the puddles....or just splash, shoes on and all!! But no, I am sensible and just look at the puddles and think...

The farm is much happier than it was during the drought, plenty of grass just waiting to pop up through the dry grass that has stayed there from last season. We have dairy cows here on adjistment at the moment but they are starting to go home as their calving seems imminent, in dribs and drabs as they are ready.

I have been on the internet for ages today trying to make sense of booking flights online. At last have finished it and have just rung Kate to say I will be with them all at the end of October. I have also booked for Perth at the end of the month to see our family there. Our 14 month granddaughter and two g-sons, 13 and 15. I haven't seen the boys for a long time so know they will be bigger and even more gorgeous!

And now it is dinner time so off to work I go1

THE LATEST FASHION DESIGNER

 

We had grandchildren to stay for the weekend and this design was created by grand-daughter who will be 5 in October. She gets an idea into her head and from there she creates....works it all out herself and only when finished does she appear with whatever it is. The poor old doll is nearly past it, her hair is definitely in the 'bad hair day' mode EVERY day. Last week she had to have surgery as her arm had come off and it was left for Pa and Nanna to operate on. With four hands necessary, two of them big farmer hands, we were able to attach arm back on...quite a difficult job. I do hope you like the decorations, back and front views both being showed

Some favourite days

We had a lovely trip to see the Eildon dam,in the north east of Victoria, 90% full, a few days ago. Two years ago it was 3% full... a huge difference. It was once the spot for water skiing, fishing, house boats etc but this hasn't been possible for years.  We took a picnic, ate under the gumtrees on the way there, something we really love doing.

 I just happened to look on my bench and saw the collection of yellow, funny how suddenly something strikes the eye, mundane, every day things and there they are!

And of course it is wattle time again, such a happy shrub!! Actually wattles seem to flower most of the time. The pale yellow ones seem to be the first during late Autumn, the as the weather becomes more gloomy we get the vivid yellow.

This morning I am off to our local 'village' for our Ist Monday of the month morning tea. It can be any number, from 2-3 to 12-14. It is so good to have this regular catch-up, we just know there will be someone!

Have a beautiful day!!

WHERE DOES THE TIME GO!

This cheeky fox and his friend ran across our verandah last week, down the steps onto the lawn! I had just finished a nap when they caught my eye so dashed down to tell the grandsons who were staying here. By this time this one was perched up on a rock wall, looking into the house so I grabbed the camera and ran around the house to find him looking through the fence at me, such a beautiful creature with such a bad reputation!

 While the boys and their mother were here.....school holidays.... we had a drive up to our special Rim of Heaven, rocks where we can look so far over the countryside down below and beyond. We took our lunch and just sat there, soaking it all up and enjoying the sunshine.

 Last week I showed the flowers E brought me home from the farm, the happy wanderer or sarsparella. Well, on the way back from our picnic I DISCOVERED the site of the plant....

 Just beautiful!!!

We also have a new grandson, haven't seen him yet but fingers, toes crossed we see him this weekend. This little fellow is E's first blood grandson so I suggested he goes off by himself and buys something just from him.

 

The most beautiful, soft cuddly Eeyore, with a gorgeous soft tickley tail, a tail which his cousin Hugo, from greedyforcolour.blogspot.com would thoroughly approve of. He has TedTed who has a very worn out tail that he tickles his nose with when cuddling TedTed. Hugo has made, with Kate's help, a rabbit for the new little fellow and this rabbit HAD to have a ticley tail! E was so happy with his Eeyore, as were we, the audience waiting at home!!

I have been busy too and have made a little friend for Eeyore.....

And a cardigan and a little beanie. I am a bit worried as they might be a bit small for him as he was 9 1/2 lbs and the days are slipping past! Never mind, I can do some more!!

 

Two friends!

                                                                      

I am hoping to write more regularly, life just gets in the way as every-one knows. However school holidays are over, yes they can be a busy time for grannies too! I have nearly caught up in the house and then it is into the garden. It is the most glorious day today and it is almost a crime not to be outside. Have a good weekend every-one and I will see you very soon!!!