Tuesday 14 February 2012

Good things in small packages

February again. Another birthday has come and gone and we are comfortably easing into our country life more and more each day. Tom is off to Kindergarten 3 days a week and I get to enjoy walking home with him from the cottage to our rental place each night after working all day. Small things, but happy times. Busy at the cottage every day now until we move in. But I couldn't think of anything else I'd rather be doing than working on our future home.

Wonder why it's taken me about 18 years to work out that I really missed living in the country? Oh well I guess they say that to climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first......


Two new openings for French doors at the back of the cottage. Framed nicely by the solid beam and posts. Lisa has even got the first of her fruit trees in. She has chosen Granny Smith and Pink Lady apples, mulberries, white and yellow nectarines, Beurre Bosc pear, lime and of course a lemon tree! Should be a great fruit salad in a year or so.


Here' s one of the mortices all done and in situ. The pegs are Ironbark, they started out as 40mm square stock that had been out in the elements for years, so by the time they were split and shaved down to 16mm (5/8") I just managed to get one peg per blank. I reckon I could have almost sharpened them and nailed them in, they were that hard!


This little guy showed himself as I dug out some rubble from an existing trench in the back yard. It's said that the first sign of decline of an eco-system is the loss of amphibians, so hopefully this bodes well for our little back yard! Anyone know what sort of frog he/she is?




And last but not least, here's my first pork sausages from my new sausage attachment for the Kitchen Aid, Tom and Lisa's great birthday present to me. The recipe is my Dad's from when he used to make them en masse for dozens of Melbourne's best restaurants.
Anyone who samples them says they are the best pork snags going around and I'm firmly in that camp. As you can see they're that good I had to make a rissole out of the leftovers! Washed down with a bottle of local cider from Harcourt. The small things are often the best....

2 comments:

  1. eek, that sure looks like a cane toad. I hope it's a pobblebonk or some other native rather than the dreaded invader

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    Replies
    1. Hi Peter,
      crikey you really had me worried there, but after reading this web site

      http://woodfordnewspaper.com/is-it-a-cane-toad-or-a-scarlet-sided-pobblebonk-frog/

      I think I'm going with the Pobblebonk, mainly because I found him all puffed up after digging out dirt from a trench, he actually sustained a 2mm cut to his nose from my post hole shovel. Sorry bout that Frog. So that makes me think he was burrowing down in there, given it was a bit softer than the other dirt. And I definitely didn't see any white secretions behind his head which they say cane toads have. Hopefully it's too cold down here for the toads!

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