Our Other February Happenings

As well as setting my stitching goals for February, I set a few others.  Let's see how we went.

1.  GO MOTORCYCLING

Yes, we did - twice!  And saw a motorcycle show.  I'll do a separate post.

2. GO AWAY FOR A WEEKEND

Nope!  This was a failure for me last month too.  Our plan was to attend the Newbridge Swap Meet.  We would go out on Saturday, taking our tiny camper trailer, and have a stall on the Sunday.  However, the weather was bleak to say the least.  It was forecast to rain lots, but in the end was just drizzly and quite cool. Quite a contrast to the weekend before which reached 40 degrees C.  We had a nice, quiet day at home instead on the Sunday.

3. READ A BOOK

Goal met.

A couple of years ago I picked up these books at some markets in Molong.  I was drawn to the vintage Penguins.  The lady said that they were her father's and that Maigret was a French detective.  I'd never heard of them.  Then, coincidentally, there was a TV series of Maigret starring Rowan Atkinson.  It has been played on the ABC a couple of times.

Finally, I read one of the books.  It was a good read.  I'll gradually get through the rest of them.

4. TRY A NEW RECIPE

Yep. 

A couple of our button squash had grown way too large.  Therefore, I made up a stuffing of chicken mince, brown rice, Moroccan seasoning and other bits and bobs.  It was rather tasty and there is leftover stuffing in the freezer for the oversized zucchini that also got missed being picked.

 

We did quite a few other things during the month as well.

We had a stall at the Bathurst Swap Meet was at the beginning of the month.  On the weekend where the temperature reached 40 degrees C!!!  It was so hot!!! 

We got rid of some unwanted stuff and Mick made one purchase.  I'll share soon. The only time I left the stall was to get us an egg and bacon roll for breakfast.

We also had a garage sale, which was quite successful.

We finally received some much needed rain.  The river level came up quite high.  Sadly, not much of this rain fell in the catchment for our water supply dam.

As a consequence we have now gone to the next level of water restrictions and can only water twice a week for half an hour using a bucket.  We are so pleased we have some rainwater tanks for the garden.  They did fill with the recent rain.

The rain and some milder weather has seen our back garden revive somewhat.

The beans had loads of flowers but no beans were setting, as we had very little bee activity.  This seems to have been a common problem with the hot and dry weather.  We are now starting to see some more bees around and I have noticed lots of little beans starting to come on.

I even saw a blue banded bee the other day.  These are a native Australian bee.  It really made my day.

After our massive raspberry crop last year, our plants look rather stunted.  We were doubtful if we would get any berries this year, but they are just starting to form fruit.  We only finished the last of the frozen berries from last year a couple of weeks ago.  They were the best thing to have all year.

Our indigo plant is one that is quite hardy during the hotter weather, but looks so delicate.  I'm surprised you don't see more in gardens.

And just to finish off, I had to take a photo of our Joey on the rug Mum made.  He has such a hard life.