The Rest of November

November was rather a busy month for us.  I have shared my stitching efforts, but not a lot else.  I did share about our trip to take Monique to the spa here and here.  Now, I will finally fill in some of the gaps.

The garden continued to flourish.  We were gifted a bulb of home grown garlic earlier in the year and hadn’t got around to using it before it started to sprout, so what do you do?  You plant it.  We have now harvested a nice little crop.  It is currently curing in the shed ready to store and use throughout the year.

Our poor old wheel barrow has seen better days.  It has quite a story to it.  We picked it up as a tip find not long after we set up house together, about 40 years ago.  We painted it dark green, planted some flowers in it and put it in our garden.  Ten years later, we moved out of town.  At that stage Mick put a sheet of tin in the base and it became our wood carting wheelbarrow for the next fifteen years.  Once we moved into town, ten years ago, it reverted to being a garden barrow.

As you can see, there isn’t a great deal left of the original tub.

Surprisingly, the frame wasn’t too bad.  

Now Mick has placed the old copper that our bay tree used to be in on the frame and yes, that is another pot on top.  We weren’t sure what to plant in the copper, so the pot with the strawberry has temporarily been put on top, so the runners can take root in the copper.

Our one standard rose bush has not been looking too healthy, but it has had a nice flush of flowers.  This was the first.

We picked the first raspberry.  We had next to none for the last two years, so it is nice to be getting a crop this year.  They are earlier than usual as well.

The strawberries have been very prolific, with about this many picked each day for a few weeks.  They have now started to peter out.

It is always nice to be able to pick a little posy of spring flowers to take over to Mum.

And Mick presented me with a floral gift.  Well, not quite a flower, but a beautiful big Santa Claus.

Other than that, we have had two more trips away.  Some good friends from Queensland came to visit, so we set off in a little convoy of two caravans, heading west to areas they had not previously visited.

We travelled to Forbes, Condobolin, Lake Cargelligo, Grenfell and then back home.  I will do a separate post.  The weather was rather hot, but we still had a terrific time.

Then, towards the end of the month we had a couple of more days away, visiting the Braidwood Airing of the Quilts.  Another very hot trip, but well worth it.  Once again I will do a separate post.

We have now given the van a good clean and put it to bed for a little while.  We don’t generally travel during summer, so will look forward to more trips next year.

Books seemed to be a bit of a feature during November.

Lifeline have a book fair twice a year and we always pop along to see if we can find any of the books we are looking for. We did have some success.

Firstly, I love their book Christmas tree.  Last year they had a competition to guess how may books were in the tree.  I never did hear how many there were.  I was looking at the spines and there were a few I would love to own.

This is what I came home with.  I have quite a few early Ethel Turner books, but not this one.  I also have several Ion Idriess books, but not these, and they were at a very good price.  I was looking for “Trust”, so was happy to find it, as it is the next one to read in a series. At the last book fair I picked up a Margaret Hickey book, which fortunately was the first in a series.  I really enjoyed it so I was very happy to find the next two.  Now to get around to reading them all……eventually.

These were the two craft book I found.  I was quite excited to find the Denyse Schmidt book, as I have a nice collection of her fabrics.  However, I was rather disappointed with the content.  The scrap one has some nice patterns.

I actually read three books in November, which is unusual for me.  They were all found in op shops on our trip west.

The first two, found in different op shops, were ones I have been wanting to read for ages, but have never found.  They are by the author of the Pryne Fisher books, but are quite different.  The lead character is Corinne Chapman, a size 20 baker who lives in an Art Deco apartment block in Melbourne, along with an unusual assortment of employees, fellow residents and her very handsome partner.  There is always a mystery to be solved.  There are six books in the series and I have now read them all.  Very light reading, but enjoyable.

I picked up the next book purely based on the title.  Nothing to rave about, but I read it.  

And that about wraps up November.