The Rest of March

Apart from stitching, some other things took place during March as well.  Grab a cuppa, this is a long one.

Let’s start with the first thing that I was rather happy about.  I finished the jigsaw that I started between Christmas and New Year.  This one was rather challenging, so I kept avoiding it.  

You can see here how the shapes were not the usual standard sizes.  It was occupying half of the dining table, so it was time to knuckle down and get it done before any pieces were lost.  I spent a full day on it and it has now been packed away.  Fortunately, all pieces were present and accounted for.

As the season officially moved on from summer, it was time to redo my little shelf in the kitchen.  Firstly, with a very simple green theme for St Patricks Day.

Then after that, it was time for Easter.

Now, for the garden…

The start of the month was quite warm and we were still getting lots of veges, but the plants were getting rather tired.  

To our delight, we ended up getting enough tomatoes to make a batch of relish.

The freezer is full of zucchini slice, which is the perfect lunch to take to a stitching day.  We also have a large supply of frozen beans.

The eggplant did well, so some moussaka was on the menu.  Yummo!  There was also barbecued eggplant and eggplant curry.  All so good.

The veges have all been pulled out now, until next season.

To our delight, after a couple of years bearing next to no berries, our raspberries are starting to produce lots of berries.  These are our favourites, so we are rather happy with the outcome.

The flower gardens did well in the late summer/early autumn.  They look a bit unruly now, but will get a good haircut in a little while.

Over the road from us there is a horse paddock and the roadside verge sometimes puts on a nice display of wildflowers……until it gets mowed.  I was able to snap a photo while they were still there.

Mick alerted me to some mushrooms growing amongst them, so I went to have a look.  Now, we have grown up with foraged mushrooms and they do sometimes grow on our front lawn and we have foraged them just up the road from our place, but when I went over, although they on the whole looked OK, the crinkling on top didn’t look quite right.

I cut one, and no, that was definitely not a mushroom to eat.  I went home and washed my hands and knife well.

What else did we get up to?

I tried a new recipe.  It was muffins made from just four eggs, two bananas, half a cup of peanut butter and some berries.  They were OK, but I won’t really rave about them.

I listened to a book.  It was The Road Trip by Tricia Stringer.  A light hearted read about a caravan trip.  I enjoyed it as the characters followed a pretty similar route to what we did through northern Australia.  It was amusing reading of all their dramas.

As we do twice a year, we helped out at the church fete.  This the white elephant stall that I work on, before the rush of patrons.

We had  day in Orange, while Mick’s truck “Frank” was serviced.  On the way up we saw some ibis flying in perfect formation.  This isn’t something you see very often here.

As we had loads of time to kill we visited the art gallery.  There was a photographic exhibition of spiders.  They are an Australian variety called “Maratus”.  The males have very colourful tails that they display during courting.  

What is amazing is that these spiders are only three to five millimetres in size.

There was another exhibition from their permanent collection with all works featuring animals.  I was delighted to see an original Jenny Kee Jumper.

With more time to kill, we went to the museum next door.  They had an exhibition of botanical drawing by two sisters in the 1800s, who drew butterflies and moths.  They were one of the earliest records of the creatures.  It also shows some of the early landmarks of Sydney in the background of some of the paintings.  All rather lovely to see.

The trees in the forecourt were starting to change colour.  The first we had seen for the season.

And now for the weather…..

March usually starts to see the sting go out of the heat and transition to relatively stable weather.  The nicest time of the year, in my opinion.  This year it was rather hot at the start, with some nice rain, and then it did start to get to that gorgeous temperature of the mid 20s C.  

Then, on the last Thursday of the month a rather strong cold front came through with a little rain and lots of strong wind.  It even blew a tower crane off a building in Dubbo.  The next day saw us reach a maximum of 10.9C!!!  That is the coldest March day since records have been kept.  The previous coldest day was 11.3C in 1939.  There was even snow in Orange and Oberon.  Fortunately, that was just a blip and today we reached 26.4C, which is 5 degrees above average.

What I have noticed since Friday, is that our street tree has started to change colour and ones further down the street are quite golden.

Now, for the elephant in the room…. This is just for my record……

Australia, and the world, are living in “uncertain times” due to the war in the Middle East which started on 28 February.  The vital shipping lane for oil, and consequently our fuel, has been blocked.  Fuel prices have doubled with diesel at about $3.50/litre.  We are assured there is sufficient fuel coming to Australia, but our reserves aren’t all that large.  People have been panic buying and the farmers are stressing as it is just about time to plant the winter cereal crops.  Not only is diesel an issue, most of the fertiliser also comes from that region.  It will be interesting to see how long this goes on and the outcome.  As a result, we have decided to cancel our trip to Melbourne to attend the Australian Quilt Convention.  There will be other years when we can go.

On a more positive note, we will still definitely be going to Baradine.