The Rest of December

What else has been going on in December?  

We’ll start with the weather.  What a mixed bag.  There has been days up into the high 30s C, down to the low 20s C, storms, heavy rain, and no rain to speak of for the last couple of weeks.  There have been lots of windy days, resulting in a largish bushfire in remote country not far from here.  Thankfully, it is now nearly out.

We had an evening out. The background is that last year, while watching the cricket, we kept seeing ads for Australian Idol.  We don’t normally watch that style of show, but did this time.  Surprisingly to us, we both really enjoyed it.  There wasn’t the nastiness that seems to be the norm in reality TV.  The ultimate winner was a fellow by the name of Dylan Wright.  Well, at the beginning of December he had a show here in Bathurst, so we thought we would go along.

The venue was “Keystone 1889”.  This is the old Masonic Hall.  

After the Masons sold it, it became “Carrington House” and was a function centre for many years.  You can see where the inspiration for both names comes from.

The interior is lovely.

It was an intimate event with only a smallish audience. The support act was a young local girl who has been touring with Troy Casser Daley.  She was rather good.

Dylan performed solo and with his best mate.  They put on a really nice show.

He was happy to do the meet and greet with all the attendees.

It was a really enjoyable night and we hare happy we went along.

The vege garden is getting into full production.

The onions have been harvested and are curing in the shed.

We are getting plenty of beans, even enough to include in our Christmas dinner, small tomatoes and zucchinis.  

Our hydrangeas are putting on a show.  Mick bought the one in the pot at the church fete.  It is a beauty.

The dahlias are also starting to flower.

The golden rain tree out the front is also looking a picture.

Mick has been very busy down at the bowling club.  They had their annual tournament at the beginning of the month, so he helped lots in getting the grounds looking their best.

The main green keeper is currently on holidays, so Mick has had a crash course in maintaining the greens, mowing, rolling and watering.  He is down there nearly every day at present, and loving it.

Oh, and I made a cherry pie.  

So good.

And that about wraps up December, and 2024.  

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.  

The Rest of October

 As predicted, there was quite a bit going on during October and it’s about time I got it down here.

It was the month to get some things happening in the garden.  Our beans and corn were planted.  We have had a good success rate with our beans.  A couple needed replanting, but all are up now.  There has only been one casualty to snails……so far.  The corn has only just started to come up.  We’ll give it a few more days, but may have to do some replanting.

We planted our zucchini and egg plants.  This zucchini is planted where last year’s beans were.  It is looking so very healthy.

This one is from the same punnet, but planted in a different bed.  Mick actually lifted it a couple of days ago and added lots more compost underneath it.  Hopefully, it will do better now.  Next year we must remember to plant them where the beans were.  It just goes to show how crop rotation to where the nitrogen has been fixed from legumes really makes a difference.

The eggplants have not done well either, so they have also been lifted and replanted in richer soil.  If they don’t come good in the next week or so, we will buy some new seedlings.

We have picked our first strawberry and now have the plants netted to try to keep the birds out. 

The potatoes are going gang busters.  Fingers crossed for a good yield in the coming months.  You can see the netted strawberries in the background.

Our Zephirine Drouhn rose has really got established now and is looking a picture on the arch.   It is ideal, as it has no thorns and will flower for most of the warmer months.

The sweet peas on the other side are also looking lovely.

We did have a couple of very light frosts during the month, so were covering all frost tender plants each night.  Fingers crossed, there won’t be any more, but it is definitely still a possibility.

We had a couple of days giving things a cut back and also had a big clean out in the potting shed.  It was looking rather neglected.  It still has turned into a dumping ground, but is a lot better than it was.  

In the process, we realised that the zygo cactus were looking very sick. They have now been brought down to the back verandah, along with a few succulents that we bought at an open garden.  But where to put them?  Down came the old plant stand we have had for ever.  It originally came from Mick’s Mum.  There is an old photo of it out the back of his childhood home painted in several different colours, as was the fashion then.  It was white when we received it and we painted it Brunswick Green, as was the fashion in the mid 1980s.  It is looking very shabby at the moment (not just shabby chic), so I may have to get some more paint and give it yet another makeover.  After all that, I do think the plants will come back nicely with a little TLC.

So, what else have we been up to?  We both helped out at the Church Fete, me on the White Elephant stall and Mick on Bargains for Blokes.  My wedding dress and another lady’s christening dress were on display to promote our Wedding and Baptism display scheduled for early next year as part of the Bicentennary of the Parish celebrations.

Another feature of the celebrations will be Pioneer Cemetery tours.  There are a couple of people learning how to deliver these tours, as like so many things, the current experts aren’t getting any younger.  A small tour was given for training purposes.  Although I have walked past these graves all my life and know many of the pioneer family names, I learned a lot.

There is one First Fleeter buried in the cemetery.  Apparently, he lived to the ripe old age of 103.

October is always the month of open gardens.

On the day after the Church Fete we headed up to Cowra to see theirs.  It was a lovely outing and I will do a separate post for the day.

The following weekend was the Bathurst Spring Spectacular.  Another lovely day out that I will post about separately.

One perplexing thing that happened was that we had a blackout.  The reason it was perplexing is that we have a solar system with a battery, although we are still connected to the grid.  The grid did not have a blackout.  We hoped the battery hadn’t failed.  After a few phone calls and the visit of an electrician it was established that the safety circuit breaker switch had failed, not our solar system or any of our appliances.  It ended up being a rather simple fix.  Phew!

And finally, Mum celebrated her 95th birthday.  It was tinged with a little sadness, as she wouldn’t believe it was her birthday and for the first time ever, she didn’t know who I was.  She did eventually start to believe that it was in fact her birthday and she has known who I am every time I’ve seen her since.

So, how did I go with my goals?

No books were read.

No new recipes were tried.

We had lots of fun days out.

All, in all, a good month.