Christmas is coming...

Bec and the kids turned the wood stove into a Christmas centerpiece - much nicer than the plant we bought for this purpose on the left. Was nearly cold enough today to contemplate stripping this all down and having a fire - odd Melbourne weather we are having.

Woodpile

This is Gord's effort from two weekends ago - a couple of hours work, few bucks passed along, and wala! A picturesque pile of wood in the backyard. Gord threw Jethro in front of it for some photos, but I'm sure that was just a ploy to get more people to look at his handiwork!


(Jethro is sooo chubby - love it! Not crawling yet, that's why...)


We have two cherry trees in our backyard, which are fruiting - to our delight! Cherries for Christmas!


Washing day - washing the winter woolens in order to pack them away as we head into summer. An excuse for bubbles on the deck. I think the kids were interested for ten minutes and then I had to do the rest!

And Jethro didn't pull his weight at all! (Hey, nice blanket, Tam!)
Lastly, Gord took this shot of the kids absolutely loving shelling broad beans from our garden. Broad beans, if you didn't know, require two shellings, and they were giggling about shooting the inner bean out of the middle skin. Very funny, but you can't really get that in this photo - we kind of look stoned. Well, I look stoned and Piper looks maniacal and who knows what Jasper's thinking!

Love to you all - thinking of our many friends and family in between these very infrequent posts...

Solar hot water

Australia is a land of much sunshine. So it only makes sense to use it to our advantage.

Thanks to a few generous solar grants from the state and federal government, we have a new 'you beaut' solar hot water system.

Its pretty clever in the way they've set it up. The water circulates through the panels and is stored in the 200 litre tank. This tank can store water close to boiling. When we turn on the hot water tap, the system either mixes the hot water down with cold water to a normal temperature, or the gas booster (the unit above the tank) heats the water as it comes out of the tank.

It means that we don't use any fossil fuel to store the water in the tank itself.

The panels above are on the north-facing section of the roof - the best possible placement in Oz.

Getting away from an electic hot water system also means that my brain has been ticking away on the possibilities that we could get a water radiator in the two rooms of the house that need it in winter... don't know if there are products that would allow us to cycle water through the hot water tank, but I'm assuming that I should be able to find something. However, that's a job for another day!

Terracing and crop circles

What happens when you take one weekend, and then add:

5 loads of laundry.
2 hot 30+ days
2 visiting familys
2 mornings working on terracing
40 corn plants
1 engagement party

We ended up with:
1 finished set of garden beds
A lot of folded laundry
1 crop circle
A couple of full stomachs

In other words, it wasn't relaxing, but still very good.

The garden beds were very satisfying. After putting them off for a few weeks, they went up in about 5 hours of hard yakka. Then some compost, a bit of lime and blood and bone for good measure, layout out the watering hose, and then a token layer of pea straw over the top.

Come and get us summer, we're ready for you.

Bec, in the meantime, true to her emerging earthy roots, was in the top corner of the yard seeding crop circles in corn. The idea is that they will grow up into another garden feature/play structure for the kids. Piper already claimed ownership...

Finally a look into the corner of the yard, where last weeknd we put down a lot of newspaper and mulched up the raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. A berry good time of it as well...

Only a few more jobs to go this year - finish the steps into the back yard, get a pump hooked up to the big tap and get a few taps hooked up to it, a shade cloth over the deak, a few more for the kids to play under, a sand pit, play structure... sigh... suppose I'll be at it for a while yet.

Cup Day

The Melbourne Cup - "the race that stops a nation," worthy of a public holiday. We all got frocked up and headed to the neighbours' place to join them in yelling at the TV for each race, and consuming much champagne and prawns in between! A few pics at the beginning of the day before the kids got grubby and we got silly (not that we did, really!).

Deck completion

Finally, after a bit of effort, the deck in completed. Its been a long time coming, from when the first shovel fulls of dirt came out of the ground to create the space for the deck through to the final nail and coat of oil.

Many many thanks to Matt who will always be remembered for his contribution (along with his fondness for galvanized nails!!)

The finished product gleaming under the cloudy sky...

And, as is so often the case, the next project lies in the background... literally, in this case, as we now want to build steps up into the backyard, as well as mosaic the wall and build in the pizza oven...

Lots of fun, but for now, a break!

A new Gumnut Guide

Piper was enrolled as a Gumnut Guide earlier this month - the day after Mr McKrahn arrived, actually. (Gumnut Guides being the youngest age group of Girl Guides.) I was a Guide when I was a kid and got so much out of it. I can't describe the feeling I had, seeing her all dressed up in the uniform - some warm cross between pride and excitement and that feeling you have when you're introducing something really cool to someone...


More to the point, Piper really enjoys going, and I appreciate the influence of other caring adults in her life.

Deck work

Matt and Gord have been working on building a deck out the back of our place. We (ha - that means Gord) cleared the space last summer and now it's finally coming together.

It's been pissing down the last few days, almost non stop (raining, that is). It's amazingly wet, which is fantastic, but not so fun for working. Even so, Gord (and to a lesser extent, Matt - he is on holidays, after all!) has been heading out there to keep pecking away at the work. Once he starts a project, he finds it hard to relax until it's done. And it's fun and exciting too!

Matt's birthday

Gord's cousin Matt is out visiting us from Canada. A post about him is way overdue! Here's him on his 31st birthday, facing a trigger-happy Gord. The only reason he didn't flip Gord the bird was probably cos my folks were round and he'd only been in the country a couple of days! (Have to include a lot of photos for the rellies in Canada who are dying to get a glimpse of him!)

For Gramma & Opa - thankyou...

Family update

(Gord and Jethro today - we're celebrating the Saints grinding the Pies into the ground!)

Jethro is growing, but it's catching me by surprise because he has eczema and that's more what I think about when I look at him. Still, despite his red forehead, he's feeding well and chubbsing up into a boodgy bubba, just like he's supposed to do! And his eczema does seems to be settling down. Gord commented the other day that Jethro knows he's part of a mob - he's kept company in the back seat of the car by two other talkative gits, and entertained by them when he's lying on his playmat, and cheered by them at the end of the day when he's just about ready for bed. Fantastic seeing them build their own relationships with each other.


(Bit of Playschool watching!)

(Jasper the Ape-man, after an attack of the facepaint - on his legs!)

Jasper's a tremendous mimic - of Piper in particular. Here's he's doing a funny face of Piper's, one that's often pulled for the camera. He knows a few letters, and not surprisingly, these are P and I. I heard him saying them to himself over and over to himself just recently. He's like an echo of the eldest! And great fun...

While Jethro slept (for ages!) this afternoon, Piper and I sorted out all her clothes - somehow they had accumulated, and on top of this, we were trying a system where she didn't have to fold her clothes in her drawers, so it was total chaos and she had trouble finding stuff, of course. Anyway, I was bemused and perhaps disturbed by the MOUNTAIN of clothes that are now no longer part of her wardrobe. I was reminded that she's a part of this affluent Western life many of us take part in...

The clothes and a myriad of other bits and pieces from our household will get taken to the Really Really Free Market, an event a friend and I are organising where people turn up with stuff to give away and share. It's kind of a loose cannon event - not sure how it will go down - but here's to experimentation and challenging societal norm!

On a different note, on Monday (two days away), Gord's cousin Matt arrives from Canada to stay for a month, so September is semi-holidays mode. Gord's taking two weeks off, we're heading down to Lorne, and somewhere else too (not sure yet). Matt and Gord will work on building a deck out the back, and that, along with the terracing job finished with redgum sleepers, will really change the feel of the backyard, I reckon, just in time for my 30th bday dance party!

Much love to all!

(taken in my parents' front yard - September 2009)