Goddamn Varmints!

Do you remember that lovely rockmelon from last time, that complete, untouched rockmelon.  Well.  Look at it now.  Bloody goddamn varmints, it's completely hollow!

So I picked the final one, I hope it's ripe enough to eat.  I also harvested the four luscious quinces before anything ate those! 

I did the first apple harvest, the crisper in the bottom of the fridge is now full to the brim with these beauties.  We still have heaps on the trees, I'm planning on dehydrating lots of sliced apples next week, yum yum yum.

This, in my opinion, is our very best apple tree, the Red Fuji.  Really really nice fruit.

These are the Cox's Orange Pippins, as you can see they are a completely different skin colour to the Fujis.  They have a nice flavour too but they are not as crisp as the Fujis and I love a really crisp, sweet apple.  We haven't touched the Granny Smiths yet, probably next week.  The 6 kilos of apples in the bucket will keep us going for a while :-)

I am waiting somewhat impatiently for these to turn orange, these are Fuyu Persimmons and I think they are my absolutely most favourite fruit. 

Isn't the blossom on this Dwarf Lilly Pilly pretty, the bees love it.

The agapanthus I salvaged from my good buddy Ruth are growing nicely.  They are planted along the right edge of the gravel area where we park our cars.  The ground drops away there and created a small bank, so I'm hoping the strong root system of the aggies will stabilise the bank nicely.

My friends Ruth, Lesley and I were given a single African Violet leaf stuck in a small pot of potting mix by our mutual friend Ellen, who has some beautiful specimens at her house.  I am most proud to present my happily growing and now flowering baby African Violet, all from a single leaf!

This time of year we see and hear a lot of the huge Black Cockatoos, as the Marris and Jarrah are setting seed, they sit high in the trees and crack open the nut.

These are Red Tailed Black Cockatoos, the one above is a male because the red on him is a solid colour.

And these two, who have stripey red are apparently either female or juvenile.  I only learned that the other day.  Gorgeous birds.  We get a lot of the White Tailed Baudin's Cockatoos as well, but they more often fly over our place rather than land in our trees and feed like the Reds do.

Steve has been a busy busy boy giving his shed a big spring clean.  It's been a mammoth task for him and there is still a way to go, but this part looks very spick and span.  We both keep getting surprised when we go into the shed!

He's finished the hoppers of medium sized wood for the fire.  We haven't quite got to cranking up the fire in the house yet, but I suspect it wont be long, there is a definite chill descending in the evenings now.

This is Steve's new toy, he saved up his Christmas and Birthday money and bought it.  Apparently it is called a 'thicknesser'.  It's a doodad that you bung a piece of wonky timber in the back, and it comes out the front as smooth as a baby's bum. He is happy :-)

I got stuck into cleaning out the chook shed, supervised by a couple of the girls.  The apple trees now have a lovely load of chook poo flavoured hay surrounding them, and because those trees are still under nets, it means the chooks can't get at it and strew it everywhere.  We love having the chooks and ducks in the orchard, they keep bugs to a minimum,  but the chooks are buggers for digging up around the bases of the trees and kicking mulch all over the place. 

There we are, a spiffy clean chook shed.  You will note that there are two perfectly good nesting boxes screwed to the wall that the original chooks used to use all the time.  This lot refuse to have a bar of them and like to lay their eggs at ground level.  Finally, by accident, I discovered that they love old washing baskets with one end cut out.  Whatever floats their boat :-)

And here is their new treadle feeder.  They hate it.  It make a big clanking noise when the top shuts after they step off the treadle, and it scares the crap out of them.  I am told they will get used to it, and for now I have it in the locked open position during the day and I close it at night.  The good thing though is that the galahs aren't nicking any food out of it. 

We used to have one jump over the fence, escapee, intrepid explorer chicken, then two, then three, so now we leave the orchard gate open a titch so the fourth one, who obviously hasn't done her wing muscle exercises and can't get up and over, can be with her friends.  My goodness they have become bush chickens!  We have no idea where they are most of the day, and late afternoon they wander out of whatever wide roaming area they have discovered that day.  They are very good at following me back to the orchard when they see me though, I feel like the Pied Piper!

And they still love hanging out with the kangaroos!

 I haven't talked much about vegies recently, most of our vegies are finished or nearly so.  We are still picking the last of the cucumber, corn, pumpkin, beans and potatoes.  I just had to show you a photo of our fabulous pigout homegrown vegie dinner.  That's our roast potatoes and pumpkin, our boiled beans, corn and carrots, our roast garlic, along with a bit of roast beef and gravy.  Deeeeeelicious!!

Here's yesterday's photo of Voldemort eating breakfast.  For a change he had a feast of cheese and grapes which he enjoyed very much. 

We are having a lovely Easter break enjoying the company of Paul and Sam, so good to see you both xx

Until next time xx