Tassie tan

I was never much of a beach goer in Sydney, but you can count on one hand the number of times I've had my legs out in public in Tasmania so far. This week the weather has been so warm I've had shorts on two days in a row! Today we waded in the lovely clear water at Kingston beach again with the dogs. Apologies to anyone who was momentarily blinded by my luminous white Tassie tan.

Huon Jet

We picked the perfect day today for a ride on the Huon Jet Boat. David gave me a voucher for my birthday. It was one of those things where we had driven past it on the Esplanade in Huonville so many times and said 'must go on that one day'. Owner John sure knows how to drive that thing. We narrowly dodged rocks and logs, flew over shallow rapids and did plenty of 360 degree spins. It was awesome fun.

Today's project

In return for butchering some of his trees, the energy company left a huge pile of mulch in our neighbour Nigel's driveway when they trimmed around the power lines recently. He kindly said we could help ourselves if we wanted any. So today David made a few trips over the road in the ride-on mower with trailer to collect a big pile of hardwood mulch, which I have spread out on top of cardboard around the apple crate vegetable beds. The idea is that it will be easier to keep the weeds down and hopefully David won't need to whipper snip the grass inside the vegetable garden anymore. As a bonus, it looks really nice too.

Focaccia

Made with mashed potato, topped with olive oil, sea salt, fresh thyme and oregano. It was meant to be a snack but was so tasty it ended up being dinner. And then breakfast this morning too.

Fun in the sun

On Christmas Eve we avoided the shops and headed for the doggie beach at Kingston. The dogs love it there. Even David and I went in the water... well, we waded in up past the knees anyway. We've had such beautiful weather over the Christmas break this year.

 

 

 

 

A very merry Christmas

Christmas Day was a whirlwind of friends, food and fun. We started by opening gifts from our family under the tree, moved on to brunch at the beautiful home below, followed by a lovely long lunch with great company at the newly completed masterpiece home of more friends. Luckily there was a break before dessert for a walk along the river and games on the oval. 'Rudolph' pictured here was a handmade Kris Kringle aka Secret Santa gift. There was no way I would have guessed what was inside that well wrapped present. We finished the day by dropping in on our neighbours who were enjoying a few drinks with family and friends on their new deck. Delicious food and great company, what more could we wish for. I hope you enjoyed a wonderful day too.

Don't count your chickens

On Monday night, 12 December, I put these 12 fertile eggs under one of our hens who had been spending most of the day sitting on the communal nest in the chook shed. It hasn't gone so well. At first, she didn't seem too pleased about being shut in a cage when her two friends were off free-ranging in the sun (and the pouring rain... not the brightest chooks). She was sitting on the eggs, but whenever I appeared in the shed she got off the eggs and squawked madly, most upset. Then she settled down happily spread out over the eggs for a few days.

Then one morning she flew out of the brooder box when I opened it to refresh the water. Had to catch her and put her back in. At that point I figured she was not so keen on being mother hen and kept a close eye on her to see that she was sitting on the eggs. Then she broke one of the eggs, and then another, which was difficult to clean up and the remaining eggs were looking pretty dirty. So last night I took the eggs, gently cleaned them and stuck them in an incubator borrowed from our neighbour Nigel. I don't hold out a lot of hope that any will hatch given the bumpy ride so far, but I'll keep turning them a couple of times a day just in case.