wtf 2019?!

Its nothing short of terrifying to those of us that are getting older, how bloody quickly time marches on…

We are obviously well overdue for an update – other than the random posts like the fact that the plants have been flowering – so being that the last proper update was in August, without further ado – let get into it!!

September was a biiiiiig month – which started out with the birth of our youngest son and his fiancées first baby boy: Mr T.

To make what has been a very long and gruelling story very much briefer for the purpose of the blog, poor lil T was born with a raft of cardiac problems, which quickly became worse, and he was admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in Townsville initially, and then later flown on to Brisbane for a higher level of care, and subsequent open heart surgery.

We both went down individually on three seperate occasions to Townsville and Brisbane to be with the new lil family, and to offer what emotional support we could; but of course – in those sort of circumstance its hard not to feel thoroughly useless…

As of today, little Mr T is back in his home with his parents – and is getting stronger each day.
(as are his parents – who have been through an incredibly tough time…)

Mr T isn’t ‘out of the woods’ as yet, as he has a chronic condition that will require ongoing medical intervention – but for today – he is a happy little man who brings delight to all who are lucky enough to know him.
🧡❣️

Another big event of September – was the ‘retirement’ of the short Mumma – after almost 12 years of working in the same company.

Despite the first two months being very topsy-turvey, and therefor difficult to judge with too much clarity – it has (so far) been a welcome change for us both – with us now being back to having a ‘dedicated housewife’ for the first time in almost a decade and a half!

There is an obvious drop in income that comes with that choice; and for some reason people suddenly think that the unemployed one is readily available for everything and anything – but we can assure you that in our case, that certainly isn’t the case…

And just in case there hasn’t been a gloating moment happen in this post yet and you’re just itching for one (!!) –
September also saw the tall Mumma going to the Annual National conference for work, and was lauded and awarded on stage for being in the Top 3 Nationally for Customer Service Satisfaction!!🏆🏅🏅🙌
#BestAgentEverrrrr

IN THE HOME:

On the home front, we’ve been doing some work inside our little palace.

One of our sets of drawers, we have put on to castors, so that we can put the tv on – and swing it around to face either the lounge or bedroom when we want to watch tv – and we can just pop it flat against the wall when its not in use.
We love it!!

We’ve installed a shelf above the bedroom window for some of our special nick-nacks and books, and have finished the wall above the window too.

The lounge room wall has been finished, and the main wall at the bedroom/lounge end of the shed has also been completed, including the feature timber panel.

But definitely the most exciting thing to happen to this wall – which has been three years in the planning and saving for (!!) – is  the installation of an air conditioner!!!
🙌🙌 ~ ooohhh yes indeeeedddyyyyyyyy!!!

And something that happened a while back that we hadn’t yet got to blog about – we had a very special visitor when Michael came to visit and brought his brother Nikki.
We hadn’t seen Nikki for a couple of years, and they were on their way to a concert of Nikkis favourite musician – so we felt very privileged to have been one of the stops during their adventure! 🙂

IN THE GARDEN:

Over the winter, a rotten pumpkin that had been discarded in Horatios bed, sprung into life and overtook not only Horatios bed, but of course the surrounding yard for about 5 metres in every single direction!

Once the heat kicked in and the vine was starting to die off, we pulled it all out – having already eaten and given away a number of pumpkins off the vine – and found another 6 to save for the coming months!!

We finally put Digbys kennel on the local Buy, Swap, Sell, Giveaway site, and a young fella came and got it for his Mastif.
This meant that the “Palais de Poochi” area could now be fully dismantled, cleaned up, and the area repurposed.

We’ve since done a couple of vertical pallet wall gardens, with lots of bright flowers – so that the area doesn’t make for sad memories.

There is also a small table and chairs there too and makes for a lovely colourful shady space to enjoy a cuppa.

We had been in the process of Cluck Manor slowly having a bit of a revamp – but that has come to a bit of a temporary halt for the time being, due to our ‘worker’ disappearing off the face of the earth, and neither of us being able to put the time in to getting back to it – as there are other jobs that are of a higher priority than that right now.

We’ll get there though – and we have everything ready to go to expand and finish the fencing so that they will have a much bigger run, and a bigger and better night quarters.

We’ve made two huge batches of Apple Cider Vinegar (20+ litres), and canned quite a few batch of Strigidae Sauce – a sauce that we use on pasta, pizzas, nachos etc – and is made from the excess garden goodies.
We definitely already have enough sauce for the next year 🙂

A month or so ago, we got some more road base added to the driveway, so that it now runs all the way from the main road to the parking area.

We will see how it fares during the next wet season, and decide on any further works after that…

We’ve done a bit of moving around and adding on to the garden beds in the house yard.

One of the beds has always been at an angle that probably no one else ever noticed, but it drove us both mad – and on top of that – the bed had been performing pretty poorly for the last 6 or more months despite having regular ‘refreshings’, so we emptied it out, relocated it over next to Horatios bed (western side), and filled it with a compost and fresh soil mix, and have since replanted into it.

Its growing like its on steroids now!!

We also added another two beds to the northern and southern ends of Horatios bed, and one to the western end of the Nursery and have built all of them up as ‘contained’ hugelkulture beds.

Summer turned up right about the middle of when we should have been having Spring 🙁

The hot dry winds and high temperatures have caused havoc on a lot of the plants, but we’ve kept the majority of them going with grey-water and late evening waterings.

Annoyingly – its made for some days when almost nothing gets done though – due to it being too hot between about 10am and 430pm to safely be doing much either inside or outside!!!

The hot & dry has also very much pushed us into re-looking at how were moving water around the Farm, and we’ve decided to run a line from the main water pipe at the corner of the shed and put in two more taps.
One at the Eastern head of the big veggie beds, and one on the corner of the big-ass bed down in the Southern paddock near Cluck Manor.

We managed to score some blue plastic food-grade 44s a while back, and are constantly on the lookout for more.

Some will be used for water-storage, others will be cut into thirds and used for fruit tree planting rings – to raise the initial planting a little above ground, so that they don’t drown when the big wets happen each year.
(lesson previously learnt!!)

Being almost 3 years old now, the hastily erected Hoop-House is slowly crumbling, falling apart, and falling down.

Its been a great place to store a vast range of stuff – but also a lot of ’shit’ – that was hastily stuffed in there during the move from town to farm, and the majority of it hasn’t seen the light of day since!

We finally decided (ok, admitted) that it wouldn’t make it through another decent storm season, and definitely not a cyclone – so something needed to be done!

So – with a shipping container parked down near Cluck Manor, the unpacking, sorting through, disposing of and properly storing of all things Hoop-House has commenced!

Its a very big job, and is going to take quite a few goes at it – but already a full ute-load of rubbish has been sent to the dump, some stuff has been put on the local Buys, Swap, Sell, Giveaway site, and piles of ‘things to keep’, ‘things to donate’ and ‘things to toss’ have been made…

Just think folks – another five more minutes, and we’ll be giving you a 2020 update – so if we don’t get back here before then, we both hope everyone has a happy, loving and calm christmas and new year. xx