Back to normal

Work is finished at the neighbourhood centre for the week and today will be my first day here doing my normal routine in what seems like ages. Hanno has done all the washing, hanging out and folding, without being asked :- ), so all I have to do with the laundry now is to put it away and iron. Ugh, all that ironing. I'm going to tackle it in 30 minute blocks. I know I won't get it all done but I'm going to pretend that is my goal.

There are a couple of bathrooms that need cleaning, I'll change the linen on our bed and I have some plants to go in. We have almost finished the vegetable garden now, there are just peas and beans to plant up, along with a few sugarloaf cabbages. I also have some small daisies to go in. I always plant flowers in the vegetable garden as they attract the bees, so we get good pollination, and they look beautiful. Beauty is always the best excuse for doing something.

Two buckets of rosellas were picked yesterday and I'll make tea and cordial with them today. There are still quite a few bushes to pick so they'll be made into jam that should be enough for us throughout the year.

I have more bad news about the chooks. Little Lotte was taken by a snake last Saturday night. The night after the party, Lotte went to bed, tucked up in a closed hen house with the rest of the girls, and the next morning there was no sign of her. She was Hanno's favourite, so he was upset and angry that she was taken. The only sign that something had happened was a small amount of blood, but no other signs - no feathers left behind and we heard no noise. Hanno spent the next day covering all the coop openings with small gauge wire so no snakes can enter. We think it climbed a tree right next to the coop and came in just under the roof. It's probably a young python, there are a lot of them around here; the same one that killed the other silver Hamburg, Stella Gladys, two weeks ago. Stella Gladys was bigger than Lotte and couldn't be swallowed whole, so she was left, dead, with a stretched neck and wet down to her waist. It's pretty gruesome. We've delayed putting the other babies into the coop at night and they're still sleeping in a large box covered with a blanket to keep them warm at night.

My sister Kathleen, who commented yesterday for the first time, gave me a pasta maker for my birthday. I'll be using it today to make some lasagna sheets that I'll make into ravioli. I'll stuff them with spinach and ricotta for our dinner tonight. Thanks Kathleen! There will be photos of that tomorrow and, if I get myself organised today, a tutorial on making pasta.

And another birthday gift is this felt and wool cushion cover, made by Tricia. Isn't it beautiful! As is the tradition of us sisters, we don't always go by patterns but rather what is in our heads. You get the best things using imagination as your guide.