Sophie and Lady

Most of you know that we have a gorgeous Labrador named Sophie.  She is 13 years old now and has slowed down immensely.   Poor Sophie has a problem with her spine and struggles with walking very far and has other difficulties too.  Despite this she is still a very happy dog, enjoys her short walks and still has the appetite of a Labrador but we know she is in her twilight years.  We had been thinking of adopting a rescue dog for some time and I particularly wanted another Labrador but it seems Labradors get rehomed very quickly. 

Sophie

 So the lovely dog we've ended up adopting is a Labradoodle named Lady.  Lady is 9 years old and has been a breeder.  Her owners had no more use for her and were going to have her put down and then a lovely person came to her rescue.  Lady's rescuer had many dogs of her own and couldn't really keep another one so that's where we came into the picture, answering an advertisement for her online.

 

Lady

 Lady has the sweetest nature and is very gentle.  She gets on well with Sophie although is a bit pushy when it comes to getting attention.  She isn't the slightest bit interested in our cats and they are slowly getting use to her.  Lady has only been with us for a week and has settled in beautifully.

 

Besides adopting a dog I have been very busy in the garden, mowing the grass, whipper snippering the weeds and doing the edges, weeding, pruning and tidying up.  In among all the hard work it's so nice to have some spring roses in the garden, enough so I can bring some inside to enjoy.

 It is nice to have some crafting on the go as well and I'm slowly working on my Sanda Paul of Cherry Heart  Spice of Life blanket.  The colours I'm using are more vibrant than shown in this photo and the yarn I'm using is from the Stylecraft Special DK range.  I love this yarn, it's so soft and very economical.

 It was a nice project to work on while we were driving to get Lady which was a 3.5 hour drive.  On the way home Lady was sitting on my lap so no chance to do any more.

 I'm currently working on a sneaky crochet Christmas project which I'll share in another post.

Anne xx

A day out

Yesterday Mum and I went into town as Mum's car needed four new tyres.  While the tyre people were hard at it, I took Mum out for an early Mother's Day lunch.  I have a lovely photo of her but she is shy of being on my blog so I've not posted it.  We had a lovely time together chatting, eating good food and drinking great coffee.

After our lunch we were walking along the street and came across this enormous dog who was very friendly.  He looks so sad but was in fact very happy just sitting in his Masters van.

 

When we finished our errands and picking up the car we went for a short drive to the top of the town hill.  I remember climbing the hill years ago as part of a physical education class at high school.  I had forgotten how lovely the views were overlooking the town and surrounding country side.

On the drive down I snapped a few more photos.

 

Not far from home I stopped to take of photo of these two magnificent Salmon gums.  They are so beautiful.

It was lovely to go out and just as lovely to come home and cosy up with a cup of tea sitting  near the heater.

Anne  xx

Milking cows

One of the things I enjoy when coming back to visit the farm is being with farm animals.  My brother has a small herd of Dexter cows and I love the chance to go up to his place when he is milking, makes me feel like a farm girl again.

Here are some photos from the Sunday morning milking session.  Currently being milked are two cows.  One is so tiny my brother has the kneel to milk her.  At the moment the two cows are only providing about 2 litres of milk between them and hopefully the more skittish cow that hasn't yet been tamed enough to be milked will be enticed into the bale soon.

Here are the babies who are separated from their mothers at night.  Aren't they gorgeous.

Here is little cow.

Slightly bigger cow.

 For those of you who have been following my blog for a while may remember this painting I did of my brother milking from a few years ago.  Different cow, same milking shed, same brother.  Unfortunately Teddy the ginger kitty is no longer with us.

  

This is Elmo the bull.  He has been handled from a very young age and is incredibly docile.  You can hug him and as this photo shows even sit on him, he just doesn't mind.

You can just see Bonnie's nose (Kelpie sheep dog) in the lower right of the photo.

Elmo has come into the bale to have a special treat, a few mouthfuls of oats usually reserved for the cows while they are being milked.

I really enjoyed seeing the cows again although my brother wasn't two happy with the other bull called Voodoo.  He had bulldozed his way through steel railings of the fence in the night to get to a cow in season.   Some major repair work has to be done.  All in the day of the life of a farmer.

Anne  xx

Teapot spout stains

I do like my cups of tea and mainly use tea bags but every now and then I like to make a pot of tea, seems to turn having a cup of into something special.   Irish Breakfast is my favourite.

 One thing I find is that after a while the tea leaves stains in the cups and teapot too.  I usually turn to good old trusty bicarb soda to get rid of the tea stains which always works a treat.  Come to think of it bicarb soda is great for lots of things like deodorizing the carpet, cleaning the toilet and many more things I'm sure everyone knows about.

As I was cleaning the teapot the other day I was frustrated as I couldn't get the spout clean.  Light bulb moment...use a dampened cotton wool bud/tip dipped in bicarb, a little scrubbing and voila, a clean teapot spout.

It's gross isn't it?!

Nice clean teapot.

On to other things.  I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who has left comments about hubby's French clock.  He was really chuffed.

Before I go I can't resist posting a photo of Sophie using hubby's feet as a head rest, SOOOO CUTE!

Notice the dog hair on hubby's work socks, no amount of vacuuming can remove it totally.  :(   Hubby is in outside work trousers as he has started working on the second side of the drystone wall down the front driveway.  A subject for another post.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to read my blog.

Anne  xx

Australia Day

To all the Aussies celebrating Australia Day...

Bonnie and Jessie, my brothers sheep dogs.

Gold Coast, Queensland beach from holiday with Charlotte December 2011.

Google images

http://www.7spice.net/dessert/lamingtons-recipe/

 

 

Have a fantastic day.

Anne  xx

In my neighbourhood and what my dog did!

 Yesterday when I was driving to yoga class I passed this front yard all decked out with Christmas hats and giant candy canes.  I didn't have my camera with me so went back today to take this photo.  The house is set quite a way off the road so I tentatively made my way up to get a closer look.  I think it's rather a cute idea. 

 

Last Sunday afternoon hubby and I went to the local movie cinema to see the latest Bond movie which we enjoyed immensely.  In front of the car park and on the main road through our local town was this fantastic yarn bombed tree.  I took the following photos today too.

 

 

 Someone has put an incredible amount of work into this display and I love the bird cage too.

Now to the DOG!!!

I love my dog, I really do, but sometimes I don't like what she does.  In the last six months (please bare in mind we are talking about a 10 year old dog not a puppy), she has developed some not so nice habits like getting out of the yard, trying to dig under the gate and upending my pot plants on the back deck.  I did wonder if she was letting me know she wasn't happy that I left her for two months in May/June while traveling in Europe and the times I've visited Western Australia this year.  (She's always been at home and with family members).  She usually sleeps out on the deck at night in a very nice sheltered and warm kennel but as I was feeling sorry for her, we started to let her sleep in side.  She then developed another bad habit of sleeping on our lounge chairs which is NOT allowed.  Perhaps you may think I'm harsh but she is a pale Labrador and Labradors shed two coats of hair.  We have fabric lounge chairs and her hair gets stuck in the fibers resulting in vacuuming taking 30 minutes for one lounge chair. It's bad enough having two white haired cats let alone a dog that when she wags her tail, she sheds enough hair to stuff multiple pillows and cushions.  

Yes, it's a bit of a long winded story so if you are still with me well done and thank you for your patience.  In my wisdom (not so wise I since discovered), I bought a lovely big brisket bone for her thinking it would keep her busy during the night while she got use to sleeping outside again.  It did keep her quiet and out of my pot plants but two days later made her very sick with diarrhea and vomiting.  I felt so bad for her but she had to stay outside the second night because she was so unwell.  Apparently not too sick to do this though.

The guilty party.

  She is well again thankfully after a diet of boiled rice and chicken but I'm still not going to let her inside at night because she will be up on the chairs again.  We've tried putting things on the lounge chairs to stop her climbing up, so much so that we had boxes, bags and other paraphernalia nearly up to the ceiling.  We tried putting sachets of smelly things unpleasant to dogs like eucalyptus and tea tree oil on the lounges, we even sprayed eucalyptus air freshener near the chairs but to no avail.  After I cleaned up the above mess I decided that I would pour a liberal amount rosemary essential oil over the pot plants in an effort to keep her from upending them again.  It has worked for the last two nights, so fingers crossed she is breaking a bad habit.

Never a dull moment eh?!

May you all have moments filled with peace and well behaved dogs (if you have one) in the lead up to Christmas.

Anne  xx

 

Home again

Hello, I'm home again in Victoria and back to cooler temperatures of 26C instead of 39C.  I actually feel like doing something, I had forgotten how much the intense heat saps your energy.

While I was on the farm I bought Mum a new bougainvillea plant.  She expressed a desire to look at the lovely blossom while doing the laundry in her outside wash house and I had so much fun creating an easy care patch of garden for her to make this possible.  My big strapping nephew very kindly cut down and grubbed out a dead privet shrub making space for the new garden.  I used whatever I could find including an old discarded 44 gallon drum, wire from some chicken netting, an old piece of trellis, some garden tie wire, stones from the farm, other pot plants from Mum's garden and a white pot for the bougainvillea. 




Mum and I both love the rusty drum although Dad thinks it needs a paint.






On the last Monday I was staying with my parents, my brother came over in the morning to deliver fresh milk, have a cuppa with us and was then on his way to move some sheep.  I hitched a ride with him so I could watch his amazing sheep dog Jessie in action.

It was an absolute joy to see her working and my brother says she is very mature for such a young dog.

Late Monday afternoon my brother took me, my nephew and the two dogs to Lake Baandee for a swim.  It is a salt lake which rarely has water in it due to the low rainfall in the area.  There has been water in the lake for the past two summers although previously it had been dry since about 1999.
My brother swimming with Bonnie.


 My nephew with his snorkeling gear on.  There was nothing much to see except a few mosquito larvae, he had fun anyway.
Gorgeous Bonnie with a salt and sand encrusted face.

 After swimming for a bit, Jessie decided it was time to go home and sat in the back of the ute.  She had to wait for us as we were having too much fun.

 Sun setting over the water.

 
 

 This is my favourite.


We came out of the water very crusty with salt but as I managed to float on my back for the very first time due to the saltiness of the water, I didn't mind. :)

I had a good flight home to Melbourne from Perth and passed over these salt lakes, one in the shape of a heart which I thought was rather lovely.

Flying over the township of Esperance.

Beautiful coastline along south eastern Western Australia.

So now it's back to the routine for a few months and then hubby and I are off to Europe for a couple of months.  There is a lot to do between now and then, so I had better get cracking.  Thank you for taking time out of your day to catch up with my blog.

Anne  xx