Koala portrait & $8.00 Eggs.....

This is a better portrait of the Koala which visited our garden last week. He came on Sunday and on Monday I found him in the Ash tree looking very comfortable. However, he disappeared since then and I have not seen him again.
What we did have on the patio this morning was a young hare, we have rabbits as well in the garden of course, but this one had longer legs and longer ears and loped away rather than hopped.

The vignerons hate the hares because they chew through the irrigation lines to get at the water.
So they shoot them but the kangaroos will also chew through the irrigation lines to get at the water, I don't know what happens to them though.
I can't get over how vibrant the autumn colours are this season. Usually we thought the colours were not much good in drought years but this has been an extremely dry summer and autumn so our theory doesn't hold ......

Above are the Golden rain trees with the pomegranate on the right and the Claret Ash behind them all.
On the left is our neatly stacked starter wood for the winter, our gardening friend is an artist as well as a gardener and very organized and neat in our somewhat dishevelled and normally wild garden. So it is a pleasure to see works of art like this instead of the woolly mess we may have left it in.

Well, now, I am pleased to say I happened upon some laying hens for sale yesterday on the way back from Aldinga. I went in to inquire and the man I spoke to was not very communicative but called his brother out to explain to me how old they were ( supposedly 2 years old but how can you tell with a bird? you can't look at their teeth like you would with a horse...). So I took his word for it and at $4 a hen who could argue? After some very strange antics to get them out of the trailer they were in, they were put into two bags, as I had nothing with me to transport them home in my car.

They look pretty miserable in the picture of course because they are moulting.  They did find the Chook Palace they were put into a bit posh after their farmyard shed and could not believe they were expected to sleep upstairs....
When I went to check on them last thing at night they were all sleeping on the ground floor...
Then, wonder of wonders, there was an egg in the actual laying box upstairs this morning and later I found one on the ground floor... so here they are, two eggs at $16 = $8 each, we will have them tonight and enjoy them.

On the right is my mothers sewing box she brought with her when we migrated from Holland in 1952. It had been sadly neglected by me and another kind friend who loves restoring old things, mended the lid and put in new hinges and a few screws and stripped it and varnished it.
So now it looks like new and I will use it again.
I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table at Anlaby, darning  endless socks and mending shirts and sewing on buttons......
How wasteful we are now, toss out socks and other clothing when we think we are merely sick of them.....