Wedding Anniversary 25th May 2017

 Today was our 26th Wedding Anniversary and we went to the Currant Shed to celebrate.
It is a lovely little restaurant situated at the end of a narrow road and sits among vineyards which are changing into autumn colours.
You look out onto a grove of citrus trees pruned into umbrella shapes and they look very pretty.
In amongst them flit a lot of fairy wrens busy eating all the bugs that bother plants.
The shed is actually very comfortable and has good acoustics with a straw ceiling which absorbs sound and so you don't have to shout to each other to be heard.

We looked at the extensive wine list and decided on a shiraz from Tasmania. We visited the Holm Oak winery probably fifteen years ago when we took our campervan across on the Tasmanian ferry. We could both remember the Holm Oak trees, which are evergreen and can be pruned into hedges. The winery itself we vaguely remember as a shed.
The shiraz was typically cool climate and on the light side, not unlike a pinot noir really. Certainly not the full bodied, mouth filling wines grown in our Willunga area.
We were brought some delicious morsels of food to start with, one oyster each which were fresh and crisp and some deep fried kale holding a creamy paste.
Then some deep fried ribbon of beetroot with a lovely cream holding chopped Kalamata olive. I just find it such a lovely surprise to have these little tid-bits while we are waiting for the first course.

Brian had chosen the quail/grape/miso/watercress for his entree.
It is served on a lovely handcrafted plate.
He wasn't quite sure where the quail was and thought it must be in the sausage shape.
I had avoided the quail as I usually find the little bones a bit hard to cope with.
He enjoyed it very much and the light shiraz went with it very well.

I chose the squid/chorizo/beans/fennel for my entree.
It had some grilled corn with it which was an intriguing addition and the beans were delicious.
The squid was real squid with its grilled little tentacles making me feel a little sad, but then as I said to Brian, they really only live a short little life in their environment so we may as well eat them as not......

We both chose the venison/cabbage/white peas/curry leaf for our main course.
The venison was medium to rare and the cabbage, some of it red pickled cabbage went with it very well. The Holm Oak went very well with this and though Brian thought his knife was not as sharp as he would have liked, I had no such difficulty. You do wonder where the venison came from as the deer up at Yacka are driving Janet and Horst mad on their farm and they would be happy for shooters to come and eradicate them so their trees can grow to a decent size. This photo was taken by our waitress who volunteered to take it with us standing in front of the little citrus trees. I wonder what the next twelve months will hold........

Tawney Frogmouth in January......

It is hard to believe that our Tawney Frogmouth Dad has again sat on his nest in the Ashtree and produced another offspring in the height of summer....but he did and yesterday morning I saw the little chap peeping out from beneath his Dad's hot body. It was creeping up to 40* C yesterday but luckily there were no fierce northerly winds. Also ,of course, the Ashtree is in full leaf so there was plenty of shade. It is interesting too, that when I first saw the chick it was quite white but this morning it had turned gray.
Last night we had another amazing sunset but when I went to take a photograph the battery in my
 Nikon 80 was flat and could not fire.There are plenty of dramatic sunsets and sunrises in my photo stash so here is one from an earlier time.
I love the outlines of the gumtrees now they are mature sized, we planted them twenty five years ago and they have grown without a great deal of extra water except perhaps for the first few years when they were all on drippers.

We have been seeing quite a few bunnies this year as the wet winter has encouraged them to breed up. they are cute creatures till they start to decimate one's vegie patch and nibble on the rosebushes . We have had Mr Hare lope through the front garden also but I don't mind him or her as they don't seem to do much damage here. They will chew the trunks of small trees of course so we did have to  protect them for some years.The vignerons don't like them at all because they will chew through the dripperlines.

Kangaroos do so too, I am told, to get at the water.
Our garden has been looking very good this year with all the rain we have had. The pond especially has become a mass of water lilies and the surrounding plants flowered so well.
It was such a wet winter and spring with the cool weather lasting till Christmas when it certainly told us not to be complaisant and fired up to 40*C on Christmas day and we had our lunch inside in airconditioned comfort....no standing in front of a hot wood stove in one's knickers to cook the Christmas goose nearly fifty years ago.....was I really that silly in my younger days?

Unusual Flowers in Spring at Willunga

 It was  lovely day today and to see the flowers now, after such a long and drawn out,wet spring
gave the urge to get out the camera and shoot away....
I think the water lilies have escaped their pots and consequently they are thriving with big leaves and stunning flowers. The goldfish are in droves too even though I found one of the big parent fish floating dead in the pond.I fished it out and buried it near a plant....

The bearded iris on the right is a tanny brown colour with a golden throat. It was given to me 30 years ago when I moved into my cottage at Watervale  by a friend from Tasmania. I have never seen another one of that colour. It is also inclined to flower in March as well as in October.I nearly lost it when the water restrictions came in but I managed to save it and will propagate it from now on.

The long wet spell we have had has encouraged a host of insects to breed up in large numbers.
Especially the earwigs which are such sneaky creatures as they eat voraciously at night when no one is watching and you find your plants full of holes and the roses damaged with the little buggers right inside the base of the bloom.
The next thing will be the caterpillars hatching after the lovely butterflies have laid their eggs on just about everything as well.....

Can you spot Mrs Tawney in our pepper tree?
She has been sitting on the same branch each morning for the past three weeks, so I greet her with "Good Morning Mrs Tawney" as I open the gate to go in and feed the chooks which is right there alongside the pepper tree. Mr Tawney is sitting on the nest in the Ash tree a few yards away and I noticed today his little chick is starting to poke its head out from under his Dad's chest.It is written in the bird books that the male sits on the nest, you wonder how someone found out that little fact......

All this Rain....

We are still having the most amazing cold and wet weather for September into  October this year. South Australia is usually the driest state in the driest continent, but this year it is making records in both rain and ferocity of winds. Last week our whole state was without power for anything of 12 hours to days on end for some of the outlying areas. Today again we are indoors as the winds blow and the rain comes lashing down. We are not as badly off as the poor  farmers in the Mid north and the vegetable growers on the Virginia plains which are flooded,or the Barossa valley, that wonderful wine growing area. The Onkaparinga river too, is flooding the lower areas and I am sure the bream are very happy if no one else is....
Sixty years ago in 1956, it was also a wet winter when my family lived on Anlaby sheep station and I was unable to cross the creeks to get to the school bus to go to Kapunda high. I missed so much schooling I failed my leaving certificate that year.

I did gain my certificate while studying for it when I was a lab technician at the Waite Institute the following year.
It is astounding that people still try to cross flooded roads not aware of the power of raging water and are left stranded in the middle of the creek, in their cars and have to be rescued.
 One year when we lived at Hughes Park, I watched from my kitchen window overlooking the Skillogalie creek which was a raging torrent after torrential rains and was tossing huge tree trunks around like matchsticks in the paddock. All the floodgates would have to be repaired as the debris would pile up against them and eventually drag them off the wires from which they hung.

The most useful thing I have done this week is make Quandong jam. They are such a lovely colour when ripe but it is lost when made into jam....such a shame.
This morning during a hailstorm, all the magpies and one young one sat on the Studio verandah taking shelter but the poor Tawney Frogmouth is stoically sitting on his nest while Mrs Tawney sits in the Pepper tree well sheltered under a bow near the chook yard....
There is a mangy fox lurking around too and kitten rabbits hopping around on the patio early in the morning.....their burrows flooded, pity they didn't drown......

Cards Anyone?

 I have had good fun making cards for the past week or so. It is still being creative but not overly so and it has kept me in the studio most days. It has helped that there are 52 CDs of all of Beethoven's works to listen too as well, while the weather has not been condusive to being outside for gardening.
We are also being faced with having to attend Flinders Hospital more often than we would like and that takes a lot of time and energy. Especially as the parking there is horrendous and you don't know beforehand whether there is a space available.

 If you are lucky to get a space in the car park, you hang onto it for the number of appointments you have to keep which can be hours apart. So sitting and waiting in air-conditioning and observing the sick and their carers is becoming another interest....The other fascinating but irritating aspect of Flinders Hospital is, that no-one seems to communicate with anyone, be they specialist or pharmacist or nurse. So a whole day was spent wasted just to see two specialists and a nurse....
Our prolonged winter is proving a challenge and while all the plants have responded very well to the wet and the cold , it means the weeding is getting far behind. I had another photo here of the Bluebells in the front garden but it has disappeared .....a pity the bluebells won't as they will be problematical the way they spread....

Well, here we are, I managed to insert the photo in the right place after all.....
The Tawney frogmouth is still sitting on his nest and his wife is sleeping in the pepper tree by the chook yard ... the Greenies are building a nest on the patio in the Glory vine right by our door....

Verses from the Book of Job

It suddenly occurred to me that I had not done a blog about my "Book of Job" verses.
I have been reading Rowena  Loverance's book on Christian Art. She writes eloquently about this subject and has wonderful illustrations to back up what she is writing about.
There is a wonderful photo of a linocut by the Australian artist Eric Thake so her choices of art for this book are very wide ranging in both times and artists.
So Rowena inspired me to make a book about the verses in the book of Job.

I have always admired the illuminated scripts of the monks who would have sat in cold monastic spaces, on hard wooden seats, concentrating on doing the lettering in gold and vibrant pigments,
creating books for the Church in the Middle ages.
So I have tried to make the first letter of the verse look more important than the rest of my writing.

The verses I chose are worded in beautiful old English and they are so poetic and inspiring that they are inclined to make one feel humbled.
Who indeed are we? who can command the eagle to fly or anchor leviathan, that great sea creature we all admire and stand in awe of....
the description of the horse in all its glorious strength and beauty and its courageous facing of the enemy in days when it was asked to carry its soldier into battles in olden days, is stirring and humbling....when you think what enormous effect the horse had still, in the First World War,

only just 100 years ago and how many died in the service of mankind. It makes you want to weep. We used horses in the 1960ies for mustering sheep and cattle on the steep hills of  Hughes Park and they gave of their very best carting us up and down incredibly steep slopes.
Racing over stony ground to head a freshly shorn mob of wethers, bucking and kicking their way to a fresh paddock. Or galloping madly after a steer unwilling to go through the gate into the yard. The horses were shod every six to eight weeks

by our local blacksmith,  a short but wiry man who lived in Auburn. To start with I used to lead our horses over to the homestead blacksmith shop with its coal fired forge and all the tools of the trade hung in neat rows. Or is that my imagination that it was neat and not hung with dust of ages and cobwebs thick in the corners...
later the boys would be roped in and lead their pony as well.....
The cover of the book is fairisle knitting with  a mix of fine yarns and a card this time as the carriage of my electronic machine was sick and ill and away in a place to be repaired.....

After SALA

 This is not going to be much of a blog as I could not seem to find the photos I wanted to add. Is it me or is it the laptop.....
It can be very frustrating to have ones' routine of setting these blogs in motion, altered to such an extend you can't find the photos easily,let alone choose the ones you want .
Enough already......
Our SALA month is now well and truly over and I find myself making small things at present.

 The above are two artist diaries with covers.
The one on the left is a fairisle design and knitted on my brother 860 knitting machine. It sold during SALA but the person has not yet picked it up.
The one on the right I finished this morning. It is knit-woven, the background yarn is a mix of fine cotton yarns and the weaving in yarn was fine ribbon.
I also did a batch of greeting cards yesterday, the painting was done in acrylic on a separate paper

 and then attached to the black card. I am quite pleased with them and my friends and family can look forward to getting them for birthdays or just as an "Hello".....
The two manikins each wear knit-woven kimonos with matching hats. I had hoped some fond grandmother or auntie might have bought these for a favored child but no one did and so they will stand in the studio to cheer me up on lackluster days.......