Perfect Sunday morning

 We had  a wonderful night last night. Piglet (aka Michael) arrived yesterday for a holiday here and once Glen arrived a little later we decamped into the spa with a bottle of Chilean strawberry sparkling wine and 4 plastic glasses. The sun was just starting to set and the sky towards the west was the most amazing smears and streaks of orange and crimson. Dinner was a slow cooked leg of lamb and veges and then we settled in on the lounges for a movie. We woke to a living area still warm from the remnants of the fire from Saturday night and another small log revived it without any problem. The morning was clear, brisk and sunny with whispy patches of mist rising from the dew-moistened grass before burning off into nothingness.

We did our Larnook Big Brekky with bacon, poached eggs, tomato on the bbq with basil and balsamic drizzle, asparagus spears (also done on the bbq drizzled with some lemon juice) all sitting on some Turkish bread (toasted on the barbeque). Geeze it's bloody nice living here.

Gramma pie

 So I bought this gramma from our friendly vege farmers at Kyogle Farmers' Market last Saturday and yesterday I converted into from this fairly unappealing looking vegetable into a delicious...

gramma pie. I steamed 1kg gramma flesh, then mashed it up with some sugar, golden syrup, allspice (or was it mixed spice?) and some ground ginger and the juice and zest of one of our lemons, poured it over short crust pastry base and then covered it with another layer of pastry, a bit of milk and sugar over the top and into the oven for 50 minutes. Served it up last night with generous dollops of King Island double thick cream.  Very yummy on a winter's night.

Pot Hole Art Sweetie, Art....

The Northern Rivers is so creative and artistic, I love it. So there's a guy who goes around and creates art around pot holes in the roads. The art serves to make the roads a more creative space as well as drawing attention to potholes that could create problems for your car. He has done all the roads in the Lismore area and lately he has worked his way to the Kyogle district. There are donation boxes along streets in Lismore where you can donate money to help pay for his petrol and paint expenses. Lordie, I love living here!

Kooky Kyogle signs

 OK, so who'd like a toasted finger?  Index or little....

 See ya gran like you've never seen her before.....

 It was only a matter of time.....

And what an exemplar of understatement?  The Mentals reduced down to an A4 page generated by a pub's computer!  I'm pleased to say that last Saturday we did spot an actual official marketing poster...anyone want to come with me to see them? Come on, I'm sure the nips will get bigger and we can live it up!!

Winter is here...

We've had some colder days lately, with yesterday and today failing to go beyond 14 degrees which doesn't happen too often up here. The clouds closed in today and the rain has been unrelenting, although not anything more than heavy, but still, if we get more rain overnight we may well be flooded in. Our turmeric plants (which look like gingers and indeed I suspect a close relationship) are yellowing off and will die back soon, their ryzomes protected in the soil until they reactivate again in spring, and our sweet basil is dieing back as well.  So far we haven't had any frosts but no doubt we shall get a few over the next couple of months. I just hope they are light.
I need to get some a load of firewood - our slow combustion fire is so much better than the gas heater. I spent today doing work (as in career-based work) and cooking. I've made up the meat mix for lasagne but found that we didn't have the cheeses I need for the bechamel sauce so I'll conjure that up for dinner tomorrow night and I also have a beef stew slowly cooking in the slow cooker.  Hopefully just the thing for a winter's night's dinner.

Little Bro turns 40...

Photos: The exuberant Tracey Goodall

and so of course, you would expect a cake created as the Wicked Witch from Snow White, for Bretty's birthday.  She looked fabulous as well. Steve and I made a quick trip to Sydney to catch Brett's party held upstairs in the Pyrmont Point Hotel. Brett, being the event designer that he is, hired the services of a clairvoyant and a caricature artist to read guests' futures and to do their portrait.  But the highlight would have to be the arrival of the prime minister herself, Jahulia Gillard.

She was very funny and managed to create some very funny stories involving Brett and his friends without, in any way, bringing the office of prime minister into disrepute. She even threw in a couple of songs as well. Anyway, lots of fun, and it was great to meet so many of Brett's friends who we'd not before, as well as catch up with others we haven't seen in such a long time. And yes, I probably should have been a little more conservative with the sparkling wine.

Pesky possums lovin' lemons

So here I was, just a week or two ago, getting all giggly about the fact that we'd spotted our first brush tailed possum, and now look what the critter has gone and done. Decided that it has more than a passing taste for lemon rind. This has never happened to us before so either the possum is a newcomer to the area or things are pretty bad and food is scarce and it's decided that lemon zest is well....zesty and fun to eat. The purloining possum does a very good job though, I have to give it that, of chewing the rind off completely, as if it was skinning a rabbit, leaving the naked fruit behind. It clearly finds the fruit too sour for its liking. It has eaten quite a few fruit which is a little annoying because we like our lemons. I don't mind sharing our fruit with the wildlife with which we share Maryville but come on, don't eat it all, poss.

Wildlife Moment: 5 June

source of image: Museums Victoria www.biodiversitysnapshots.net

As readers of the blog know only too well, our place is a haven for a mob of red necked wallabies that pretty much do what they like, when they like. But I've known that swamp wallabies also occur around here because I've seen a couple of dead ones on the roads close by and I also happened to see two swampies bound across our paddock one afternoon sometime last year. But I had my best swamp wallaby moment on Tuesday morning as I crossed the bridge over our creek on my way to work. And there it was, munching on some grass on the embankment just to the right of the bridge. It looked at me for a few seconds and then bounded upwards to the top of the embankment and stayed there, again maintaining eye contact with me. Fan-bloody-tastic. They are such a beautiful wallaby. Generally solitary unlike the red necks that we share Maryville with. Wallabies that is.

Living the dream

Now most of you know I'm much more of a big blue sky kinda guy, and that grey leaden skies can often trigger a session curled up under a blanky listening to the Best of the Carpenters. On repeat. But as I walked across the lawn from the Chookery to the house, on Saturday afternoon, I reflected on just how beautiful it is to live here at Larnook and that even when it's wet, it's an absolute delight (even though we do start complaining when we get too much rain). A slight misty rain was falling gently and the clouds had closed in around us, obscuring the Billen Cliffs behind the house. The greens of the lawn, the lomandra garden, the jacarandas, all seemed to be intensified in the soft light. I remembered how I used to fantasise about us owning a weekender in the Hunter Valley somewhere, probably in the Dungog district, when we lived in Newcastle, and how I loved the idea of retreating to the weekender on a Friday afternoon, returning to the city on Sunday night. And now we live that dream. 24/7.

And as I continued my walk in the gentle rain, I stopped and watched this pair of wood ducks graze on the lawns while several red necked wallabies looked on. And I smiled.

Sorting out the septic

Living here at Maryville at Larnook means doing all kinds of things we never had to worry about back in Maryville at Newcastle. Such as maintaing a septic tank. Now to be honest, we've had no problems with the septic over the time we have been here, but a slight, yet, discernible smell had begun wafting from the tank over the past week and a peek inside revealed that the tank, all 2500 litres of it, was pretty well chockers. Not, as you might think, with solids, but mostly with water (which could mean that the flow from the tank into the transpiration trenches isn't working all that well, but we'll deal with that later if it turns out to be true). So we called in Clarence Valley Septics (not sure why they have a marlin as part of their logo, just another of life's mysteries) and a friendly, chatty fellow arrived on Friday to pump out the tank.
Fortunately his hoses were long enough, that once clipped together, they reached down to the tank without him having to drive that big heavy truck onto our soft lawns. The whole process took a bit over an hour. He commented on our lack of a crust on top of the liquid (this is not good) but otherwise he didn't think there was too much to worry about. The final stage was more like a vacuuming than a pump out, and we chatted about bread runs and the pros and cons of living in the country as he vacuumed up the last of the solids that lay at the bottom of the tank. Without a tinge of embarrassment.

Weird Wildlife Moment 30 May 2012

source of image: www.ozanimals.com

Over dinner on Wednesday evening, Victor asked me in that quizzical way of his what that funny bird was that looked a bit like a baby chicken, that he had seen scurrying about in the Chookery for the past day or two. I gave my suitably perplexed look and uttered something like, 'Um I really don't know, Victor...I hope you haven't been messing with those mushrooms growing in the gardens.'  Occasionally a crested pigeon manages to get inside but I was sure that Victor would have known what a pigeon looked like, and besides, pigeons don't really scurry about, instead preferring to fly like a maniac on speed into the sides of the Chookery in a panicky bid to find their way out.
So it was with much interest that I approached the Chookery on Thursday morning and began scouring the ground for signs of this avian interloper. And sure enough, scurrying about as Victor described was a buff-banded rail. Now I've written about these guys a couple of times and they are one of my favourite birds that we see quite regularly as they hurtle off the Rock Valley Road, neck low and outstretched, in a bid to out-run our vehicle as it bears down on them (they always escape I am pleased to add). And I have seen one or two in the Big Bush Garden. But I was very surprised that this one had made it's way over to the Chookery and even more surprised that it had managed to find it's way in. (And I still don't know how it did this).
I feared that the girls might decide to gang up on it and peck it to death and eat it (which they will do, dear readers), and besides the Chookery was no place for a self-respecting buff-banded rail to be hanging out, so I managed to corner it in the quarantine pen inside the Chookery and grab it. Much to it's annoyance - which it made quite clear to me with it's loud squarking. Which of course then set off our neurotic Japanese bantam (my little cock, as I'm prone to say), Terriyaki, whose catastrophising then set off the rest of the girls. Bedlam and panic in the Chookery.
Easing myself and the rail through the door, I then liberated the rail into the garden we have established under the pine trees next to the Chookery. And I mixed up some soluble valium for Terryaki and his girls and they settled down a treat. (just joking re: valium).