A little place to call my own

Ouch! It’s hot.

It’s been hot here. Hot enough to feel like I’m swimming in a goldfish bowl of cool air around the air conditioner vent, while the rest of the world (or my part of it) bakes under our blistering sun. The temperatures are high, but not too bad so far. The thing is, it is just so dry here. Dry enough for any spark to quickly become an emergency.

First there was dust storms and now there’s days and weeks of smoke from the nearby national park as it burns out of control. Luckily it’s over the river and away from most homes. But the flames have driven more wildlife in our direction. For the second time in a fortnight, we’ve had to swiftly dodge a huge kangaroo bounding across our main road in to town.

The news reports predict a bad summer for fires here in Oz, and so far it has proven true, even in our little street. There’s been two fires on our lane so far, as well as the national park fire. Two fires may sound dangerous, and it could have been – seeing as the flames licked at the backdoor of  neighbour’s house. But the local rural fire brigade patrolled our road all day, each time, and kept the fire from jumping the road onto our property.

Thankfully, this makes things safer during the rest of our summer, as it will provide a fire break on that side of us.

These photos are of the first fire. It burnt three neighbours’ land and almost took out a home (third picture below), but luckily the worst damage was only to their fences.

 

Look at the size of it. We were surprised  that the fire which at first seemed some distance away actually turned out to be two houses down, and fast approaching.

 

Here it has caught up with us, and is lapping at the road’s edge, hungry for the fuel  or wind, needed to cross over.

The flames came right up to our neighbour’s backdoor, it looked like his house would be consumed for sure, but the firefighters were able to beat the flames down by back burning.

 

These photos are just opposite to our letterbox, on the land of the best neighbours ever – the ones who supply us with all the wonderful eggs.

 

The fire encircled our neighbour’s house, but all was well by this stage. The fire fighters were very friendly and quickly called for back up when needed. Four crews fought the fire, and so it was all over in a couple of hours.

 

Watching the fire and chatting to neighbours was certainly was a dramatic way to spend a quite  Saturday afternoon. I’m glad it is a rare event, and that the right people were on the scene.

Life can be pretty crazy in it’s extremes sometimes, for here I am writing about fires, and heat… when my twitter pals in Cork are completely swamped by flooding. Hope you’re all ok, and keeping dry and safe on higher ground.

 

Join me for Breaky

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Come join me for a banana, watermelon, and passionfruit yogurt smoothy, mmm, yummy. But I forgot to add the mango-oh! Never mind, as it was, it made up a perfect amount for two glasses. It felt like a healthy start to the day and was surprisingly filling.

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Crumple petal Cosmos Flower, from my garden

Join me for breaky

I made this frittata for breakfast, and it was so yummy.

I had wanted to make something substantial for breakfast, and when I put my head into the fridge I noticed a few sausages looking a little left out, so I worked my recipe around them.

After deciding on making a frittata, I went out to my veggie garden to collect some ingredients. I found spring onion, pea stalks and a green zucchini. It’s a great feeling; being able to take food from the garden and combine it with other produce to create something spontaneous.

 

I’m always surprised by how different my veggies taste to the ones from the shops. But the stars of all my cooking are the cute eggs provided by our wonderful neighbours across the road. Look at the various colours and sizes.

You might not be use to using pea leaves in your cooking, I certainly am not. But I was out in the garden one afternoon when the peas plants had only just sprouted and after admiring them, I wondered if the baby leaves were edible. I tentatively ate a few leaves and wait to see if it made me feel sick. All was well. And since then I have wanted to use them in a salad or cooked meal, this is my first attempt and I found them to be really versatile.

To make the frittata I cooked the sausages under the grill, and separately cooked onion and spring onion. I peeled the skin off the zucchini, sliced, and cooked it gently in a small saucepan. Into the main saucepan I added an omellette mixture to the cooked spring onion and common onion. When that was almost cooked, I added the pea leaves, cooked zucchini and sliced sausages. I topped it all off with a light sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese and a tiny bit of cracked pepper.

I am so pleased I took these photos for the blog, because otherwise I am sure to have forgotten my recipe.

My favourite part was the taste of the zucchini. It may not taste like this with shop bought veggies, but this time mine tasted really appley. I must try and remember to make this recipe again. It’s a great one to share between two (plus the dog tax to Taj) people.

You start from one side, I the other, and we’ll meet in the middle

Yesterday was ’stained glass window class day’. And all is progressing well. The many individual pieces of glass that make up my design have been cut out and assembled, and now begins the new process of ‘leading up’. As you can see from my photo, I’ve completed one corner and have almost made it to the centre of my design, though I now have a  sneaking (yet strong) suspicion that there is one piece at the top, that hasn’t been cut out at all – due to a last minute design change which was necessary because a particular sort of glass was in limited supply. I guess I’ll know when I get there.

It’s often like creating a jigsaw puzzle.

I wanted to write a post after last weeks class, but my hands were too sore to type and the tips all lacerated. I do believe it gets easier over time. I think it is the type of skill that requires a great deal of practice.

Interestingly, when I was looking for helpful tips about it before my first class, I read on one website that you should only attempt stained glass if you have no fear of blood. I thought the author was exaggerating, but it’s proved to be true, in my case at least. After this week’s class I noticed that I am becoming desensitised about seeing my own blood.

I think I may have knicked myself the most out of the three students, and that only means one good knick each week. But the good thing about it is, that at the time you just don’t notice the pain because the process of stain glassing is so intense that you’re always busy and focused. Another good thing is the cuts don’t hurt like normal cuts do (I think it’s because the glass is so sharp, making  cleaner cuts). And they aren’t as much of a surprise, which somehow really helps when you’re  trying to convince your finger to stop bleeding. I’ve found that tearing off a strip of clean scrap paper and twisting it around the offending wound, does the trick. I think I like it even better than a band-aid. Plus it makes me feel all tough and proper.

I do have one problem though.. well, two actually. Firstly, I am not good at cutting glass. But you may have guessed that already, from my mentioning all that blood and bleeding business. But more importantly, I’ve noticed that I have a very embarrassing habit when stain glassing…. whenever I’m trying to do something very tricky and demanding, which is basically all of the time, I stick out my tongue and wrap it over my top lip, just like a toddler would. I mean I really stick out my tongue, not just a little bit, but a lot.

I only became aware of this habit during the most recent class, but even though I now know I’m doing it, I can’t seem to stop it happening.

I’m just not sure what to do with myself,

Sigh..

Fire in the sky

 

There were distant grey clouds in the sky late today, but it was smoke instead of rain.

And while I was in the garden, the air was full of the thup-pa-thup-pa sound of low flying helicopters coming to the lake to collect water to douse local bushfires. The one below came particularly close to me.