Rainfall this week : you guessed it, 0mm

The glorious golden hues of the winter wattle signal the way home. After another whirlwind trip to Brisvegas and the long journey home, we are back in our winter woollies and back in the trenches. 🥶 Both dogs excitedly jump out of the Ute and run laps around the paddocks, stretching their legs and rejoicing at the space around them. Even though they love visiting the family and Tiger, they do love coming home.

Braving IKEA on Friday, we surprisingly survived. Even though it was busy it wasn’t as busy as I had anticipated. Although the cafe seemed to be busier than the actual shop. 🤔 The plan was to inspect the Billy Bookcase products that we will use to create built in cabinetry in the lounge room on one wall that will essentially mimic hand crafted and constructed bookcases that are fully built in and trimmed up and painted that would normally be quite expensive. ( Rightly so as it’s a lot of work ) Perusing Pinterest we have found quite a few fabulous ideas that use the Billy products from Ikea for a very reasonable price. One of the spare bedrooms will also have one wall covered in shelves that will surround a Murphy Bed which again we will build ourselves. And as an added bonus we came across the wardrobe inserts which also gave us some great ideas for our walk in robe. (I’m very excited about having a walk in robe as I have never had one before 👏 )

Arriving home on Saturday afternoon to the calls of the Black Cockatoos, we were blessed with watching them wing in over the Ute and all land in the big knarly old wattle tree. It’s always amazing to watch them and hear their crazy screeching.

Sunday was spent moving camp, collecting water from town, cleaning and getting organised again. And just like that a new week has already begun. 🥴 With confirmed dates from the concreter we got straight back into the trenches. After backfilling the drainage, Jason started digging more trenches for the power feeds and the stormwater. I have to say he is getting quite good at digging neat trenches now. Of course there were rocks, there’s always rocks isn’t there. But eventually after trying different lines, he made it through to the tanks. No trenches are straight forward, they all seem to go right, then straight, then left and then right again. Oh the joys of owning a rock farm 🤣.

BTW, Chilli seems to think we have built her a new agility course. Every morning she’s in the trenches, runnings laps around the house pad and jumping over everything. It’s quite comical and entertaining to watch whilst having a coffee.

Lasagne layering in the vege beds has commenced as well. Yes it is going to take me a while to fill them up, but I’ve made a start and will continue filling this week. With plenty of dead Banksias to cut down, they should provide me with quite a lot of material.

Jack Frost did visit whilst we were in Brisvegas which unfortunately killed off a few more plants. ☹️ Learn from your mistakes as they say. Don’t leave indoor plants outside🥴 Both my Monsteras are almost dead, the Moreton bay figs that were in pots are dead ( lucky they were free ) the two smaller spider plants are almost dead, and a couple of varieties of succulents look extremely sad also. The rest of the succulents and the pig face don’t seem to be bothered at all and all the trees are looking great still. Some of my Geraniums have been burnt, but I figure they are such hardy plants that they will bounce back in Spring. Only time will tell. The olives seem to thrive in the cold as does the rosemary and the roses. But it’s definitely all learning about what grows well here in such a varied climate and what doesn’t. I’m sure I will manage to kill off quite a few more plants along the way…

Plants that seem to thrive out here:

Olives…Rosemary…Lavender…Pomegranates…Cherrys…Figs(edible)…Plums…Apples…Bay Leaf…Roses…Grapes…Most Succulents…Garlic Chives( nothing eats it👌)…Crepe Myrtle…All of our Citrus are doing quite well, but we have them all planted under the big paddock trees for protection🤞.

We have been pondering on whether the world has started spinning faster🤔 Do the clocks move forward sneakily? The days are technically supposed to be getting longer after the Winter Solstice but I really do think they have been getting shorter🥴…