On Wednesday I went to market. to market.
I walked up and down.
Tomatoes, $8, great for sauce
Rockies, $2 a carton.
Cherries, super sweet.
Listening to their calls.
Some stand and watch you, waiting for you to decide that the price & quality is right. Others see you coming and do their best to talk you into buying from them.
There is no partridge in my pear tree but I do have 20kg of tomatoes, 8kg of capsicums, 5kgs of cherries and 4kg of mushies.
Which will become/has become
frozen mushies & capsicums
semi-dried & dried tomatoes
dried roasted capiscums
pasta sauce
frozen cherries for baking
cherries for eating 😀
We picked up two cherry pitters from the shop which made it so quick and easy to pit the cherries for freezing. I also picked up a curved paring knife, which has made coring the tomatoes a dream. It is now Monday morning and I just put on the last lot of capsicums to dry and there is one last tray of tomatoes that will be dried in a few hours. For some reason, I am guessing the weather it has been taking a lot longer to dry the tomatoes & capsicums than usual.
I spent a period of time each day, sitting at a little table on the back cement, with a box of tomatoes on one side, my drying trays on the other and the waste bucket between my legs. I core, halve or third the tomatoes depending on size, pop the backs, squeeze out some of the excess juice, arrange them on the trays and pop them in the dryer. Some of the tomatoes I have seasoned with some salt and pepper but the others are 100% tomato.
The dried roasted capsicums are possibly my favourite though, they have this slightly smokey intense capsicum flavour, are about 2mm thick and have a texture similar to a fruit roll-up. Quite nice.
Today is Christmas Eve, it about 8:30am here and we are about to put up the Christmas Tree, like a good Icelandic family, we decorated the house yesterday and put our outside lights up last week. Mum and I went to the farm yesterday to get our tree and of course to decorate Grandad’s house ready for Christmas Day at the farm.
Yesterday morning, I took a call from Mum. She had a brief message for me. That between 3:30am & 4:00am tomorrow morning the girder for the pedestrian overpass would be delivered on to site and put in place. Did I want to go? Of course I wanted to do. It meant that I skipped out on the Banawarun concert but it was good morning.
A bit of a brief info regarding this pedestrian overpass. Redcliffe State High is spread over two campuses on either side of Oxley Ave. For years there has been talk of an overpass/subway. Just over a year ago, a student was killed when a car ran a red light. The talking stopped and action started to construct the overpass.
We got out of bed at 2:15, picked up another teacher who lives down the road and we were off to Redcliffe. Below is a series of photos showing the Girder making its way to the site and then the procedure involved in getting in place.
I think it is well established that I likelove wide angle ultra wide angle. In fact I have had thoughts of renaming this blog to life at 12mm and only posting photos that were taken at that focal length. My tag line on the photo board is “go wide young padawan, go wide”. I have recently discovered the beauty in using a flash during the day time to overpower the ambient light, combining that with 12mm well I just can’t stop taking photos.
Some people dislike (hate is just too strong a word to use about 12mm) the distortion that 12mm can bring, my mother is one of them. Some people love it.
Of course the 12mm really comes into its own at The Farm, green grass as far as the eye can see just works so well at 12 mmm.
Aunty Margaret and Uncle Reg were up from Tasmania as they had been to Norfolk Island with Grandad the week before.
And yes there are photos of Matthew. Perhaps you thought he didn’t exist, my little brother who threatens bodily harm if I rise my camera near him. Well at 12mm there is not much I can do about him been in the frame. One photo is very much just of him. He was standing behind me. I knew this. I carefully swung my camera round on my shoulder to change a few settings, swung it back round onto my back, pressed that shutter button and hoped like 12mm that I got the shot. That shot is the first shot here.
I went with Mum 10 days ago to give blood but was turned away as it had been less than a week since I had a Hep B shot. Pabbi picked me up from work today to take me to give blood just in case I was a little woozy after donating and would not be able to drive home.
Total reverse happened. It was my 9th donation and my best ever. My iron level was 130 which is ok and I donated my 470ml in a bit under 8 minutes. None of this having a low iron level, using the whole time and only getting about 400mls out like in the past. The best part? I literally stepped up from the chair, had my muffin and walked out of the Red Cross Centre feeling 100%. No woozy/dizzy feelings at all. So Happy, I just hope it is a sign of future donations. Still pretty stoked about it.
And here is a photo of my Mum, if Mum didn’t donate, I don’t know if I would donate or more to the point, I don’t think I would have 9 donations by now. I have so many memories of Matthew and I spending time with Mum in the City waiting for her as she gave blood and then sitting in the chairs having our cheese and Jatz.
Most people are eligible to give blood. If you are eligible what is stopping you? Yes it might hurt, Yes it does take about 45mins out of your day, Yes you need to be careful with your arm after donating and Yes in 20 years time you might have track marks on your arms but for all those the bigger question if you don’t donate your blood every 3 months, will be there blood when you or someone you know needs blood products. 1 in 30 Australians donate. The number should be higher. You can make that number higher.
I need to stop going off on tangents. I sit down to do one thing and end up 45mins later somewhere else and having barely touched what I sat down to start.
Last Sunday was a Sunday. Not one of those Sundays but one of those Sundays. Sundays where we spend the arvo at the Farm. Sundays where we get out of the car and a minute later are sprawled out on Grandad’s bed talking about the week, what we have seen in the paper today or of course just plotting world domination plotting world domination with Grandad
Those Sundays are also about going for a walk. Though this Sunday it started raining so we went back inside to read instead. I caught up on my National Geographics. Matthew slept. Pabbi read/slept/just lazed around.
Last Saturday morning, Mum and I packed up the car and headed north, first stop was the Eumundi Markets, which were interesting, I picked up a dress, a long dress as in down to my toes dress. I have always thought that long “maxi” dresses look weird and never tried one on. This one doesn’t look too bad at all. It also means I think that I have more dresses than I do jeans or shorts. If you had told a 17 year Helen that I don’t know what she would have said.
Back to the weekend though. After cruising the markets for a while we met up with Hilary, her daughter Erin and nephew Sam, or a Fairy and a Pirate as their painted faces suggested. Once we were done with the markets we headed north again to Gympie and the Tin Can Bay rd, which would lead us to our first destination of Seary’s Creek for lunch and a paddle.
Seary’s Creek by mum
Seary’s Creek. This is a most wonderful place. A decent creek flows out of a swamp and is just a nice creek – “they” have put in a lot of board walks etc to two swimming holes and you can float / swim from one hole to the other. On a body board, you just float down – very pleasant. Both pools have “tame” yabbies. The yabbies come and nibble / tickle toes if you stand still. We went both days and the first day there were kids catching and releasing them with a net. The second day Helen gave up trying to catch them with her hands as she wasn’t quick enough but managed to catch quite a few with a bowl. Sam was not successful, but he had a great time trying.
After we were all nice and cool we headed down a side road to explore and to see if the flying duck orchids that were in flower 6 weeks ago when Mum was up there last were still in flower and they were!!
Then we drove in to Poverty Point, which is a campsite at the southern end of Tin Can Bay. That was my first real experience driving through sand which I quite enjoyed. There were a few loooong stretches of deep sand that made me glad to have AWD on the car. We camped about 10m from the sand and our fire was just on the bank above the sand. Hilary and Mum both brought along a box of fire wood and Hilary had remembered to bring the marshmallows. Mum and I seem to always take the firewood and then forget about the marshmallows.
This is how Mum described the beach.
It has a lovely little sandy beach and when the tide goes out it is sand flats rather than the expected mud flats. There were these things washed up on the sand that looked like wafer thin dried apple slices – but most were only 3/4 circles – we realized that they were dried snail egg masses. Erin found a fresh one in the water, which is what we normally find washed up on the beach.
After Erin and Sam had gone to bed, Helen and I went walking on the sand flats in the low tide where we found all sorts of things; little soldier crabs having a feed and a wide array of shrimps, little fish, hermit crabs, snails and other crabs that were left behind in the sting ray feeding holes.
On Sunday morning, Sam and Erin had had breakfast and were in their swimmers by 6.00am!! It is a great beach for little people as when the tide is in it is a long way to deep water.
Once we had broken camp, we went for a short walk to look at the Orchids that Mum had found on her walk yesterday as well as just generally having a nice stroll in the bush. It smelt marvellous. It seemed to have a crisp apple aspect to it. Which is not at all what the bush normally smells like.
After we went on another walk/paddle in Cooloola Creek, we headed back to Seary’s Creek for lunch on the boardwalk, a swim, some yabbie catching and general fun.
Then it was time to start the drive home. We took the Cooloola Way home from Rainbow Beach which was a nice drive back to Gympie. We had a quick stop in Gympie so that I could have a looksie in the windows of a bank that my company has done a lot of work in. Driving home we stopped to have a look at a large colony of fruit bats just north of Nambour. There were 1000’s roosting in the trees beside the highway for a good 500m-1km.
In pictures instead of words there were…..
… plants
… a sunset
… people
and there was my newish Crumpler bag that I love to bits (a Barney Rustle Blanket).
