now a thirtysomething from Brisbane
An overflowing container of cherry tomatoes, a visit with the most treasured man in my life, getting covered in Cobblers Pegs as I lift up the vines gently plucking each little red ball off the stalk, dicing a handful through tuna mornay for dinner. A family table; laughs, love and the hope of tomorrow. Just another afternoon at The Farm. That was how I spent my May Day afternoon.
We certainly didn’t.
Mum is now with phone! Due to changes in how Grandad is been looked after, Mum now has a mobile to keep to date with all the happenings that come with the healthcare of an 88 year old.
The last 24hrs have proven most interesting in watching Mum learning how to use her new phone 😀
Matthew of course helped out in Mobile Phone Studies 1001 and of course hid his face from the camera.
However this one I caught him unaware 🙂
It is that time of year in Brisbane when the streets are filled with squawks and squeaks of baby Noisy Miners. One crazy couple decided that one of the palm trees on our driveway was the perfect place to put their nest, they “wove” together three fronds, two to form the base and one to cover the nest. It was just their luck that we didn’t have any big winds as the nest would have hit the ground pretty quickly.
We watched the birds, three or four of them fly into to feed the babies and if you stood in the right place in our garden you could sometimes see the little heads poke up out of the nest for a feed. We could hear them all the time though. Each baby had its own squawk and for the week or two when they were there we loved it. Every day as I walked up the street home from work, I would pause in the garden and go “hello birdies”.
Friday last week though, I came up the street and I could hear the squawks and the squeaks but now they were coming from a different place, no longer up in the palm tree. Where had the babies gone? Had they fallen out of the nest? Pabbi and Mum did not know where they had gone. 🙁
I went out to look at my herbs on the front verandah (something I do quite often and marvel at the size of the leaves on the lettuce leaf basil) and to listen to the squarks to see if I could find the baby birds. I sat on the steps and listened and listened. Then I saw one, a little downy fuzz ball on the ground beneath the mock orange. I rushed inside to tell Mum and Pabbi. Then sitting in the kitchen we saw the other one in a branch in the middle of the mock orange.
Oh it was quite an evening watching in particular the little fuzz ball as it tried to fly, he would get up somewhere to perch, then he would fall back down. The funniest thing then happened when Ma, Pa and big sibling bird all flew at the fuzz ball and he flew a good 8m to the tree where they were perched.
The next morning, the largest baby was perched high in a tree in our front garden but little fuzz ball was on the fence between our house and our next door neighbours on the topside. There it was perched on the cyclone wire fence. Oh the ache it caused though because they have a dog. In saying that though the kept the dog inside that Saturday whilst the little fuzz ball explored the area, demanded feeding and practised flying. The entire time there was an older Noisy Miner perched a little way away keeping guard, sometimes flying down with food or standing guard whilst the parents flew down with food.
Getting Fed
Perched on the fence
The Guard
Little Fuzz Ball on the tree outside my window.
Come Sunday morning, they were gone 🙁 🙁 :(. We still hear the squawks and squeaks of baby nosiy miners in round the street but they are not the little babies who kept us delighted.
I went bush the other weekend to the Goomburra Section of Main Range National Park. We were sitting round the kitchen table on Thursday night after dinner and Mum was planning what she needed for her weekend away. I suddenly realised there was nothing stopping me from going, and I really needed to get out Brisbane. 5 seconds later I was going and we were planning the new logistics. We nipped over to the shops to get some extra groceries and I packed my bag ready to depart shortly after I arrived home from work on Friday. It was also the first time my car got to go a little big trip, all up doing about 400km and going up and down some steep hills 🙂
I can’t describe how absolutely happy I felt on Sunday morning as I was walking up to the toilet block, the sun was shining on the eucalyptus, the air was filled with the scent of those gums. Then there was this wanderer butterfly that always seemed to appear as I walked up to the toilet block. Yep I’m the sort of girl who decides that one of her highlights for the weekend is a wanderer butterfly that always appears when I go to the toilet block but never when I was exploring with my camera.
I got to give my ankle quite a work out too and bar a bit of minor “yes I do remember hurting this ankle on Saturday evening” I was brace free and happy scrambling up/down/over/under all weekend, well for the most part. I couldn’t physically bring myself to rock hop up the creek though so I took off my shoes and waded.
I spent the weekend, reading, a bit of walking and generally just lazing around. Quite nice 🙂 Ohh and one of the highlights was hearing Lyrebirds x 100 times, ok maybe more like 40 but it was soo cool, I just wish I had seen one!
Some photos 🙂
and more photos here
The weekend was topped off with a present that a carload of Italian papas gave me on the way home, which will be featured in a blog post shortly 🙂
no not hot cross buns but just good food. I had plans of going away this glorious four day weekend, going bush and exploring. Sadly though that has not been the case as it is nearly two months from when I wrecked my ankle and it is still causing me havoc. Most recently from me thinking it was better than it was and overdoing it, so much that I spent a fair bit of Friday in bed recovering.
Yesterday we had not one but three phone calls from Iceland!!!! That does not happen very often even less than once in a blue moon, more like once is a red moon. It was one of my brother’s birthdays so he rang to say hello and then he passed the phone to one of our other brothers. Then one of my sisters rang to have a chat. Then to top it off Karl the next eldest in age brother from me rang from Ãsafjörður the town of his birth where he and a big handful of mates were at Aldrei fór ég suður or I Never Went South a music festival that is exactly how I think a festival should be and so looking forward to going to one year soon. One of the first things Karl mentioned was that he had seen Svavar play with his band Hraun earlier on and commented on his polaroid picture taking which I had to laugh at as last year when Svavar was here I think he quite possibly took more poloraids than he drank beers and that is saying something. A little while later Karl asked if I wanted to speak to Svavar as he had just walked outside, I said of course why not and that was then the most amusing thing. Karl handing a phone to someone who does not know him and saying there is a girl on the phone from Australia for you. Very hilarious. So that was quite a fun thing.
When I woke up Sunday morning I didn’t expect to speak to any family in Iceland and much less Svavar.
Back to the food.
Easter Friday I made a a big whopping batch of pesto (we are talking 1kg plus here). Don’t underestimate my love for pesto or the fact that my pesto could rival that of the best Nonna made pesto from Genoa well I haven’t tested it against a Nonna from Genoa but I think it could. I made a pesto loaf using a slightly different bread recipe to what I normally used and well moral of that story, when making a plain white loaf, use the recipe you know! It is edible but that is about it, the Mum analysis is that I probably altered the water content too much when adding the pesto.
Dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.
Four slices of bread toasted on/under the grill, rubbed with a little bit of garlic, topped with some more pesto, then some toasted prosciutto, some semi-dried tomatoes, a sprinkle of salt/pepper/oil and a fine grating of pecorino. It was quite delightful, my only wish would if we had had some salad greens in the fridge to add as well.
Lunch for Mum and I today as well as lunch for the next two days.
Little egg and bacon tarts.
Puff pastry shell pre-baked for a few minutes to crisp the bottom up, spread with some pesto, filled with sautéed onion, garlic, shallots and bacon, topped with egg, pecorino, seasoning and cream fraiche with a semi-dried tomato on top, baked for a handful of minutes and served with a quick grate of pecorino and served with a good handful of fresh beans.
Then in the freezer I have some lime granita and I made a pretty tasty dinner tonight which was cannelloni stuffed with mince, pesto, ricotta, parmigiano, bread crumbs, seasoning, parsley, semi-dried tomatoes, onion and an egg to help bind it all together in a sauce of tomatoes, spinach, ricotta, onion, garlic. Pretty nice, no photos of either though because the lime granita is just that and well the cannelloni as good as it tasted didn’t exactly look good and most of it disappeared pretty quickly.
Tomorrow it is Tuesday which means the end of the four day weekend and back to work.
Despite promises by Mum that we wouldn’t be getting any Easter Eggs this year, Pabbi just couldn’t resist and since Mum is walking the border line at the moment somewhere between the Mt Lindsay border gate and the Boonah border gate (hopefully much much closer to the Boonah gate since she started at the Mt Lindsay gate on Friday morning), Pabbi could do as he wanted.
I woke up this morning to find a carton of eggs on my desk. Never mind the fact that I still have my three Lindt Bunnies from last year on my desk and we only finished the other eggs in September. I did only buy them though to take photos of though and I didn’t eat them last year after taking photos of them so I could take photos of them again this year!
First thing I did was to go outside and have a play. This was one of the photos I took. Pabbi asked me what I was doing. I said taking photos because what else am I meant to do with them? Eat them?
