Winter, but...

It is winter, but is is still so warm.  Still dry enough to do burns, on a good day.  These pics were taken by Dave from the brigade.   

Jen and Rob

Ken and Andrew

The guardian of the 1.4

In the end, the burn was all prepared for and then too damp to light, so we are going back to do it tomorrow.

Oh well, it was nice out there in the forest.

Jen took this one

With a cheerful crew.

I did pike out a bit and spend much of my time in the 1.4, guarding it and doing the radio comms.  There were a lot of us and I was worried about leaving the appliances unsupervised with all the weekend warriors hooning around in the bush out there.  Must admit, at times in recent weeks, I have felt very tired and ill all of a sudden, then good then tired again.  Not sure what is up there.  My iron is getting low again, dammit, after my lovely iron infusion last December, but it also could be the Helminths getting settled.  Hope it buggers off soon.  It feels awful. Glad it come and goes!   

On Saturday Arvo, we had a birthday do for Uncle Greggy.  He got given his new beanie and wore it at once.  Warm it may be for us, but it is cold compared to down on 'the flats'.

My darling sis and gorgeous oldest niece.

We had fun playing 'exploding kitten' with some Firey mates on Saturday night.  It's a card game.  Don't worry, no kittens were hurt!  It's a fun game but not in any way child safe, though I believe we were playing the adult version and there is a kid one too.


Yesterday I was pretty quiet (even had three naps!) and today has been a Monday holiday.  Jen and I walked our dogs together early then had a cuppa back at her place.  Her two dogs are now firm friends.

Little Pippa, on the right there, is so snuggly.  She always likes to be touching someone, even if it is Kelly.

This evening I got in some lyre time down in the paddock.

The chookies came down too.

While Mr Fitty Kitty continued his afternoon love affair with the bed.

  
Wise Mr kitty.         

Cafes, Community and Crocheting

Well, here I sit after a couple of recent AGMS,  the new Resources Coordinator for the Mundaring Fire school, and also the Uniform and Amenities officer for the Darling Range Brigade too.  I like looking after people and I'm good at it, so these roles suit me to a T.   I'm pleased to add these roles to my community service, though I am still a Firey at my original brigade.  I very much admire the work that both organisations do for locals and beyond, and this way, I'll get to meet and work with lots more lovely people.  Win-win all around!

I'm dying to show you the website as it is so far put together, but I will be patient and make sure i have all the bells and whistles working before I share it.  I'm working through a very useful tutorial on Youtube. Ahh, Youtube, what did we do to learn new skills before we had it?  Wear out the patience of our more cluey friends, that's what.  :D

I'm madly crocheting, but can't show you them all because they are gifties.  I can show you this one, though, because the recipient doesn't look at my blog.

Cafe crocheting today with a good friend.  Cuppa, cake, chat and crochet in the winter sun. How can you go wrong?

I met two lovely dogs this week.  Murphy the Mastiff cross was first. Such a sooky leaner. I love dogs who lean on you. Not so much when they are giants and stand on you.  :D

Second was at the cafe this morning, this dear little Welsh Springer teenager called Holly.  Argh, so many lovely breeds of dogs, so little lifetime left in which to own them all! 

      
Earlier this morning, when we walked up at the block, the Flying Jarrah was looking very happy with her little baby trees at her feet. This is the tree that was so angry and sick, and lonely for the trees that were cleared from her south and east sides many years ago.  I did her a soul retrieval and planted these especially for her.  She is so much happier now that she has her babies and knows how to journey for herself.       

The screened gazebo is put away for winter now, and this is the new lyre spot, under the old horse shelter to keep the chairs dry.

 
I like the aspect, but the dogs can now go and bark at passers by, so they stay a bit too alert, ready to run and bark at all the offenders.  Hmm.  Will have to think on how to stop that.  It's not peaceful for anybody!         

This was my gift from the Universe this week:  The biggest iridescently-bronzed Bronzewing feather I've ever found.  These coloured feathers only come from one patch on the birds' wings and I didn't even think they came this big.  Thanks for the lovely present, Universe!

 




    

  

     

Naughty me!

I never did catch up on my last blog post.  Ah well, busy life means neglected blog!

We've had a bit of social whirl this past week. Andrew went back to work as a fire inspection officer for the shire today so we took our last opportunity for a while to be holiday people.  There was much cafe-going with friends and family, and there were also some brigade meetings and a going away party for one of Andrew's Firey work-mate friends.  Sorry, no pics of that one, I was too busy yakking.  What a great bunch of people!


We did another social event at our fire station on Saturday, inviting two other brigades to come along for brekky. It was good fun. I love it when we network.

Cheers! Great Pic by Dave Ramsay.

That's me bang in the middle wearing my blue Darling Range Brigade t-shirt and my black Sawyers Brigade jacket.  Torn allegiances!  The other Brigade that came along was Chidlow.  There was a lot of chat and much laughter.  Fireys are good people.       

Hi Phil the intrepid BBQer! 

That's my handsome bro-in-law Craig smiling there in the background.


We also did some interesting walks, including another one in a local reserve that is new to us.   It was a very drizzly day, and the water on the young she-oak trees along the trail made for a very pretty walk.

Once more we ended up going a lot further than we had meant to, and once more the sight of the car at last was very welcome.

Yay!  Time to rest my feets!

I finished Niamh's afghan, apart from all the weaving in.  Gawd the colours here are so off compared to the real thing. That yellow is actually a greenish teal, the pink is actually almost white, and there is no purple in it!

Full pic of the finished result soon.  I've also finished a beanie as a gift for someone and was a tad excited about it, because it is super cute, but I can't show you yet.  Oh and Andrew's pointy beanie is so much admired that people keep asking me to make them one, including a complete stranger we met in a shopping centre.  I have no idea why it is so much more noticeable than his old brown and cream one, but apparently now it is in bright colours it is desirable and eye-catching!  Well, it is pretty noticeable.  :D

Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't write up the pattern as I went.

Doopy the car is sporting a sticker showing my allegiance to a certain "Mr Wednesday with the one eye" as I heard him referred to the other day.

I had to buy some new t-shirts and got the sticker at the same time.  I do enjoy a t-shirt with interesting, relevant designs on it.  I hate wearing anything like logos for companies or other meaningless designs.  I love these two, though!

Mr Wednesday again!

Tuppy for sure!

As you can see, I'm trying to brighten up my clothing a bit. It's too easy around here to wear black all the time because of all the dirt, but that's no reason I can't wear something a bit more colourful to go out into the world.    



The native life around here has been going full throttle.  Almost the whole property looks like this at the moment thanks to bandicoots (quendas) digging for insects (loosening more dirt to somehow end up on my clothes!)

And this baby brush-tail possum was seen making for safety up the Illawarra flame tree when we came home from a meeting:

You can't see me. Really you can't.

They are so sweet to look at, but the screeching noises they make while territorial arguments are going on are truly horrific!

This week will be holding a lot of garden work for me, since there are many areas of the block here that need tidying up.  (I'll try to ignore that the block up the road needs even more work.)

I'll also be learning how to use the divi theme I have bought to help me make a whizz-bang Author platform website.  Wish me luck!  Andrew gave me a lesson on how the internetz works, on Friday, and bits of it his diagram that I really didn't need to overflow my brain with just had brackets with the word "magic" written in them.  That made perfect sense to me!  :D  Actually it is all magic even when you know more.  Humans can be so clever.

I twiddled about with the idea of a site icon//navicon over the weekend and came up with this little drawing of Bu, the dog from the Norse world tales.   She'll need some tweaking to make the design perfect for the job, but I love her. She is perky and brave, just like my characters, human and animal, so often are.

  
Have a good week!  See you on Friday!





     

 


       

 

Woah!

Blog post will be late this week due to much learning on website design taking place.  It's time I had a proper author platform.   

In the meantime, rock your unicorn self and shine your light brightly!

It all about the love here this week!  Love and Wordpress.  :D

Boomshanka!



  

Weekend Shenanigans

Sadly most of the shenanigans weren't mine!

On Friday we went over and gave Harley a run because his dad, Angus was off can-shaking to raise money for our Brigade. I must admit we piked this year.  It was Andrew's Birthday (we thought!) so instead we went out for lunch.  Anyway, Harley is such a sweet guy with a really bad past.  He is very lucky that Angus took him on and saved him from a miserable life, and he knows it and is very devoted.

He's a funny boy and he loves a kong game, his version of which has to involve much shaking of kong back and forth and ruh ruh ruh noise-making.  Those big kongs are heavy. He must have a neck made of iron cables!

So it turned out that Andrew's birthday was actually on Saturday!  That's what happens when you don't look at a calendar enough.  Mum very kindly made some gluten free cakes for us to take up the station for schedules.  Yum!  

In the evening I left him happily amateur radioing in the man-cave and took mum off down to watch the younger nieces in a showjumping competition.  It was rather a big event and the entries for this class alone were 100 pony club kids!  As you can see, the walking the course opportunity was a little bit crowded.  :D

It's called a jigsaw event, which means that two kids jump identical courses at the same time, and the time they get is from when the first horse crosses the line to start and the last horses crosses the line to finish.

 Niamh was first to come into the ring.  That's her and Ollie going over the last jump while their partner crosses the finish line.  They were fast and neat and got a great time, though not quite fast enough for the winning line up.

  

 

  Here are Molly and Mahlee.  

It was lot of fun to watch the event and reminded me very much of when mum and I went and saw the Horse of the Year show in the UK.  What a fantastic day and evening that was!  Gave me a taste for cobs as well.  :D

I was very impressed with the horsemanship that I saw there, from tiny kids on up.  A lot of the ponies and horses were far from push-button, and the kids did a sympathetic and brave job of handling anything that came up.  It reminded me of my own fearless childhood riding days.  I wish I was that fearless now!

A large part of the rest of the very rainy weekend was spent doing musical stuff, sometimes upstairs in the reading nook.  I've been tinkering with Andrew's neglected ukulele.  It's a dear little thing.  I can see why people like them!         

I've been actually learning scales on the guitar too. Shocking!  It was finding this youtube teacher that set me off.  Thanks Sean Daniels!   You can't ask for a more enjoyable set of lessons than his.

Oh and if you'd like to listen to some music by an Aussie Druid whose music is far more advanced than his years, listen to this album by KC guy.  So pretty!

Crocheting is going well but I can't show you my current small project because it is a present. Niamh's afghan is one and a half rows from done, plus rather a lot of weavings-in!  The next afghan is going to be an Aussie camo one for my bro in law.   

      

    

The browns look a bit pinker than their true colour here.  I'm going for another big square, or in this case, rectangle.  I LOVE not having to sew the small squares together at the end and it is so much faster!

I hope the week treats you well, with much creativity and rest and love and all the good things.     

          

   

     

Exuberance!

I finished my dream board with my word of the year on it this week.  I love it!  Being able to image search on google certainly beats the days of hunting through magazines for pics.  I'm not sure many magazines even contain the sorts of images that I'd consider inspiring!
 

 

Exuberant colour. You can't go past a good maple for that.  

 

What a delight to the eye!   With wind gently blowing them, they were even prettier, so I got little bit of video for you and added some lovely music by the musician, Hauk, from his album called "Love Songs. Lamentations and Lifthrasir."  The song is called "Freyja's Tears."

We had a lot of fun this week doing a photo shoot and article about women in our Bushfire Brigade for our local newspaper.  It was such a laugh and the feeling between us all, both we women and our family members who came along to support our effort, was so lovely.

I've been thinking about another short story for Freya Fjordrider.  I can't say she is my most exuberant character, because I need to factor in the mad Brodie Mac Brodie from the Norse World Tales, but she is certainly consistently full of life and fun to write. I had so much fun writing the last short story (novella?) for her, the link for which I now can't find.  What the? I thought I'd put it on this blog for you to read!  I'll see if I can find it.  

Anyway, when starting to think about this new story, I'd thought about going back to her earlier life, back to when she met the hideous but charismatic Ferss the Fierce, who shows up in Golden Bear, and doing the story of how they met and adventured together, but actually, the more I think on it, the more it needs to be a full novel.  Hmm, now I'm torn between writing the next Satan story and the next Freya story!  What a very pleasant quandary to be in.  I certainly haven't dried up for novel ideas yet!

It's Andrew's birthday today. Happy birthday dearest one!  We all love you lots!

     

I found this pic the other day while looking for something else. I've done so many interesting things in my life, and yes that really was my exuberant hair!

I wonder what's next in this exuberant life?



  

Past/Present/Future

I don't know why that idea is on my mind today. I'm not sure it relates much to what I am going to post here.  Perhaps it is the Leonie workbook, which asks you to think about what you want to have happen in the year ahead (I know it's May but anyway) and not just realistically but to really dream wildly about it.  This brings you in touch with your actual path, your needs, what you are doing that is successful and not so successful.  It's an interesting exercise.

I also got a phonecall to tell me that Tori, my horse who went off to be a police-horse when I found out about the Lyme Disease, is retiring.  They wanted to know if I want edher back. As you can imagine, that brings up a lot of stuff for me.  I'd meant to do a 'Horses I've Loved' post about her for quite a while, but somehow I keep avoiding it.  I loved her a lot, but my time with her  got all tied up into the exhaustion and anxiety of Lyme, so that now my feelings are really mixed.

I did adore her though.
 

And we had fun together sometimes.

 

Anyway, once I got the Lyme diagnosis, I felt able to admit that having horses was all too much for me.  Tori's companion pony, dear little Bellamy, went to be the beloved and much cherished pony of Della.

And Tori went to be a policehorse...

...which I'm sure she thoroughly enjoyed since she liked a bit of excitement.  They certainly love her there.  They are in no hurry to pack her off to just anybody, they were just asking me first.  I did think about it for a little while but no, I don't think she was ever all that happy here and I really do have no intention of going back to horses.  Not yet anyway.  Maybe not ever.

In other more cheerful news, the pointed beanie is finished!   No pattern, sorry, I winged it by kind of matching it up to his old one.   

There were just a few ends to weave in!

The weekend showed us some beautiful skies above the smoke from all the hazard reduction burns...

Including this bit of 'merino-wool' cloud! 

And we got one call-out to smoke that turned out to be a couple of piles of logs that were being deliberately burned by our local parks guys, so we didn't put them out.  The light, as it shone on the hill while we were down in a gully, made for some nice photos though.

Andrew continuing his 'heroic stance in sunlight pose' practice

Nope, you're out of the light now!

To put it out or not to put out?

We also took the dogs to the Swan River on Sunday morning.  The water was beautiful.  So still.

Except for the dogs churning it up.  They sent ripples right across.

They had a lot of fun fetching, which was fine...

... and then even more fun rolling in something truly hellish in its perfume, possibly very smelly, fishy bait some kind fishermen left behind, so home we came for a lovely bath.  Sorry, no pics of that, I was too busy torturing my dogs with the same substance they had so recently enjoying swimming in!  :D 

Sunday afternoon we went to Jen's place and had early dinner with mum and the family. Sorry, forgot to take pics!   What do you call early dinner anyway?  Dunch?  Linner?