Just Mum and me this weekend. Mum had her cast off her arm, and was keen to come up to Inglewood again, especially given that she hadn't been up for her regular school holiday week over Summer.
I picked her up very early - as I had to have Fraser at school by 6.20am as they were being bussed down to Geelong for Saturday sport. That meant that I was at Mum's before 7am - I sat outside for a while and read the paper (didn't want to be too early). Given that we hadn't had any breakfast, we stopped at the Calder Park Service Station complex and had a McDonalds breakfast - not bad - breakfast burger, hash brown and a coffee
We also stopped at the road side big fruit stall in Marong and got some grapes, bananas and stone fruit.
Once we got to Inglewood, we unpacked - lots of goodies from Karen's Dad ie sausage maker, nice silver cutlery that matches my existing cutlery, toast rack, gravy boats etc
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| a couple of gravy boats, 2 milk jugs, a silver dish, and an oriental teapot from Karen's Dad |
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| various cutlery pieces, some of the forks and spoons are the same as my silver set |
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| the sausage maker from Karen's Dad |
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| an oriental vase, and metal tray from Karen's Dad |
And then, we went and visited the ladies at the Op shop. They had put aside a very nice single doona cover for me that they thought would look good in the house.
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| the doona cover was in this bag |
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| and this is the doona cover |
Moving on up the road, we both had smart haircuts from Michelle,
Did some watering of the garden, and Michael dropped by to tell me and then show me where the two good yabbie dams are. I was pretty thrilled about this. As Webb's dam off the main road up near Kingower had only given me one solitary yabbie which I threw back in, and the other dams ie Inglewood reservoir and the dam where Elise had caught heaps a few years ago had none this season.
Obviously I won't divulge where these new dams were, but Michael had caught quite a few from both dams - and we're hoping that there are still quite a few left.....
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| Michael said that this gathering of sticks was an Aboriginal type yabbie trap |
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| one of the hopefully full of yabbies dam #1 |
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| One of the hopefully full of yabbies dam #2 |
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| Michael says that you can eat these small red fruits - bush tucker |
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| Some old mining equipment near the dams #1 |
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| Some old mining equipment near the dams #2 |
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| oh - what a good yabbie dam |
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| must have been an old house here once - with that palm tree |
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| Some more old mining equipment - near the dams |
Once I returned form the yabbie reconnoitre, I commenced the long and arduous task of watering the again parched garden - just the main bits ie fruit trees/orchard at the front, front beds, olives x 9, yuccas x many, lillypillies x 5 and "heritage" orchard. Luckily Mum helped too- but it still takes a while.
And, it was a pretty hot day - over 35 degrees celsius, and humid too boot. So a nice cold drink at the end of the day was definitely in order. I had introduced Mum to Gins and Tonic a couple of years ago up here, and she was an enthusiastic convert. Therefore she was keen to go up to the veranda and relive the magic. Only thing was it was hot, very hot. Yes we went up there, with the ends of some dips and biscuits, and a couple of icy G&Ts. Well, we lasted the length of the G&T, but then had to retreat back to the cool of the house to dry the sweat and cool the skin.
Read the papers and was surprised to see a feature article on Graeme's Passing Clouds book in the Good Weekend in The Age
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| article from the Good weekend |
Given that it was just the 2 of us, and the fact that we were arriving later than usual, we didn't bother making a reservation at the pub. And it was fine. I guess we got there after 7.30pm, and were served up our dinner within 10 minutes of ordering - fabulous. I also introduced Mum to apple cider which we had with our shared Outback Parma. Yep, we shared a parma, like Justin and I normally do. The sizes are large, we'd had a late lunch, and drinks and nibbles earlier, so didn't need a whole one each. Half was just right. And the apple cider went with it very nicely.
Once we got back home we had a game of scrabble, all up I think we had 3 or 4 games over the weekend - as it's Mum's favourite game. We like it best when we can make good long words, have high scores etc. It doesn't really matter who wins.
Sunday, and we had breakfast outside in the garden, fresh bread from my bread maker and a pot of tea. Lovely!
And then I decided to get rid of as many of those bloody bindi eye weeds as possible - wearing thick leather gardening gloves of course, as the thorns are merciless!
I thought they were just near the back fence, but the closer I looked the more I found, spreading their nasty tentacle like stems across vast swathes of the garden
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| The bindi eye has wattle type leaves and a nasty spreading behaviour |
I took out heaps of them, some green and living, others brown and withered with unfortunately already scattered prickles which I tried to pick up. Gordon's trailer had been empty, but I filled it with quite a few bindi eye plants
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| trailer of bindi eyes |
It was another hot day, and I had to go inside for drinks of water and to cool down. Each time I went I had to de-bindi the soles of my shoes (not thongs this time) Once I hit the tiles under the veranda it was like I was walking with hob nail boots, I could really feel and hear the bindis under foot
I had to de-bindi 3 times - and took out quite a few and put them in a plastic tub
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| quite a few stubborn bindis prised from the soles of my shoes |
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