Kingower Christmas party and fireplace mantle completion

 Well, what a busy Friday....first a Melbourne neighbour's Christmas at Greg's from 7 - 9am, very nice, coffee van and sausages.  Then back home to make the olive tart, then lunch with Lana in Camberwell, then back home to load the stone table onto the ute, and off to Inglewood around 3.30pm - whew!

And yes, more traffic again....  took nearly 3 hours - very frustrating

Chris and Lesley were already there when I arrived - sitting in the rotunda

Given that it was nearly Lesley's birthday, we opened a bottle of bubbles.  I asked where they wanted to sit, and Chris said the veranda, I did warn that it could be hot - and it was.  Lesley and I were fine with hats, but Chris was squinting into the sun.  I did tell him....- oh well

Made a start on dinner after this - made a potato salad, and bought some green salad, and Chris cooked up 3 x lamb racks.  Dessert was a New York style cheese cake which I made in the thermomix in Melbourne  - was delicious. Ate in the dining room - very nice social evening 

Saturday, and a slow start. They had brought almond croissants for breakfast - so we had these on the back veranda.

Their friend Darren dropped in to give something to Chris, and also helped out carrying the mantlepiece shelf out of the shed and reinstating it on the fireplace surround - hoorah, that means that Chris could take back his saw horses, and we could navigate the shed properly again

Darren also helped move the table top and base from the ute. (but I didn't have my phone with me - when they did this, so didn't get a photo.  Also forgot to take a photo of the table.  Chris wasn't very impressed, thought we should replace the top with a stone slab, given that the edges were deteriorating (had been pressure washed - and this had caused the damage).  Justin plans to fix it with a render solution - hopefully this should work

Anyway, after this - we had a wander up to the shops, and then went to Blanche Barkly to get some wine for Chris, (but they were out of what he wanted), and then visited Anne - to check out her hip camp. Was great - particularly with the Tasting room set up as an additional space.

 

I also liked the look of the portable spa (from Bunnings) - maybe one of these rather than my bath house....

 Anyway, it was now time for lunch - so back to Inglewood and the Bakery for a pie, except the Bakery had just closed. Pity, then onto the takeaway where we bought a burger each.  Ate in the rotunda again - very nice.

They left after lunch, and I just pottered around a bit - went to the IGA for some soda water, and saw these new pictures along the IGA outer wall.  I assume a school project

Off to Kingower for the Christmas Party for 7.30 pm.  Usual suspects there apart from Arleen and David as they were in America.  I brought my olive tart, and we had that with cold chicken and ham and salads etc.  Followed by desserts - trifle, cake, and Maile's fab egg nog

After the dinner there was a bit of Christmas carolling 

I took this photo - because there was a spider web across the entrance - you can see the spider as a white sort of shadow on the bottom left

Sunday, and did some more gardening/trimming etc - and Shane the gardener came back to see me - he's available to do the paths etc again - so hopefully it will be done

The bird of paradise was out

And I found a number of dead birds around the garden - plus one on the top veranda that I didn't take a photo of 

Was pulling some weeds around the side of the house - and realised that one was actually a rocket plant that I re-planted in the vegie garden.  Hope it survives

Left for Melbourne around lunchtime, and was surprised to see a large kangaroo, followed by a joey bound across the Calder prior to Marong.  Gave the car in from of me a bit of a fright (I think)

Dropped in at the Mill in Castlemaine - and bought some more large curtain rings (Chris and Lesley had told me that they were there, (they had given me some as a present also)

With a bit of luck we'll now have enough to use the nice wooden curtain rail that Alex had purchased on our behalf over a year ago 

Wineries and group gardening Thursday 8- Sunday 11 Dec 2022

Despite it not being a long weekend, it still took us about 3 hours to get to Inglewood on Thursday night.  

Justin thought that he would work from "home" on the Friday - which he did

I did a few loads of washing - sunny and windy, good drying day.  Was tricky stringing up the washing line - as the almond trees had lots of new sucker growth - so I couldn't easily get to the stronger bigger branches to tie the line to.  Ended up using the ladder to prop it up, so that the sheets wouldn't touch the ground.

And then I went and had a morning coffee and chat with Terry

Dropped in on Pauline afterwards and gave her back the last Inglewood Town Hall folder, and she gave me back my notebooks which had got mixed up in a box that I'd given her previously.

By this stage it was well after 12,- so back to the house to have lunch with Justin

After this, I emptied out another few litres of water from the cellar (from the low point in the corner)

And then we packed up the plastic tubing from the pump, as it was still there in the scullery.  It was so long and unwieldy, that it took 2 of us to do it (still had water in it )

 Pauline dropped over later - and she showed us around the 3 shops on the corner - they all need a lot of work.  Was very interesting seeing them inside though.

Then back to the garden....

Val and George were coming later, and we booked the pub for dinner

However, Val had a challenging day at work, and wasn't able to leave early, so we ended up cancelling the pub, as we thought they might not make it before the kitchen closed.

Therefore, Justin and I went to the IGA for supplies - hot roast chicken, and some salads - easy

Saw Bernie and Marcus on the walk there, and then kept bumping into them in the supermarket aisles.  

Given that it was a lovely evening, and Val and George weren't arriving til after 8 - we invited them back for a quick drink 

Went up on the veranda and had a nice time 

And we put the hot chicken in the oven on a very low heat.

They stayed about 1/2 hour, Justin and I pottered around after this, set the table etc 

Val and George  arrived just after 8, got them sorted, and then had dinner in the dining room - with guitars out afterwards

 

Saturday, and I donned my overalls and started weeding - first outside the orchard.  I'd unfortunately missed my window of opportunity with easily pulling out the weeds.  The ground had dried/hardened over the last week or so, making weed extraction much more time consuming and difficult.

Before

After

Before

After

While working around here, I also noticed a cut off star picket slightly poking out of the ground - will be very difficult to remove.  I'm surprised that we haven't noticed it before

Next stop was the orchard - I'd neglected here, as I'd wanted to get the front /more public areas done first 

Before

After

Given the very drastic trimming of the fig, I ended up with lots of chopped off green figs - looked up a recipe for using them. And decided on preserved green figs in sugar syrup.

And then the berry corner

Once all trimmed back and weeded, I found an almost ripe berry and ate it - better me than the birds

 Meanwhile, Val went and bought supplies for lunch - cheeses, smallgoods etc - so we had a lovely deli lunch in the rotunda.

After lunch - Val, George and I (Justin stayed behind to do some work) went to WaterWheel  in Bridgewater -and supported the local economy (bought wine), and then to Kingower - Blanche Barkly - where we bought some more....

Given that we didn't go to the Pub on Friday, we went tonight - was surprisingly not very busy, and we got our meals nice and quickly. Justin had ordered a pizza, but Steve came and told him it would be much later than our dinners (backlog on pizza orders), so he swapped his order to prawns and calamari like Val and me (George had a parma)

Then back to ours - and upstairs to the bee room.  I had wanted to have an outdoor movie event - but the mosquitoes are just too ferocious, so we stayed inside.

Played a bit of music, and then watched Kinky Boots - which was a bit predictable, but still a lot of fun 

 

Sunday, and a bacon, egg and prosecco (to cut through the fat) brunch in the rotunda

And then more weeding/gardening - with everyone helping

Before

Close up - before

After

So, it's no surprise that we filled up Gordon's trailer again...

Meanwhile, the others were out the front - George with a spade and broom - tidying up the edges, Justin trimming, and Val picking up

A lot of lavender was trimmed - so I cut off and kept the flowers - plan to make lavender and lemon cordial

By this stage it was spitting a bit, and then started raining more - so that was it for the gardening 

The rain brought out  an extraordinary amount of snails - pity they're not edible!

I should also add that Justin took some "mood" photos - which were quite atmospheric