lacuna sabbath

'sbin a while between posts.

It was lovely to have four days off over Easter, and even better to have a three day week and MOST EXCELLENT to celebrate the lacuna sabbath again today.

s'wats bin 'apning?

Well, I have been TIRED and GRUMPY. But this morning Mr Duck Herder made me get in the car and drive to Black Mountain for a run. Because my beloved is VERY FAST, we usually go our separate ways and meet up at the end for a coffee in the botanic gardens. As we parted, my beloved said "make sure you turn that frown up side down by the time I see you again" which made me laugh at my silliness right away and in no time I was in love with life again.

The marvelous hunt for wild food autumn harvest continues. I have been keeping an eye on some apple trees on the back road between Tarago and Goulburn. Wednesday afternoon in all that crazy wind and dust netted these little beauties.

All perfect. No coddling moths no blemishes no nothin. I love that I get to travel for work. Ten years of working in a 300km radius around ONC has resulted in a mental mud map marking the locations of roadside apple, plum, nectarine and peach trees as well as the best roadside stalls, farms selling local produce and functional coffee machines.

How cool is this. The two apples on the left are from two different roadside trees. The one on the right is from Robin's beautiful ancient old apple tree near Bungendore. This old giant is higher than her house, is a definite biennial fruiter but even this year which should be an off year, there is still about 30kg of fruit. Last year, well, it produced an embarrassment of riches - more than could ever be imagined.

After looking at the Woodbridge website, the one of the left looks a bit like a Pomme de Neige (also known as snow apple, lady in the snow, fameuse or chimney apple). The fruit is very red, flat and smallish. The flavour is lovely. The texture is a bit thick.

The middle one looks a little like a Lord Lambourne or a Blenheim Orange. Of course, they are almost definitely seedlings, so who knows.

I have just bottled what I am calling the "Pookie Hill Apples". I have decided that number 31 vacola jars are the new black. Why did I ever bother with little 3" openings?

And in other news, we have opened our home to two little teenage mothers who were dumped outside the RSPCA with 9 kittens between them. A few months ago we lost our most spoilt beloved little poppet and while I still miss her dreadfully, we also missed having that lovely pussy cat energy in the house. So here we are - Chu-Chu and Ziva. It is hard to get good photos of them - they are still a bit scatty and timid, but very sweet. They are best friends, probably sisters and little Ziva who is the naughtiest is also very very shy and seems to need Chu-Chu for confidence.

Chu-Chu

Ziva