hot hot hot

hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot

wilted duck.

Lacuna Sabbath

WELL that was a bit hopeless. While I did very much enjoy all the attention from you lovely things out there in the internets, and WELCOME all you new folks from Marla's gratuitous vacuous and obvious slow day at the farm gaping hole of content, it's not like you were very helpful in helping a decision to be made. Whoever says internet polling is the rising star of social research has rocks in their head. In the end we had 7 votes for green and 7 votes for pink/deer/zebras/birds and one mutinous vote with the cat for the status quo. (Thats YOU Jonesy)

So we go for PRICE, which then makes the decision very easy, because the Echino fabric is somehow 1/4 of the price of the Surface Art fabric. So I ordered it on Wednesday night and it arrived TODAY and it is more lovely than I could ever imagine and there is enough to make me a skirt or perhaps even a frock or a bag or something lovely because Ms Duck, one only apparently needs 2 1/2 meters to cover a chair, NOT FOUR.

And darling Rhonda, may I ASSURE you the deer and the bird are dear friends, and the bird is either:

a) a wee bit tired while traveling in the same direction as dear deer, so is buming a lift (thats FUNNY, get it?) and dear deer is just saying "of COURSE my dearest friend, hop on board"

or

b) The dear bird is busy eating fleas and lice straight off dear friend deer's derrière, for which he (lets call him Bambi) is truly grateful.

Thats my story and I'm stickin' to it.

In other news, the Wild Plum Melomel is kind out of control at the moment too. I came home from work yesterday a bit hot and frazzled but a buzzy sneaky peaky glass of this stuff soothed my ruffled feathers just nicely.

Its almost time to take the fruit out methinks.

Thank you so much for visiting my silly blog. It is a worry, because I was / am a middle child and well, am / was completely STARVED of attention growing up so ANY attention turns me into a monster and well, I is just tellin' ya.

Duckie xx

help from the internets

Hello my lovelies - I was wondering if I might be able to borrow some style advise..
You know how I am looking for a new office chair, well of course, the beautiful universe provided me with a new old free office READING chair instead. (who am I to question?)

Anyhoo, here is the old chair - just a little moldy but it is super comfy and small and wont take up very much room at all.


But I can't decide which fabric to cover it with.......

This:(I have a skirt in the same fabric, so I could read camouflaged)

or this:
Preferences?

stupid inane cutness

Look who has been dancing on the roof lately.

This is where I live. But I only just fit.

Its not just that this little mama possum is stupid cute, its the fact she lets us pat her. And she has the sweetest little paws. And her baby is very cute.

Thoughts on peace and the (r)evoluton

Last night we had walnut loaf for dinner. Everyone loves this recipe. You don't even need to be a big fat smelly hippy. I discovered this recipe after my dear friend Pickle North made it for us one time. Even Mr Duck the meat eater likes it and asks me to make it again often.

It is simple and cheap and apparently planet friendly and also delicious hot or cold but especially with home made relish.

The original recipe is from "Diet for a Small Planet" but Frances Moore Lappe. I haven't read the original book, though I am very familiar with its concepts. I like the general premise that it isnt a lack of food that causes hunger, its a lack of democracy.

The recipe is here, although I don't add the caraway seeds, and I don't use so much cheese, I just use 2 onions etc etc etc.

Anyhoo, cruising the internets for recipes of a similar ilk, I came across this:

7 principles for a climate friendly diet which kinda sums up how I like to eat in a neat little small blue green planet loving package. Here are the principles here - only slightly reconstituted by the duck.

1: EAT REAL FOOD (processed, packaged, GM foods are from the devil)

2: EAT PLANTS

3: FAVOUR ORGANIC FOODS (certified or otherwise)

4: FAVOUR LOCALLY GROWN FOODS (support local food production and local farmers)

5: GROW WHAT YOU CAN, BUY WHAT YOU NEED, COMPOST AND RETURN TO SOIL WHAT YOU DON"T USE. (Sending organic waste to landfill is the path of the devil)

6: REFUSE OVER PACKAGED FOODS OR PACKAGING THAT CAN"T BE COMPOSTED OR REUSED

7: GET YA ARSE BACK INTO THE KITCHEN (and the garden - learn to grow, cook and preserve food)

Anyway, I thought this was nice.

I also especially liked this little quote from the same author:

Hope is not what we find in evidence. Hope is what we become in action

. Frances Moore Lappé

In other delicious lovely news Queenie and I set off at dusk last night to travel up river to pick wild plums. I have had my eye on this little copse of trees for some time, and they are just about perfect. I picked and picked and picked and then loaded up Queenie with about 20kg of plums. Really, I just had to stop because it was dark. The trees are laden and I suspect I may be the only urban hunter gatherer to know and love these particular trees. You do have to be a bike rider or avid runner, because bike path along the Molonglo River Corridor is the only way to get there. There, now you all know.

I gave special thanks to Queenie's ultra stable front rack, kickstand and steering stabilization spring as I set off by moonlight on the long dawdle home.

There are really only two things to do with such a wonderful harvest. Split the load in two. Put half into some melomel, and deliver the other half to the girls next door for value adding. I have no doubt I will be presented with an array of delicious and interesting concoctions in the coming days.

Thats about it.

Oh, I also found this little gem out there in the internets as well.

We must not believe in hope we must become hope, we must not believe in love we must become love, we must not believe in forgiveness we must become forgiveness, we must not believe in peace we must become peace...

Tony Angastiniotis Night Eagle

May there be peace on earth and may it begin with us. Amen.

A beastly experience

Mr Duck and I met some friends down at the yacht club for lunch today. It sounds posh, but there is a hole in the wall fish and chip place. We traveled by Beast, of course. (because we can, and because I can't keep up with that long legged drake.)

Vicki and Rob rode there too, but from the opposite side of town. Here we are splattered about on the grass, bikes in the back ground.

A jolly good time was had by all. And then we rode home.

Amen.

Precious Cargo

My what a big basket you have Queenie.

The truth is, I only really use the basket when I am going down to the community garden, or shopping, or to the farmer's market. It is attached to the nifty signature workcycles front carrier which is easily removable - it all just slides up and out. Less than a second.

The REALLY cool thing is that unlike every other front rack or basket I have ever seen, this one is mounted onto the down tube of the FRAME which means there is no connection between what ever ungainly weight might be in the basket, and the front wheel, the steering or the general stability of the bike. It is amazing. And, it is one of the MANY reasons I chose to IMPORT my beautiful, beloved, super useful, supremely ridable, ultra practical, joy inducing workcycles secret service bike, rather than some of the other almost as good but not quite as amazing city style bikes available in Australia.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my bike?

So what is in the basket?

The first ever Vista Bella apples.

Precious cargo indeed.

So I et one.

Inane Cute Stuff

Well, after that last ranty post I did promise some inane cute stuff and well lookie here. Julia emerged from her secret nest today with four widdle babies.

now this is seriously cute.

Wouldn't you agree?
told you.

Big Fat Whinge (rant warning)

So, like, I am getting organised and finally putting a floor in what was the bike / cat room and is now my office / special projects (wine, melomel, seed raising)/ cat room. We are even filling in the hole in the floor that the cats have been using to access the house for the past 7 years. (have we really had a hole in the floor for 7 years......)

Anyhoo, I need a better chair. Currently I just use a dining chair, but it really isn't the best for long hours at the 'puter......

I have no need for NEW office furniture - so far everything else is second hand, so it REALLY SHAT ME that second hand office chairs from the Ex Government Furniture place are AT LEAST $20 MORE THAN BRAND NEW BETTER QUALITY OFFICE CHAIRS FROM OFFICE WORKS.

I kid you not. The very bold young fellow at the counter said that if I paid him cash, he would only charge me $100 instead of $120.

HOW THE $%#@ DOES THAT WORK?

Is it any wonder the planet is FULL OF CRAP?

I am fully taking the Office Works brochure into the Ex Govvie place tomorrow. %&#^ers.

there, rant over.

I do apologise.

Normal broadcasting about inane cute stuff will resume shortly.

big love

It might be the last bottle of peach melomel from last year thats doing it, but no, really, its just life. I am just in love with life. (stupid hippy)

This afternoon my dear friend Rosemary and I rode through the windless misty rain to the lake and then around to the Oak Brasserie for lunch. Do you know it is bike path ALL THE WAY. We were soaking wet, but it was warm and beautiful and lovely. Me on Queenie of course, and Rose on her cute as a button stylish single speed. The Oak Brasserie is located near the lake, among heaps of huge trees. In summer it is green and lush and overhung with big shady trees and all that stuff. They have huge brollies, which was good because it helped keep the rain off us.

This was our first business meeting. We did some visioning (we both want to have an early well funded retirement), some goal setting (lets score a coupla awesome overpaid projects in a very meaningful area and each make $120,000 this year without working too hard), and organised an incentives scheme (see that gorgeous, amazing, red, incredible, huge urny water feature thingy at the Yarrolumla Nursery discounted from $1450 to $1250, well, if we make $100,000 then as a reward, we can each have one of those in our garden).

Business development has never been so much fun.

But seriously folks, the duck is in the last 10 weeks of her big project and underemployment is looming post March and I couldn't be happier. Rose and I are keen to pool resources and work together if any biggish projects come up but we are both free to keep working on our own or with our own contacts.

There have been some tentative offers of work, a few people sniffing around, but I have total faith that Bruce, the universe, the big kahuna will look after me just fine. Its taken over 12 years of project work but finally I trust completely that I kinda just need to breath and be present and still and that Bruce will sort everything out and bring me in contact with the people I need to know to do the work I need to do.

And thats why I love being alive so much.

But what about the frog? Well, here in the ONC, it definitely ISNT tree frog land, but here he is, hanging on the water tanks. I saw this big dark blob coming back from moving Queen Aprillia exactly 1 meter to the south and on closer inspection, it was this big fat cutie pie.

My heart goes out to everyone and everything who is suffering in Queensland in the floods, but it is so strange, La Nina is always so damply kind to us down here, where normally we would be parched. Welcome brother frog!

Hooch Report

Things were getting a little crazy on the Cherry Melomel front.

It looked like it was getting on time to get all those cherries out. But first, I squished and crushed them so that all the juice and color could go into the melomel. After another day, I removed the cherries and drained everything into a new carboy, and closed it up and popped in an airlock. In total, the cherries were in the honey water for only 5 days.

There was still a lot of juiciness left in the cherries, so I squished them up some more in some fresh honey water, and got another 5 liters out. This didn't happen before they had sat around for another couple of days, so I have kept this lot separate in a 5 liter hooch bottle just in case it turns to cherry vinegar before we have had time to drink it. This lot we will drink first.

Both containers are bubbling away nicely, and noisily. Thats 30 liters of Cherry Melomel on its way.

Crochet Bag

Instead of going back to work I have been mooching and getting funky with the hook. No matter how frugal one might be, one can never really have too many handbags yes? Behold the newest edition to the crochet stable - a big fat purple bag loosely based on this pattern here.

Basically I used three strands of different yarns, crocheting in the ends after each color change as I went along. I used up lots of balls in the wool box mixing up sock yarn, alpaca wool and various tea cosy colours.

Instead of separate straps, I marked the center front and back, and then continued in two sections, decreasing two stitches each row until I got to 10 stitches where I just continued on until the handle got to a comfortable length, and then stitched the two sections together. It is roomy and strong and thick and sits nicely over my hip. I guess mostly one might see this sort of handle style on a dilly bag with a circle base, but I wanted the option of carrying an A4 workbook if necessary. (Or the paper!) I am most pleased.

purdy colors.

Hot Nights, Wild Yeasts, Tame New Year & Yummy Peachcots

What a stinker it was today! There has been lots of microbial activity happening in the special projects room. Behold the bubbly wild yeast status of the cherry melomel this morning:

And this evening:

Go you little good things.

And here are the first and last peachcots of the season from our young tree. Yep, thats the entire crop. Lucky there were two - no fighting. They sort of tasted more apricotty than peachy.....and they look pretty apricotty too...except for the give away peach fuzz. Anyhoo, whatever they were /are - they were delicious.

Oh yeah, happy new year to y'all. Mr Duck and I rode the tandem up to the top of Duffy to watch the 9:00pm fireworks. My friend Eileen from the garden came too (not on the tandem) - we shared a bottle of my cyser from last year and munched on her homegrown silvan berries. Then it was down hill all the way home which was the really fun bit. Amen.