A Beautiful Afternoon.

The weather has been so kind to us of late. A very delightful 20-25 degrees and rain every week. The garden is growing like mad and if I'm not careful to keep up with maintenance, it might just engulf everything in its path! Oh what a joy to be gardening in a garden that is growing and thriving for once after such terrible drought conditions.

There is so much beauty in the late hours of the afternoon that I can't stop taking photos. There is not a day that goes by that I am not grateful for this beautiful place that we call home. Of course, it's much easier to feel like this when everything is green and the temperature is near to perfect. Having said that, even when the climate is being a little cruel, it's still a nice place to be. My cute little shetland, Timmy, is always very curious when I'm getting around with my camera. I think this time though, given the time of day, he was hoping for a carrot. He's quite a spoilt boy! I'm often undecided whether I'm being kind to feed him his daily carrot or whether I'm killing him with kindness.....given his rather large stomach! Late Sunday afternoon with chainsaw in hand, John chopped down four of the five scrabbly old wattles that we had left there for shade until some of the more desirable trees we had planted had grown. It felt like some sort of cleansing. SO good to be rid of their very ugly appearance. The whole area looks so much better.

This is some of the pile of branches we cut. We are slowly working through the pile with secateurs and saws making smaller piles of usable fire wood, mulch and a mass of medium sized sticks to help with water control near the dam (which is usually empty and leaks badly). It feels like our little quest for the environment to be using this very valuable biomass and not just adding to the greenhouse gases by burning it all.

An enjoyable week's end to everyone......Angela.

Busy Days

Yes, once again I have been neglecting my blog and playing far too long in the garden. We have had the most rain we've had in years and so everything is growing so well it is just too hard to resist spending time there.

What a busy couple of weeks I have had. Sunday before last (while we had three other boys staying over) my son had to have emergency surgery for something that came totally out of the blue but all is well with him now. He didn't mind having the week off school despite the fact that exams are just around the corner- that boy is way too laid back if you ask me! It never seems to do him any harm though.

I had a busy week mostly gardening and I managed to make this charm for my cousin's daughter for her birthday. I have decided to put vintage paper on the backs of some of my charms as the paintings although small, are quite time consuming to do.

One of the things I love about making charms is making the little box to package them in.

I start with a paper mache box, collage it with papers new and old and then bees wax it. Sometimes I scan the original painting that is on the charm and print that off to use, that way I know the box will match the charm.

This past Sunday I think we had 17 visitors over the course of the day. It was wonderful to catch up with some of my many cousins and family. For this week I plan on getting some more charms done and I will hopefully have some to show everyone soon.