08 September 2007

The garden club

Recently I have been encouraged to enter parts of the garden in the local garden club competition, and I finally succumbed and entered in two categories, Australian native flowering shrub, and a flowering vine.
Because the weather has been so cold and dry this winter the flowers were all a bit slow appearing but there were enough there to see.
The powder puff lilly pilly looked pretty good really, in fact good enough for me to win second prize! The flower heads are about the size of a grapefruit. I was stunned and really quite pleased.



The wisteria which looks great now didn't have enough flowers on it to be prize worthy.


I mustn't get too carried away though as both Margaret and Wendy also received prizes for areas of their gardens which are far more impressive than ours.
So now I have to think about what I can enter next year, maybe the vegie garden?

02 September 2007

Chocolate Pudding

Do you remember this?
David and I have just been making a chocolate self saucing pudding to have with our Sunday lunch. With all the wonderful chocolate that you can buy I'm sure you could make the most delicious pudding. I wonder if you have this old recipe - in case not - here it is.

60 gms soft butter
1/2 caster cup sugar
1 large or 2 small eggs
1 cup SR flour and 1 tablespoon cocoa sifted together
1/2 to 3/4 cup milk
dash of vanilla
Plus another 1/2 cup sugar and 2 desertspoons of cocoa mixed together for topping

Cream butter and sugar, (do this with a wooden spoon, you won't need a beater), whisk in unbeaten egg and vanilla (optional) until creamy. Fold in flour and cocoa alternately with milk.
Pour into a greased ovenproof dish and sprinkle with sugar and cocoa topping. Finally pour over 1 &1/4 cups of hot water and bake in a moderate oven for 30 - 40 minutes.

Make sure you cook in it a dish that is big enough!!



Serve with lashings of whipped cream and/or ice cream. Guess who didn't want his photo taken?


For Lily - the wallaby family having breakfast under the trees this morning.



Grandad on the tractor for Jasper

01 September 2007

Things Australian

I didn't expect the Vegemite to be such a hit - but I'm sure you don't have any thick soft white plastic bread to put it onto. I'm looking forward to when we can visit so that I can try some of the yummy goodies that you have been having for breakfast.

Yesterday morning I spied a Koala making his way across from the mangoes to the old growth grove in the cow paddock and managed to take a rather distant photo of him for Lily and Jasper.
If you look closely you can just see him going under the fence. Just for comparison I have included another we took a couple of years ago. And - how about all the water in the dam? and it's so much greener than it was two weeks ago.




Before the rain the wallabies were very active around the garden and I managed to take one of the alpha male just before he raised the alarm and dashed off.

Lily's next jumper is coming on really well and looks great. I am much happier with it than I am with the blue one. I have put Jasper's aside until I finish this one.

We have really been coasting along for the last six weeks or so but the time has come for us to start to get all the after harvest work done, so today we start on the mulching, then the pruning and more fertilizing. I'll have to see if I can get a photo of Grandad on the tractor.