A Return to Simplicity.

  I love repurposing..........furniture, clothing, and any brick-a-brat stuff  really, and this shirt has seen better days. Picked it up from the cheap rack and turned it into an apron for use in the garden.   Of course you can't see the collar but the embroidered band on the top of the apron came from the collar of the shirt. Not a very big pocket but that will have to do! Another repurposed project was to make the insert for my new cushion and for this I used old pillow stuffing. As I'm a bit of a hoarder I strip out the stuffing from pillows, wash and dry in the sun and put in those vacuum bags to store for later on.     I thought it would be a good idea to make my own inserts. They will last much longer than a brought one and can be taken out and washed repeatedly without falling apart. I think I'm going to do this for all the cushions I make now. I used calico for the outside. Cheap and tough!   In the garden the Furcraea has now produced abundan...

While Autumn brings to mind the changing colour of leaves and cooler weather for the Northern Hemisphere,  here in North Queensland and the Southern Hemisphere, summer lives on! The landscape is lush, the creeks and rivers are full and waterfall chasing is spectacular.      Of course this means it's time for garden preparation and is the perfect time to get into some long weekend gardening projects to make your space the best place to be. Hubby and I are getting older and with that comes the creaky knees and backs. So we have decided to change our garden beds around this year. There are still herbs, capsicum, eggplant and tomatoes growing but these may not survive a transplant when we move the beds.     Instead of one long bed with limited access we have moved the chook pen back about 4 feet and are going to turn the space into smaller beds. This will also be beneficial for crop rotation as well. Both of us work together in the garden helping each other ...

 A near miss with Tropical Cyclone Niran, who by the way is still intensifying off the coast but way out to sea, means we have wonderful sunshine, to dry the washing, air out the house and dry out the ground after sooo much rain. With the rain comes lots of toads, and native frogs, some whom live deep underground waiting for the wet and the chance to sing and breed and with all that activity there are plenty of babies hopping about! Which leads me to the tale of a snake slithering across my foot! Still get the shivers thinking about it. I didn't look where I was walking and we intersected on our respective paths! Once I got a good look at it I could see that it was a Keelback or freshwater snake and we have at least 3 resident ones at the moment. They are all busy keeping the frog/toad population down to respectable numbers at our place.    This species is one of the few Australian vertebrates to prey successfully on the introduced Cane Toad. Cleaver creatures!  Nee...