3 weeks at home

I've done it again! I'm so sorry!!! I spent 3 weeks at home and did not write a single post for my blog. Well, that's actually not true. I did start writing several but didn't finish and therefor didn't publish one. My apologies! I have to try and be better. So as a request for forgiveness, let me tell you what I've been up to over the past 3 weeks.

A few days after I came back home (and after cleaning up the chook pen and house), Steve and I decided to go away for a few days. Things have been a bit difficult and tense between us lately as we're at a different stages of our life and wanting different things. We hired a lake view cabin at Lake Maraboon in the Central Queensland Gemfields. It was beautiful! We went for walks, exploring the area and enjoyed this view with a glass of wine from our cabin.

We also had lots of visitors like these Lorikeets who are very cute but very noisy and it was rather difficult to defend our food.

In the end, I just covered it and let me tell you, they weren't happy!

This is Virgin Rock near Springsure where we stopped for coffee and had the last of the best (as it was moist, rich and full of rum) flourless chocolate cake I've ever made. We also explored House of Magnolias which had beautiful homeware.

The trip was good for us. We talked a lot about how we feel, what we want to achieve and how we can go about it. I will tell you about it in the next few months but for now, we feel stronger and more aligned. A good feeling. Steve is still the love of my life!

When we came back home, we had solar panels installed. It was on the list for a while but because we moved a lot, we were never sure which one our forever home would be. Well, looks like we finally decided - this is it. I hope so because I like it very much and I love the area. I'm confident that this is a good areas for jobs as well - despite the fact that I'm currently travelling all the way to WA to go to work. Eventually, I will take on local work again. I'm very happy with the company we've chosen. We have German solar panels and power router. I will monitor the system and do a post about it in a few months time to see how it is going. Our water bill is rather large as we only use tank water and a bore. So every time we turn the tap on, two pumps will start up. Electricity prices are increasing from July again, so it will be a saving for us. We calculated that the pay-off of the system is 4 years.

One morning I was woken by loud noise. We always have a lot of birds around but this time, they obviously had a party - a Pool Party to be precise!

A lot of them flew off when I walked outside but there was still lots of them around the Pool, drinking, cleaning themselves and having fun (= making a lot of noise).

The Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos were also in the Grevillea next to the clothesline having breakfast. Also they're noisy (and messy), I love having them around. Recently we also had a large amount of the red-tailed black Cockatoos but I have not been able to capture them on camera - mainly because I'm full of admiration when I see them - I just stand there and watch them.

A small rainwater tank was installed in this down pipe which carries a lot of dew every day and we now have a good supply to water our indoor plants.

It is winter! I like winter here in Australia, well here in Queensland at least. It's dry and cold and cosy and after a long and very hot summer, it's great to wear long trousers, jumpers and don't break out in a sweat when I walk from the house to the chookpen. It's also the one and only time, it's worth while having fires going. So nearly every afternoon, I started the fire in our beautiful Chimnea and sat next to it with a book or magazine and a glass of wine. So cosy, I already miss this!!!

We even spend time at night (ah well late afternoons, early evenings) outside, having a BBQ with freshly harvested corn and potatoes out of our garden and a nice local steak. We watched the full moon, listened to music and enjoyed cooking our dinner outside. Beautiful!

I even re-arranged the dining table, decorated it in romantic red (Steve reckons I should have served pasta with these colours) and picked some flowers out of the backyard for us. How romantic! We had a lovely evening.

And how does the garden look like in winter time? The Golden Penda has started flowering.

The Grevilleas are also flowering and provide food and shelter to the native birds.

The Tibouchina looks amazing and gives an otherwise boring area some colour.

And the winter veggie garden is monstrous!!! I think I went a bit overboard with the tomatoes...

Here strawberries, beetroot, capsicum, silverbeet and snowpeas are growing. Unfortunately I have a large infestation of caterpillars and they eat all my leaves.

The capsicums look yummy, ...

... so do the peppers.

This is caterpillar poo! I tried to find them all, pick them off and give them to the chooks but I'm still finding more. Not happy! I need to think about how to remidiate this garden bed after the harvest.

The snowpeas are growing nicely and we had a few stir-frys with our own capsicum, onion and snowpeas. I heard snowpeas don't grow here but well, what's this then???

Lots of snowpeas!

My favourite tree - the Bauhinia - is flowering like crazy. It looks so beautiful! No wonder this tree is also called Orchid Tree.

On this side we have corn and onions. This is my first attempt to grow corn and it's easy and tastes magnificent!!! I reckon it looks pretty good as well.

And this is one of our many baskets of harvest. A Pineapple, a large eggplant which I utilised to make Pasta alla Norma and lots of Passionfruit. I know the Passionfruit isn't ripe yet but the Cockatoos started 'harvesting' them, so my only option was to pick them and hope they ripen. Yum!

Hera enjoys this weather as well and watches me gardening. She has celebrated her 15th birthday and I am so grateful she's still with me and still quite fit for her age.

Quentin now has a proper tombstone and his tree is growing nicely. I miss him very much and there only have been very few days where I haven't cried. It's been 3 months now since he was taken.

I moved Hera's kennel into the entertainment area as she likes to sleep there and now she's more protected from the cold winds.

I know our entertainment area is pretty good but something is still missing. Any creative ideas?

We always wanted to make a bit of a Mediterranean area out of this site. We have concrete between the house and the Pool which was required for drainage but due to that, we have a very uninviting hot area there. I'm still not sure what exactly to do with it but we're slowly decorating the wall. We got these window frames from the local market, painted them a nice blue and will put little pots with succulents in between them, so it looks like a proper window.  No idea what we actually could do with the large concrete area as such but if you have any ideas, let me know!

I did enjoy sitting here, looking at the mountains, right next to my Italian window. What do you think?

As you know I'm German, so sometimes (also very rarely) I crave German food. This is called Sauerbraten (it's a sour roast) and I marinated it in a mixture of red wine, vinegar and herbs and spices for 3 weeks, so it turns a dark purple. The purple was much stronger I guess the artificial kitchen light took that away. I then cooked the meat for about 2 hours, so it becomes really soft and tender. As the meat is sour, the sauce needs to compliment it and I put raisins and a German type of biscuit in the sauce as well as some cream to sweeten it.

And this is the end result (minus the gravy): Sauerbraten, Dumplings and red cabbage. It was a beautiful dish and even Steve loved it!

This was a great end to my R'n'R. Now I'm back at work and I will share some of the other things we have been up to during my last break soon.

Have a great Sunday, looking forward to hear from you!