Part one ....the old stuff

Part one.....the old stuff

Last Sunday afternoon I was perusing trailers for sale online and came across these two old farm trailers advertised on Gumtree.

They were very old, handmade, weatherbeaten, rusty and paint flakingly perfect for my project.

Sadly there was no provenance on either of them ( love that word ) apart from the seller telling us that he had obtained them from a farm at Goorambat near Benalla.

We picked them up on Monday morning. The man kindly loaded them on to our trailer for us with his hay bale lifter. We held our breaths expecting  them to disintegrate before our eyes but they remained intact. Good start!

Not so easy getting them off the trailer, especially with one wheel looking like this......

So that's the old bit organised.

Now I need to work out the pretty stuff and paint some bits and pieces and collect some glass jars and make some wooden boxes and.........mmm, still lots to do now I come to think of it.

Oh, and Farmer Bill needs to do some adjustments and building works on the trailers for me in his spare time. He has already tried to get this wheel off.....but it wouldn't budge....at all.

Around the garden path ....Fibonacci style

Amy has been studying how the Fibonacci numbers  can be found everywhere in nature. It's true. 

The sequence of numbers is 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 and so on.

Here are a couple of perfect examples we found using the number three.

And while we were out there, I got her to hold the erlicheer for me to photograph. They have been in bloom for a while now.

I adore the freshness of white and green and these primulas ooze freshness with their clear white flowers and tiny buttery yellow centres.

And the almond tree has started to blossom. It's always first here at Frog Pond Farm.

Amy

Amy has started a Bachelor of Education course since arriving back from Cambodia. However, on one day each week she works at an organic company preparing cosmetics and household products for sale. This was Day One!

She enjoys the break from studying, earns some money and gets to talk to people .....in real life!

Farmer Bill

 Bill has become a great farmer and is getting into a routine with the horse feeding twice a day. He has a list of who gets what. We have five rescue horses here at the moment.

He found some tyres beside the road today and brought them home to put the feed buckets in, to stop them being knocked over. ( horse person tip! )

This is Designer Doll. She is a lovely horse.

We hope someone is able to give these lovely creatures a good home.

Opal has a new home and will leave us at the weekend.

Flynn

We will finally get to see this little rascal next week. 

He doesn't know we are coming. 

We want to surprise him.

Can't wait to see you little man.

Beautiful birthday boy

Flynn turned three today.

Apparently it's been his best birthday ever! ( oh, darling boy )

He had his hair cut for the occasion.

We adore him.

A day in the country

We all travelled to Stawell yesterday to discuss and plan Dad's memorial.

After lunch together in town, we decided to return home a different way.

The countryside looked beautiful in spite of the dreary weather.

And was dotted with these.

I was only allowed to choose one "turn around and go back".

This was in an area called the Pyrenees Range. Gorgeous countryside.

Bill found these shelves at a garage sale for $10 the lot!

Happy days!

Can't have too much shelving in your shed.

The black plastic one has gone in the potting shed.

Down the garden path today

White daphne looks so pure and elegant and smells divine.

White jonquils.....always the first to flower here.

Pretty pink primulas flowering in Dad's seedling tray. Love them.

Heavenly hellebores still looking a picture of health.

And the alyssum hasn't stopped flowering for months.

I have a new project in mind, but I need to ponder it a bit longer.

It involves pretty things and old stuff !

Stay warm everyone. It's still bone chillingly cold here.

New friends

Opal

Nareeda, Kelly Gal, Missy and Opal have taken up residence here at Frog Pond Farm.

They are the gentlest of souls.

They are part of a horse rescue/foster group.

We are providing a temporary home for them.

The group of amazing people who care for these animals are all volunteers and are committed to helping recondition them and finding permanent homes.

Farmer Bill has started giving them breakfast each morning......

........and Kathy was here today to clean the paddocks.

She is returning tomorrow to give the horses a much needed brush.

They seem very content out there. 

They have food, water, rugs and company. 

Around the garden path.....

It was time to check my lilium propagations.

These are the scales that were peeled away from the bulbs, placed in a plastic bag with damp vermiculite and shoved in a cardboard box in the potting shed weeks ago.

Little white bulblets have formed on the edges and now there are long roots growing from these.

I still can't believe that it could be this easy to grow more of these glorious blooms.

( photo from Lambley Nursery catalogue where my original 3 bulbs came from)

Today I potted up  61  supposedly new liliums from the scales method and another 35 from the seeds that had shot in a plastic bag also just hung from a nail in the potting shed.

Oh me oh my....that's nearly 100!

Hope it's not too early.....

Hope it's not too cold.....

Hope I haven't poked them in too deeply.....

Won't it be amazing if I can keep them growing until flowering time. 

Can't wait.

Sweet smelling daphne picked today to bring inside.

I adore the perfume of daphne in Winter.

A bit funny and a bit not....

Yesterday Amy had a parcel delivered.

It was the smallest parcel ever, delivered by the biggest delivery truck ever and this was the result......

Amy and I thought it was hilarious!

Poor tree looked like it was going to fall at some stage anyway with that big  decayed hole in the middle of it. 

Poor delivery man was beside himself!

Special guests and dry stone walls

The long expanses of dry stone walls near Derrinallum, have always intrigued me. 

They are thought to have been built in the late nineteenth century.

This particular one is called the Hamilton Highway Wall and is part of a dry stone wall heritage trail.

They are remarkable. 

They are actually two walls that start at about 900mm wide and come together  at about 400mm apart with a through stone to hold them together. The centre is filled with small stones and rubble.

I cannot begin to imagine the laborious effort that has gone into their construction.

They are such a compelling part of the landscape there and I love them.

We always pass them on our trip to Warrnambool in the Western District.

We were special guests at Ned and Jake's school on Friday.

We created...

We read....

We visited the classrooms....

We sang.....

We went out for dinner.....

We talked about where we'd been and what we'd been up to.

The boys had been to the Bulldogs vs Cats game.

Jake took his own flag.

Thank you for inviting us boys. We loved it all.

The trip home was spent oohing and ahhing at the amazing cloud formations ( well, I was anyway).

These are whooshing past photos again!

Dad's broad bean seeds were planted a few days ago ( hope I did it correctly!)

This was the woodiest bit of woodland I could find to plant my precious hellebores.

Under the deciduous trees would have been perfect but each hole I tried to dig there, was filled with roots.

So I settled on this little patch under the old apple tree.

There are ten of them but they won't flower now until next Winter.

The jonquils have been growing there for a while and make it even more woodland- ish.

These leucadendrons look so pretty at the moment.

Beautiful little daisies ready to burst into flower.

This was different......the ducks decided to have their meeting on the Taj Mahal...!!

Kiann is looking gorgeous.