The famous potty mouthed English chef has an amusing saying in relation to food preparation: If it’s brown, it’s cooked, if it’s black, it’s fooked! I’d have to suggest that a mild Scottish accent would improve the delivery of the pithy observation. It’s true too, burnt food is not the gourmet ideal, and yet in the world of dog, the canines prefer a stronger taste to their home made breakfast mix, so mildly charcoaled is how things roll.
We’ve tested home made dog feed over many years. Drier (technically known in the trade as: Reduced) and over cooked is how they prefer their brekkie mix. Achieving such canine gourmet creations unfortunately makes a lot of stink in the house. The smell of burned dog food, sticks to the very floors and walls. Earlier in the week, Sandra had diligently kept the home fires burning, and made up a batch of dog feed. It looked like good stuff.
I was out of the house working that day, and came home to a wall of stench. Facing reality, what could possibly be said about the situation? Manfully my first reaction, was acceptance. During the evening, and despite it being only early spring, the window was cracked slightly ajar letting in the chilly fresh near to zero degree Celsius breezes. Alas the Stoics would have been disappointed, because by bedtime I’d developed this pathetic little cough. It wasn’t your full sized lung rattler, but more of someone who’s airways had been assaulted for several hours and might not go the distance.
The proverbial elephant in the room was politely raised. Cue my response which was accompanied with a very decent rendition of ‘Sad Face Number Four’: “We need to do something different!” Meaning of course that cooking the dog brekkie feed mix inside the house is not an ideal circumstance.
There the matter rested. As happens, the sun rose again on a new day. Coffees were had. The morning finally came into focus. Nice looking batch of dog food. The trio of canines rejoiced at their quality feed. Fun side story: The local birds follow the dogs around waiting for them to do their business. Avians are enjoying the brekkie mix too, although in a somewhat more processed and soiled form.
The morning was getting on when Sandra said the famous line nobody in a long term relationship ever wants to hear: “Can we sit at the table and have a discussion?” I was hoping for another coffee, but nobody fully gets what they want in life, do they? And candidly speaking, I’ve also used that ‘we need to talk’ line. I have no idea why the old timers used to quip that: All’s fair in love and war. What does that even mean? Far out!
These moments are never improved by delay, so with reluctant feet, and a heart which was secretly yearning for another coffee, I shuffled over to the dining room table and sat. There we looked at each other across the table. The dogs sensing the heavy emotions, decamped to elsewhere. Sandra made the suggestion that to avoid the dog food stink situation in future, we move the summer kitchen into the dog outdoor area. Now why didn’t I think of that? Pah! The best ideas are always other people’s.
We do have an existing outdoor kitchen with an electric oven and stainless steel prep bench which is plenty large enough to support an induction cooker. The only issue is that it is up and down a small set of stairs. The access path also runs through my office which has become narrower recently due to Ollie’s extra step – the big old Bull Arab now finds it easier to climb up and off the dog’s couch. Sooner or later though, navigating all that stuff and hazards will result in a meal being dropped onto the floor.
However, the dog’s outside area is adjacent to the kitchen, and on the same level. There are no stairs, and definitely no trip hazards. My reply to Sandra’s idea was a relieved: “Hell yeah. Let’s do this mother!”
That day, we burned off the two plywood dog kennels. The canines sleep inside the house and hadn’t used them for years. I’d suspected that during really wet weather, some of the forest critters were sheltering in them. But whatever, they were old and far from fresh, and it was no hardship to chuck them on the corten steel brazier in the courtyard. The ash was used to feed some of the fruit trees in the orchards.
The entire area then received a massive clean up using the pressure washer. Even the security screens were removed for the first time in sixteen years and hosed down. A lot of cobwebs and spiders were given the boot that day I can tell you! The stainless steel bench was brought around and levelled. The oven and induction cooker plugged in, and we were off and racing!
Ideas and systems aren’t rigidly fixed in stone here. The other day we’d planned to have a day off work, but after a brief local trip the day before, the car tyre was flat. Living out in the bush means being a long way from anywhere, the local tyre dealer being no exception to that rule. It’s an hours drive to get there and back again, so with fuel costs being what they are, why not do all of other necessary trips in one journey? Whilst discussing this unexpected turn of events, Sandra and I sat with the dogs on the front veranda in the warm spring sunshine, and just accepted that the day had slipped out of our hands. Sandra stayed home and did paid work, whilst I prepped for lunch leaving a fresh loaf of bread to rise, before then heading off. The tyre had to be left at the dealer, other places visited, then it was picked up again later in the day.
Events can be kind of like that. You plan, hope for the best, and then there is what actually happens and how you respond to that. It’s worthwhile noting what a bit of time and effort can achieve. The garden which the outdoor kitchen now looks upon has grown a lot in fourteen years. Here it is in 2012:
And here it is today in early spring when the leaves haven’t yet grown out:
It’s amazing what people can achieve when they put their minds and bodies into action. By the way, the word of this year was meant to be: “Better”, but I reckon we can also add another to the list: “Less”. The other day when everything just went off the rails, we could have done all of those activities, then tried to squeeze in some enjoyable stuff. But would it have been fun? Turns out the serenity prayer got it right: “Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.
It’s been a mostly dry and sunny week. A few hours were spent here and there breaking apart boulders into large and very usefully sized rocks. I won’t bore regular readers with how we go about doing that task, except to say that some boulders are easier to split than others. And we hit the jackpot with a chunk of granite which provided nice square edged and flat faced rocks.
About thirty large rocks were driven back up the hill. With a two person lift, they’re mostly easy enough to get into the bucket of the big yellow power wheelbarrow. The machine can only drive six large rocks uphill at a time, the combined weight of them all being remarkably heavy.
Being able to tip the bucket means that the rocks get dumped where they are needed. This time we continued work on the path just below the house. That project was started late last year, but had been sidelined due to other more pressing activities.
By mid afternoon, thirty rocks had been hauled back up hill where they were placed carefully on the path rock wall. The downhill side had been completed.
The rock wall has a nice gentle curve to it. The next rock wall to work on will be on the uphill side of that path and will have a consistent width. You can see how the path fits into the larger context from a more elevated position adjacent to the house.
About eight of the rocks brought back uphill were used on the crazy paving project which sits up above the long line of gabion cages.
Earlier in the year we constructed a new firewood shed. The year has been so wet, that if we hadn’t built the shed and partially filled it up, we’d have been almost out of firewood by now. The timber stored under a tarpaulin (which we’d assumed would be fine) had begun to get thoroughly soaked before we moved it all into the new firewood shed. Another interesting thing about the shed is that we added another dozen secondhand solar panels to that roof. At this time of year we have so much electricity during the day, that we don’t know what to do with it all! The mains electricity grid has a similar issue, but biggerer. Anyway, after last years minor issue with the wood heater, we bought an industrial looking electric fan heater, and during the week used almost a record amount of electricity: 25.63kWh
Regular readers will recall that last week the grapevine enclosure received a big load of crushed rock with lime. The hope is that the lime addresses a fungal issue in a few of the vines, and it may. But just in case, we’ve potted up vine cuttings from a local variety which grows the best of the lot here.
Whilst clearing up the various garden beds, we uncovered some potatoes which appear to have grown over the winter months. They were a bit starchy in texture, but very edible.
This week, some of the plum trees in the orchards began to flower. I’ve observed all manner of pollinators on the fruit trees this year. There are native bees and wasps, small flies, and even the occasional European honey bee. I don’t believe anyone around here keeps them nowadays, so they’d be from a wild hive, or more.
Some of the deciduous trees are beginning to wake up from their winter slumber and produce leaves. Japanese maples are one of my favourite trees, and they grow like weeds here setting seedlings.
Earlier this afternoon the dogs were calling their: “Intruder Alert!” bark. Heading uphill to see what the canines were going on about, I discovered an Echidna, which is a mammal which lays eggs (and only one of two animals left which do so).
The annual rocket plant proves why it is so named. In this early stage of the spring, it’s already sporting flowers and well on the way to producing seeds.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 15’C (59’F). So far for this year there has been 914.2mm (36.0 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 912.8mm (35.9 inches)
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