Mother Goose, in her safety cage. When we put the cage over here, there were 6 eggs. Now there appear to be 5 - she does cover them, so it's a little hard to see - but you may notice in the bottom right corner a white object. I think this is the 6th egg, I'm just not sure how it found itself outside the cage... I don't think the foxes will eat it. It's too big!

She does love to hiss.

For Xanthe

In case she doesn't get back while they are in bloom

Spring is definitely here

Budding Chardonnay

Canola fields in the distance

A skinny dog - I will have to feed her up.

Canola from the Cherry trees

I was called back to the vineyard so Dad could go to Bali - for a holiday.... I wasn't overly impressed.... at least it is pretty this time of year and its a lot warmer than it was 2 weeks ago.

What I'm also not impressed with are the nesting magpies. I cant remember the last time a magpie swooped me. I somehow realised what was going on in time to fend of the attacks. Pruned canes come in handy for removing spiderwebs, which form between the canopy, before getting a face full of cobweb, but as there is no canopy at the moment, they are very useful in the fight against broody magpies. Unfortunately for me, the irrigation tap I needed to monitor was very close to the nest.

It is also very quiet down here - work wise - I had to come back to look after the irrigation and do a little bit of work in the winery, but that was all Dad asked me to do. I think I will finish off the very last of the pruning, which doesn't really need to be done until November, but hey if I'm here....

Ummm... beer....

Birthday celebrations

My birthday celebrations didn't last quite as long this year as they did last year, but it was still lots of fun. That said I might try to stretch it out until Gosia arrives in 10 days. The only sad point was the absence of Pan, but I'll talk about that some other time.

It started a few days early when Ellie and I took each other out to Rise for an Italian-Japanese degustation. It was a lovely meal, but all-in-all I much prefer the straight Japanese degustation. We had a pre-dinner cocktail, but I was rather tired from being wined and dined in a "client" dinner the night before, so headed home after we finished the meal.

The following day I declined lunch invitations to spend the day making a dress for Ellie's 1920's 30th birthday celebration. I borrowed Xanthe's red and black feather boa so decided to make a red and black dress to match. I was impressed with my effort, especially considering I had no pattern and have only once attempted to make a dress from scratch before - and that's still waiting to be completed.

Before arriving at Ellie's party I first had to head south to The Shire for my aunts 40th celebrations. Her birthday was more than a month before. She has some affinity for my birthday, it was also her 11th wedding anniversary. It was lovely to see most of my family, even if most forgot it was my birthday too... and my brother and sister-in-law were up from Melbourne for the 40th so I got to see them for a short time, before I headed back to civilisation and on to Ellie's which was most conveniently held at bar very close to my house.

Everyone at Ellie's party had made such an effort and everyone looked amazing. Lots of feather boas and lots of fedoras. I'm still not quite sure what possessed me to smoke a cigar, but Ellie insisted that as birthday girls, we should. It seems I'll try most things once. However, it did cause a few jaws to drop.

The following day I had a few people over for drinks to celebrate my birthday. Another lovely day.

And now I have lots more cookbooks to drool over, I even received two ice cream recipe books, which will go perfectly with my new ice cream maker!

In actual fact I felt on top of the world.

Obviously brushing the the tongue does the trick. Yah!!!

I am slightly scared by this post...even though I wrote it myself!

I had a very busy day today. It culminated with me smoking a cigar. Oh dear. Most interestingly was that all 4 of us smoking had never smoked a cigarette. I was told to clean my tongue along with my teeth tonight. Ill report back as to whether this made me feel better.

More shots from dinner.




Dinners over, I'm finally able to relax. Its 2am....

More food

Sweet corn broth with crab meat and basilTomato tart with olive tepenade, mixed field greens and basil vinaigrette

Pan-fried Jew fish with Artichoke ravioli

Pan-fried mulloway with potato gratin and leek sauce

Veloute of bittersweet chocolate with connamon-stick ice cream

Unfortunately these collapse very quickly so I didn't get a photo and mine didn't quit look like that....

I really liked two of the dishes, but wasn't so happy with the rest.... The company as always was fantastic!

Boo - the hunter

I have seen Boo chase hares many times. Once when she actually caught up the the hare, she paused then ran in the other direction. She had no idea what to do once she caught up to it. It was only a game for her. So when Xanthe found Boo carefully skinning and eating a hare we were a little concerned. Had she found it dead? Had it been baited? When she didn't get sick we throught maybe it was a young hare so didn't know to run away from Boo. Either that or Boo has finally worked out what to do when she wins the chase.

The canola has just started to bloom

Goslings?

Maybe. The other day I went to feed the pigeons (I feed the chooks too, though they haven't laid an egg in 2 months - I think we need new, younger chooks) and I heard hissing, I looked around to find the source of the noise and saw a goose partially hidden. It was either sick or sitting. After another goose charged at me, the first time that has happened, I decided the goose probably wasn't sick.

The following day Xanthe and I investigated further, she wasn't sitting on her nest, but we uncovered 6 eggs. Previously geese have sat on eggs, but a fox always gets the mother before the eggs hatch. So we decided we should give her some protection. However at that point the geese realised we were near the nest and eight of them came charging down from the vineyard. They are really rather slow over long distances, but do make a lot of noise.

When we next found the nest empty we moved an old chook pen over the top of the nest, leaving the gate open. That evening she was inside sitting on her eggs. We considered locking her up each night and letting her out during the day, but the first time Xanthe locked her up it was decided she would stay locked up.

Boo has been following me into the vineyard, but then slept the whole time I was working

$44.95 for Chang beer, actually anyone silly enough to drink the stuff in Australia should be robbed blind!