And now.... exhale.

Well it has taken me a long while... but I am finally ready to do an update! We were very busy for a while moving to our new home (and all the usual dramas that brings!), then within a few weeks we were busy again with family staying from overseas, but I am very pleased to report we have all settled in to our new surrounds beautifully.

Early morning mist in the valley

We love the house - which is much larger than we are used to but strangely not too big at all - it still feels cosy in the right places! Our kids now have a very large open playroom with lots of tables for creating, and shelves for their books and games. They just love it! And we love not tripping over toys and standing on lego in the lounge room.

We even get to watch the sunset from our dining room, or upstairs out on the balcony, something that always stops us in our tracks.

Sunset from our balcony

We love the area too - very peaceful and beautiful, friendly people and the village is perched on an escarpment overlooking magnificent valleys, which provides us with fabulous bushwalks!

Our local bushwalk/ dog walk- only a couple of minutes away

All animals made it through the move too. At the time we had 2 chooks broody and the other 3 moulting, so they looked a bit rough for a while, but are back to normal now -fat, feathery and happy! We are even getting a decent egg supply, 10-12 a week which is great considering the colder weather.

It didn't take me long to get a food garden going- I was planning it within 2 weeks and building shortly after! With nothing in place to start with, we picked a sunny area across the back of the garden, and built a long garden bed 6 metres x 1.2 metres, using whatever we had to hand, and bought in 2 cubic metres of 'veggie mix' soil to make a raised bed. Excellent stuff, full of manures and mushroom compost! I will post some pictures of the patch soon when its looking a bit greener, but already everything has germinated and so we have a bed full of little green sprouts, ready to provide us with winter goodness. I planted lots of winter greens, peas, broad beans, broccoli, herbs.... and am waiting on my potatoes and garlic to arrive, though I'll have to extend the patch as its full already!

This house has also inspired me to try something new in the garden- flowers! I've always admired others gardens that burst with glorious colour, but to be honest I kind of thought flowers were a bit frivolous, after all isn't this the age when we should all be turning our land into something more productive? Well, I'm not sure exactly what changed, but you know what? For the first time, I think I deserve some frivolous flowers!! Of course, when I've waited this long, I'm not doing things by halves, so I bought 2 bulk packs of Spring bulbs from Garden Express, a total of a whopping 405 bulbs!!! Sounds a lot, but some of them are really small ~ lol ! A bit crazy, maybe. But we have space on all sides of the house, with lots of deciduous autumn trees (which looked amazing when they turned) so some will go under the trees, others will be planted outside our windows and some in pots.... I'm sure I'll find a place for them. Watch this space and see how I did!

Its all a work-in-progress of course, there is always more to do in the garden and inside, but it feels like we are home again at last, and I can finally exhale.

:-)

It's waratah time

Todays rain on one of our waratahs

It was a public holiday here today, and we spent some of it up in Blackheath at our land - the land we bought over a year ago now to build our dream home on. I haven't blogged much about this at all, partly because I want to keep it as a private place for now, and partly because not a lot has happened on the building front.

We go up there a lot because it is such a lovely place, a big quiet bush block with hidden tracks and mountain views, full of beautiful native flowers and trees, and various wildlife including lyrebirds (although there were a lot more around last year compared to this year).

Today though, we were thrilled to find some of our many waratahs were flowering- they are my favourite flower, so spectacular in the bushland against the green gums and the huge blackened tree trunks (the big fires went through our land a few years back) There was also a light rain when we were there, not enough to spoil anything, but enough to add interest......

So of course, we took some photos.....

I love the way the bracts on this one seem to swirl around the centre -

And this one with it's dancing flames

And finally I'll leave you with this macro-shot (courtesy of my husband!)   Amazingly on our big photo, we can even see him INSIDE THE RAINDROP taking the photo- so cool !!! 

      

How beautiful are they with the raindrops on them? I'm always amazed to see them growing in the most rugged landscapes.

(PS- the waratah I have as my blog-photo was our one and only flowering one this time last year!)