Only time will tell

I have this idea of living in a nice hosuse and a huge garden with vegetables growing. We are still working on the nice house bit but we do have a big garden. Now I'm working towards the vegetable dream. I ordered some heirloom seeds a few weeks ago, convinced myself that ordinary veges are too boring, and planted the seeds 2 weeks ago. The previous owner left lots of seedling pots in the shed, but none of the seeds in the seedling pots came out. However, those seeds I tried in the used egg carton (Gina's suggestion) were all out. They are 5 colour silverbeet, tri-colour zucchini and radish (from left to right).

The plan was to prepare the ground at the same time so the veges have somewhere to grow once the seedlings come out. The ground is no where near ready as I got too squremish about the wood lice and some other namless insects on the ground. Can a person like me successfully grow vegetables? Only time will tell!

Swimming class

After 2 terms of Kingergym, Lara started to do her own thing and not follow instructions. We even had to leave early in one class because Lara would not listen. A change was needed so I signed Lara up for swimming this term instead.

Lara did her first swimming class on Monday. She's over 2 and a half so I don't have to get into the water with her.

It was great fun watching the class behind the glass door. At one point, the kids took turns jumping into the pool from the side. Lara was impatient and wanted to jump first, not realising she would get her head wet, and she didn't like that! She was a little apprehensive, this being her first proper class after a trial 3 weeks ago, but I am sure she'll improve over time.

Chicken update

We were very disappointed to learn that the chickens left by the previous owner are 6 years old and don't lay any more. We thought we would keep them as pets initially, but didn't name them in case we changed our mind (they were sometimes referred to as C1 and C2). They became company to Zebadee, but Lara never warmed to them. Zeb must think she is also a chicken - how else do you explain the fact that she prefers the chicken house than her own dog kennel?

The chickens acted like they owned the house, but they started to grow on us. It was nice seeing them walking around in the garden every morning but it was time-consuming to get them back into their coop. Simon thought there was some intelligence in those little brains, but they were basically food-driven. It was nice to get rid of our kitchen scraps but we usually didn't have enough to feed them. And the food attracted wild turkeys, some morning we saw a couple of turkeys in the garden with the chickens. We heard they can be a breeding ground for lice (pooh hanging from their bottoms was a telling sign we were told). We didn't like Zeb supplement her diet with chicken poohs either. At the end, we decided to 'give them away'. But who wants some old hens? No one! The vet offered to put them down (for a price), but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

At the end, the local vegetable man came and took them. Whether they are being used as soup stock, or live in a farm (as we were told), we would never know. They are very handsome-looking so hopefully they now live in their 'retirement' farm as breeding stock.

We won't see this outside Lara's bedroom window any more. The chicken coop feels empty without them...

Koala park

It was mostly rainy this Labour long weekend. On Monday, we were all restless and needed to get out of the house. It was clear and a little sunshine came out in the morning, we decided to go to the Koala park (Lara says "kolala park").
Our first stop was to see emus, peacocks and sheeps, just as a shearing show was about to start. After that, we walked to the Kangaroo feeding enclosure, passing some enormous animals made of concrete. Lara liked the fake animals but was a little apprehensive about the real ones. We didn't have any food to feed them, but the kangaroos were very friendly and came to say hi, one even opened up Simon's hand to check if there was food in it!
We walked around and saw a cassowary (bad tempered bird), a wombat, koalas, cockatooes, dingoes, and chicknes. It started to rain, luckily it was not heavy. Lara was very interested in all the puddles, she had raincoat and rainboots on so we let her explpore as she wish. We went back at the advertised time to 'pat' the koalas. Lara only got 'one small pat' as there were quite a lot of people there. Th park is not huge, and a little run-down. But I heard it was one of the few places you can pat kangaroos and koalas these days. We all enjoyed this short, relaxing outing.

Books April- September 09

Blue shoes and happiness
The good husband of Zebra drive
In the company of cheerful ladies
by Alexander McCall Smith

I get my hands on any 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' books I find in the library. Why? Becaue I really enjoy reading them. It's the simple things in life that matters and these books serve well to remind me that.

One child by Torey L. Hayden
It's shocking, heart-warming, and sadly it's a true story!
Torey Hayden is very good story-teller and seems to be an excellent teacher too. I had to stop reading it on the train one morning, because of one horrible scence in the middle of the book. I still couldn't make myself finishing it. I would recommend the book to anyone who has the stomach to read it.

Warren Buffet: An Illustrated Biography of the World's Most Successful Investor
by Ayano Morio
Contains interesting facts about Warren Buffet. A fast, interesting read for Warren Buffet fans. The drawings are very entertaining, it makes Warren Buffet look like a real superhero. Maybe he is in his own way?

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Jane Austen's first book but it was published last. It is not as famous as the others, and after reading it, I think I know why. The usual hero-heroine misunderstanding but less convicing. Definitely not my favorite.

Julia Child's lamb stew and strawberry jam

I made Julia Child's lamb stew last week, recipe from her book 'Mastering the art of French cooking'. I didn't follow the recipe exactly - I cooked everying in one pot on the stovetop (who needs the extra washing up and our oven is broken) and I used a can of tomatoes rather than fresh ones. I think the main difference comes from using various cuts of meat -I used a mixture of lamb chops and lamb forequarters. I also browned the meat with sugar and flour as the recipe said. It was delicious! I am keen to try other recipes from the book.



I couldn't walk away from these strawberries on sale, and they became jars of jam using my trusted bread-maker. I made 4 batches in two days, each with a slightly different sugar content. I meant to write it all down straight away but didn't. Luckily they didn't taste that different. After giving away 3 jars, I still have 5 left in the fridge. The jam can be improved upon but it tastes a lot 'fresher' than your average supermarket varieties. Lara and parents-in-law like them on toasts for breakfast. I can't wait to try other summer fruit (eg plum)!

Where food comes from

The book 'Animal, vegetable and miracle" I am reading now is very interesting and informative. I learned a lot about the food industry, food history and certain farm animals and plants as well as being entertained as one would expect while reading a book in her leisure time. I learned sadly about how the majority of fruit and vegetables travel hundreds of kilometers to get to the supermarkets and how thousands of plants species and many animal species are extinct because farmers only grow food that travels well or yeilds well because that's what the big supermarkets buy.

As the author of the book suggested, I now take more notice of where the fresh food comes from. For example, I can't find garlic from Australia a month ago (Harris Farm signs showed all garlics were from China or Peru). I tried not to use much garlic but ended up buying a small bulb from Peru. I also know there is no Australian grapes at the moment. I saw grapes in the local vegetable shop last week, hoping the new season's started, I asked the owner wherer it was from. He confirmed grapes are not in season and his grapes came from USA by air - transport time around 5 days. He further addded those grapes that cost less than $6 all came via the sea (took 2 months to come) and he thought they shouldn't be eaten by humans. I totally agree and do not want to eat anything that sits in a refrigerated container for that long and still looks good!

As a general rule, I try to buy ingredients coming from NSW, otherwise Australia. I order organic vegetables from time to time, and I know which state and farm they are from, but not all shops list where their food is from. I also try to buy seasonal produce then find recipes to use them rather than choose a recipe first then unable to find the ingredients or the ingredients not in season, therefore very expensive. Of course, I still buy lots of packet and canned stuff and I don't have time to read each label. But I feel that I'm taking a small first step towards having more control over what we put in our mouths.

Snaps around the house (2)

There are many very tall (and probably very old) trees in our garden. The three tall ones in the front garden are our favorite. Lara calls this "Totoro tree" - it looks similar to the tree where Totoro lives (from the movie 'My neighbour Totoro').


I like the branches of this nameless tree. These lovely trees make the front garden very serene and provoide great shade to the outdoor area where we spend most of our weekend.


This is a magnolia tree (I love magnolia flowers!) It has quite a few low-hanging branches and it is great for kids to climb. Lara often hangs off it like a koala. Jenny warned me not to trim this tree too much - 'flowering tree represents love' she told me.


We had lots of help from family, especially parents-in-law who come over, over an hour drive each way, every weekend and help with many things that need doing in this house (FIL is wokring on the pergola at the moment and MIL and I are going to recover the dinning chairs). Lara enjoyed joining in with the sweeping in this picture.


The front garden is tidier and a better place to play in, backyard is a little messy at the moment. Lara and her cousins played with the golf set outside before they moved on to the trike and scooter. They happily did a golf-pose for us when the cameras were out.

Blue oh blue

Some time ago, I said to Lara "I love you very very much", and Lara said "five very much". We started playing the "number very much" game after that. Lara insisted that I love her "ten very much" now, but she usually loves me only "six very much" or sometimes "seven very much", never "ten very much". I was curious as to what else could be more important to a 2-year-old than her Mummy so I asked Lara what she liked "ten very much" one day. She only thought for a brief second before replying "I love blue ten very much". I have no unrealistic expectation about what my place is in the future, I already lost to 'blue'!

Lara's family day care closed in July. Now if I need respite on a Monday for work or other reasons, Lara goes to Gilda's house. Gilda only looks after a little boy Robbie on Mondays so she's happy that Lara is there to keep Robbie company from time to time. Gilda told me how Lara loves blue and she wants everyting in blue. And how she found it funny that Robbie is a great fan of 'pink' and he wants everything in pink (his mum's not very impressed with that!). Gilda makes sure she has blue and pink stuff (blue for Lara and pink for Robbie) to make them both happy. Two-year-olds do not know pink is for girls and blue for boys!

Lara's favorites

Hairy Maclary Hat tricks by Lynn Todd
A library book. I read it to Lara many times. Every time I asked Lara to choose a book for me to read, she seemed always go for this one. Other Hairy Maclary books don't hold as much facination as this book does.

Hand hand fingers thumb (Dr Sesus books)
Nice pictures and easy words and rhymes. Lara likes this too.

Owl babies by Martin Waddell
This is a daycare book. Lara asks for it when I'm late to get her or sometimes when I leave in the morning. I was very surprised the other morning that Lara wanted 'owl babies' rather than her blanket. I have not read it myself except learning from Amazon reviews that this book addresses kids' fear about separating from parents. I think it gives Lara a lot of comfort to know that mummy always comes back.

Lulu by Caroline Uff
This was Lara's favorite from daycare a few months ago. I was told that Lara chased other kids away if they got this book because she thought it was her book. It was out of print when I checked it ealier this year. I heard this is a bicultural book maybe that is why Lara warms to this book.

My neighbour Totoro (dvd)
This is the first moive Lara watched and loved. She loved it so much that I had to buy it urgently after returning the dvd to library. We enjoy watching this too. The story is warm and very charming and the animation beautifully done. Lara was not well with an ear infection and a huge bruise on her face (fell out of bed) two weeks before our move. Coupled with the stress of moving, this movie offered great comfort to all of us during that difficult time.

Lara helps

Lara helps me hang clothes outside ...

Cooking day

I had last Wednesday off and had a relaxing cooking day.
Pictured from left: chocolate cookies with ginger, curry powder, almond cake with coffee icing and white bread.



The cookies were made with chocolate buttons and crystallized ginger(recipe by Louise Pickford 'Fresh Baked'). The butter & sugar were creamed first therefore they are resonably 'light'.

The curry powder was made from scratch (my first) and it was delicious (Simon didn't want to get any curry paste from any jars any more!) I improvised a Delicious magazine recipe and dry-fried coriander seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom seeds, cinnamon and dried chillies before grinding them in a mortar and pestle (my hands were sore!) Garlic, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg and curry leaves were added before cooking. The beef chuck steak was cooked in the curry sauce for about an hour the day before. I added milk and continued the cooking process the following day. The result was a very tender and tasty dish. Even though the spices/seeds I used are very 'old' (bought them a few years ago!) but the curry dish still tasted 'fresher' than supermarket-bought packets.

I've also been making bread ... I made a bread roll loaf (with an egg), banana walnut bread, and 3 loaves of white bread. They are frozen after cooking and can be used slowly later. I now use the breadmaker to make dough only but do all my baking in the oven. I found the breadmaker often under-bake the bread. I have more control over the cooking time when baking in the oven and the bread tastes better.

ps The oven stopped working again....
It looks like we will need a new oven after all :(

After our move ...

The first weekend after we moved in, the hot water system stopped working.
Lukily we found out on a Saturday and could easily get a plumber in. The hot water system turned out to be working, only the pilot light went out. It cost $150 to light the pilot light. To his credit, the plumber did help calling Energy Australia and got what he thought was the problem,gas regulator, changed. It took Simon 5 calls and being transferred from one person to antoher in Energy Australia to get this done. Nobody knows anything about gas regulator. Finally someone requsted the plumber to call them. They organised to replace(?) the regulator after talking to our plumber. The fact is, we are not sure if everythign's working properly. The pilot light had gone out again twice since then and we still have the problem that if we have the gas heating on, the flames on the gas cooktops diminish by almost half. This is something that still needs fixing.

The second weekend after we moved in, our oven stopped working.
The oven was working fine for a week and a half and I even did 2 roasts and baked a bread in it. To cut a long story short, we nearly chucked it out but luckily double-checked-it to make sure it was not the fuse and it was the fuse! So after a week with no oven, this old oven decides to stay with us in the mean time.

And yesterday, our fridge stopped working. This fridge is over 10 years old, and I was hoping it would go soon becaue I want a bigger fridge(be careful what you wish for!!). Being moved 3 times in less than a year proved to be too much for a hard-working fridge and it decided to go silently sometime yesterday. A new fridge and washing machine are being delivered today.

Hopefully this is the last of the appliances not working!

Flintstones carport

This 'Flintstones' carport was a safety hazard (it was leaning on one side and it was held up by a steel rope tied to the house!) so it had to go. FIL was hard at work for a whole weekend to remove this carport.

Roof is almost gone.


Four columns left.


Nearly done.


All gone.

Snaps around the house (1)

Lara playing in the chicken coop:


Zeb and the chickens got along fine. The problem was the fencing around the hosue and the chicken coop. We kept finding Zeb in the neighbour's backyard, front yard or inside of the chicken coop (eating chickens food and their poo!). Today we found Zeb lying in the chickens' house! I was seriously thinking about getting rid of the chickens after they pecked a couple of people and kept flying out of their chicken coop. Life is very busy when you keep finding your chickens and dog wondering around in places where they shouldn't be!

Lara entertained herself on moving day:


Moving day (removalists moving big items) was brought forward by 3 days for a variety of reasons, we then took what was left by ourselves over the next few days - it took more trips than we imagined. Moving early and getting sick (cold) meant we only painted half of the house. There are still many boxes in the garage and study, they will have to be sorted out slowly.

Simon's new vey important, had to have it toy - line streamer:


Nothing escaped the streamer!
Many neighbours came over and said hi. They all commented on how the garden already looked a lot better. We have some ideas about what we want to do to the garden. Exactly when and how we will implement these will take some time to work out.

Making progress

We took possession of our new hosue on Friday. We have been there whole day every day since then. There are so much to do!

We had 3 unexpected but welcomed visits on Saturday. The neighbours on the left told us a few things about this house - it was built just after the war by a physicist and his wife. It was a shame that the last of the original owners died last week so we wouldn't be able to speak to them.

We bought $500 worth of paint on Sunday. The colour was decided at the last minute (Stowe white won over Berkshire white at the end). Simon now has the big job of painting the whole house before we move in next week. Both Simon and I are a little run-down and Simon's coming down with a cold and wouldn't stop sneezing today.

The new tenants signed the contract on the weekend so we now have a date we have to move out. It feels like things are really happening whereas before it felt like we could move out next month or next year when there was no date in sight. Removalist booked today. We also took things there every time we went (the 2 places are less than 5 minutes away). We are making good progress towards moving.


Grand-dad working on the gutters. The condition of the gutters is not bad.
They just need a good clean.


Chickens having a feed. Lara loves the chickens and wants to see them all the time. The chickens were a little scared of us on Saturday, but by Monday they were picking the bag I had the food in as soon as I walked in. The chicken coop is pretty dirty (as well as the rest of the hosue) and it needs a good clean too.


One of the few photos I took of the inside was this blurred one.
Lara was probabaly saying 'Mum, Honey ate my cheese!".

Chickens, vegetable patches, lots of work

Houses we liked, the last house we rented or even the house we currently live in all have one thing in common - a large backyard.

It is no surprise that our new house has just that. There are several vegetable patches, 4 citrus trees and a chicken coop in the backyard. There are wired frames for tomatoes to climb everywhere you see and lots of strawberries in summer according to the real estate agent. The vendor will leave the 2 chickens currently living there so we will also have 2 pet chickens. The thought of fresh eggs every morning is very appealing (whether the chickens will lay any eggs with a dog around is another matter). Hopefully Zebadee and the chickens will learn to be friends!

There are lots of work to do both inside and outside of the hosue. But it's all very exciting.


Nice day to play in the garden.

ps I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, vegetable, miracle" at the moment. This book is about the year Barbara and her family living on a farm and only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it. We have no green thumbs and will be extremely happy if we manage not to kill all the existing vegetables growing in the new house!

Two and a half!

Talking to a two-and-a-half-year-old can be very entertaining. Here are some of the things Lara says:

"Lara reading... no talking, ok?" - Lara holding and reading a book
"Of course you can, Mummy" when I asked if I could share her biscuits or toys.
"Don't touch it!"
"I'm up...set" with pouty lips.
"Mattew crying... Mattew bump head" when Lara tells me of her day in daycare. She told me "Kyan sick. Kyan home" the other day when Kyan didn't come to daycare.
We only have a short ride home from daycare but I try to ask Lara what she did that day and who was there during the day. She's able to tell me more and more every day.
"Maybe Liz help" when I couldn't open the door to daycare.

Lara knows the names of most kids at daycare. She pointed to a Mum and a girl the other day and told me it was Ryan's Mum. I thought maybe she was confused when the lady turned to me and said she is Ryan's Mum and Ryan was at home that day. When Lara saw people she didn't know, she would ask me who they are. For example, she would point to the check-out girl at Wollies and asked me "Who's that?".

Lara's not toilet trained yet but she loves to sit on the toilet before bath and would sometimes tell me when she's weeing (on nappy). We just haven't timed it right so that she does the act of wee sitting on the toilet. It will happen soon I'm sure.

Blueberry pancakes

I made Nigella Lawson's "Ritz chicken" the other night. The chicken meat was extremely tender after they were marinated in buttermilk overnight. I made these pancakes using the rest of the buttermilk that weekend.
I prefer a "savory" breakfast, but it's nice to have something different for a change when we all sit down leisurely to have the first meal of the weekend without rushing.

Feeling guilty

At the beginning of June, Lara had a small cold. Like other cold she had, it startd with a bit of running nose and coughing. It could go either way from there - it could develope into a full-blown cold like she had many times last year or she could get better. Her cold seemed to go towards the second way this year thank god. She had a temperature on Monady night so I fully anticipated not being able to go to work and had warned work so. That week was a very busy one with a tight testing schedule of a project and a colleague on holiday. On Tuesday morning, Lara miraculously didn't have a temperature so I deicded to take the risk of taking her into daycare. Lara had watery eyes and generally didn't feel great so I was half waiting for a phone call to go and pick her up at midday but reasoned that I would have done some work by then. I didn't get the call and by Tuesday night, she looked a lot better but it didn't lessen my guilt of sending her to daycare ill.

I try to pick Lara up well before the daycare close time of 6pm. I often get there at arond 5.30pm but Lara is usually the last 2 or 3 remaining. I was the last one again the other week. When I arrived, Lara was reading "the baby owl" book with Liz. I flipped through the book to see what it is - it's about these baby owls waiting for Mummy to come home. And the sentence "Mummy always come back" is repeated again and again in the book. Liz told me they had been reading that book for at least 15 times in the last 20 minutes! Talking about feeling guilty, this one is definitely up there. I have to try to leave work even earlier....