Was Sunday today!

So I did stuff! I started trimming the tree that was brushing the power lines. I was hoping to trim it fairly savagely as the tree itself is (1) not a native tree and (2) mostly strangled by ivy and (3) brushing the power lines.

I ended up going for a much more subtle trim when I found this:

I'm sure breeding season will be over soon and I'll continue then.

I also had the delightful Mr Chen and his wife drop by today. They gave us housewarming pressies :-) In fact, these:



I have seen the lychee one but never tried it. Can't remember ever seeing the pear brandy one! We were told that the way to drink it was to soak a sugar cube in it and suck on the cube. I understand why. It's pretty concentrated. Was very tasty with some ice melted in it as well as the sugar!

Dredging through old photos for the panorama-ing

Hokay so there are some old photos that I meant to do this to years ago. I still need to learn to use an airbrushing tool to take care of the final bits of detail like the trimmed off sky, but apart from that they turned out okay. The first two are from my trip to Darwin in 2005. They are taken from the viewing platform of Fogg Dam. If I remember rightly Fogg Dam was built so they could harvest rice in Darwin. Only the torrential flooding and hungry native wildlife put an end to that.


The next two photos are from the Shoalhaven, taken in 2007. The first one is the view from the top of the hill at the Two Figs Vineyard.

I can't remember which vineyard the next one was. I suspect we didn't buy much wine there and only made a nuisance of ourselves (see small child in half wine barrel photo, wherever that may be...)


Well at least I did something I've been meaning to do (for a very long time) this weekend!

Chicken newsflash!

After two days ago with the first of our chicken-egg events, there was no chicken news yesterday. This morning was different. Megzzzz went in to have a look, and behold! A shiny, new, warm egg!


The one on the left is our first bit of real produce (the first one was broken and leaking so probably not a great idea to eat... good point there Mz Speedy). Aaaaanyway... the left was the fresh, shiny, new egg and the right is a normal 59g egg from shop-bought free range eggs.

The yolk was smaller than usual and quite tough, but after some convincing it contributed to the omelette for breakfast.

Space saving chickens!

No... not the kind that save outer space from aliens. More, the stackable kind:


on the bright side though... when their powers combine, they did make this:


which, as you can see from its condition, was laid fairly and squarely on the concrete. Go team chicken!

I made dinner and drank stuff

Been a while since I made salt and pepper chicken. So I did! Was also a good excuse to bowls and chopstick rests bought in Japan.

It was accompanied by the following drinks:

So what are the Taverners Honey Ales like? Well they both taste fairly strongly of Leatherwood honey. Good, bad or other, decide for yourself. The Strong Ale was lighter in colour than the Honey Ale, and sweeter. Overall that made the regular 4.0% one tastier than the 5.2% Strong Ale. While I'm drinking... we also tasted these:

They both had very strong tastes. In fact, the Wicked Elf had almost too much flavour as it warmed up, but I'd certainly drink either of them again!