There are fairies.....

......or something at the bottom of our garden!

This is the one remaining fruit tree that actually has some fruit on it. You can see that the fruit are apples, and seem to be golden delicious from what I can make out. Last year the cockies ate every piece of fruit off this tree, so this year, we have heavily netted it, with faith..yes..faith...that we will defeat those feathered eating machines.






Last week, there were some smaller apples under the tree, but within the net, they obviously had dropped off at some stage.

The next time I noticed the tree, the apples from underneath it were gathered outside the net, lying close together. Three feet or so away, there was the evidence of the fairy that had placed them there.






This photo from the opposite angle.




This was very mystifying, how did the apples come to be outside the net??
Could a fairy ...aka.....kangaroo, actually do that?

When I looked more closely at the net, I saw that there was a gap that a critter could have gone in to retrieve fruit from the ground.





The next day, the apples had been soundly munched!




I can only conclude that the culprit was indeed a kangaroo, as we do have rather a lot of them around our home most nights.





Needless to say, I have remedied that gap in the netting, and we are looking forward to harvest , which should only be a couple of weeks off.

Location:Daniell Drive,Castlemaine,Australia

The beach and strawberry jam

A few weeks ago, we took a couple of days and went over to the beach at Ocean Grove. Being away for a large part of the summer we had missed our yearly beach fix, so sought to remedy that.

The weather was very hot, and the sky was clear when we set off. Lying on a sunny beach, reading a book, and dipping into the ocean periodically is right up my alley, and that was my plan. The last time I had been on a beach was in the Netherlands, when it was 7 degrees.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. On our arrival, we found a coffee shop overlooking the beach, and there was a gale blowing so hard that it was uncomfortable even to stand and look at the beach.

The next two days were cooler, not beach weather at all, and the smoke haze that was covering Melbourne extended to the Bellarine Pensiula, so we had to opt for some sightseeing instead of the beach.

These are the sorts of beach views I was hoping to see for myself , and for these spectacular shots, which I have used with her permission, I must give credit to my quilting friend Ramona. She is a great photographer! They were taken at Torquay and Inverloch, whilst she was holidaying.









We did a tour of thefort
at Queenscliff, which was extremely interesting. Our guide was a Scottish lady aged about seventy, and she was so enthusiastic. Each little snippet of information she gave us sounded as if she had just discovered it herself five minutes before. The views across the heads from the fort are magnificent, and if you are there at the right time, you can see the big ships sailing down the channel, and through them.


Passing a strawberry farm on our way home, we stopped to "pick our own". This led to jam making a few days later, with the help of Mum, I made four jars of extremely delicious jam. We enjoyed one jar with scones and cream for afternoon tea.














I can highly recommend picking your own strawberries, I would love to have a patch of my own sometime. I have fond memories of the one in our back garden when I was growing up.

Location:Daniell Drive,Castlemaine,Australia