Nitsy, the duck, has died

Nitsy - our little yellow duckling has unfortunately died. She was found by A, buried with only her little webbed feet protruding from the ground. Very sad, very undignified way of losing your life. She has been caught by something and buried in shame. We are assuming it wasn't intentional as she had no scaring or obvious damage. So she either died of shock or broke her neck possibly. With Jessie - the other duckling, crying out for her, we have immediately gone up and acquired two new ducklings to keep her company - they are 3 weeks younger, half the size and are not Muscovy. These are Indian Runners x Mallard, flightless ducks which lay a lot more eggs than the Muscovy. The three are now curled up in the corner of their new pen (the dog kennel) keeping warm. Photos will come later when it stops raining! We did take advantage of about 10 minutes when it stopped raining, to start building a fence which will isolate the entire back part of our yard to allow for a bigger area for the poultry grazing. This area includes apple and citrus trees which is perfect for a grazing area. We will also be adding some coffee trees soon.

The rain has not let up now for about 10 days. Katoomba was on the Nine O'Clock news three times last night due to the awful weather. Thank goodness we are on a mountain top, otherwise there would be far more severe flooding in the area. The plants looks good!

New Chair

And with a clap and hooray - I present you my new reupholstered chair project. I found this chair on the side of the road about a year ago now. Only in the last few weeks did I get the mojo to do it up. We love it! We found the fabric from a fabulous Australian online store called kelanifabric.com.au. (will be a new favourite for sure). The fabric was ordered and delivered within about 4 days. Great service. The fabric is Hofmann Petal Punch Floral Brown.

We were looking for something really contemporary and bright to go with the natural wood style. It's kind of retro danish looking and not that dissimilar to the chairs I did last year. The wood was sanded back and oiled. Probably still needs a bit more work to be honest - but if we ever get there - not sure!

Before & After:

From recycled furniture

From recycled furniture

From recycled furniture

Rain rain go away - The Ducks are happy

The ducks grow every day. Amazingly so. I swear each morning when I look at Jessie - (the darker one) she has grown overnight considerably. The rain wont leave, our Katoomba paradise is flooded and nothing but the plants and ducks are happy. Everything is soaked and even the chooks I think are depressed. Below are some happy snaps of the ducks, - taking to water ....like...well. Ducks! [The water is our flooded backyard!].

From animals

From animals

And under the watchful eye of one of our dogs...

From animals

Australia Day - New Chairs

Here are our new stools. Both were picked up for nothing - one on the side of the road and one at the local tip. Old, rusted and 70's vinyl covering we have been using them in the kitchen for months - in one case over a year. But this Australia Day was the day. A gorgeous day in the The Blue Mountains around 28 degrees and perfect blue sky - I decided today was the day. I had already purchased some Japanese material from a online store in Australia called SANSHI - (click here to visit) . We have a slight Japanese theme (mainly colours) going on in the house and we thought it would be lovely to bring elements into little things we do - like these stools.

We painted them black and reupholstered in the farbic - and great new stools! We are all very pleased.

Slide show below - click on a photo to vist the larger image.

New Pond

We have finally advanced our Pond. A new above ground water pot has been placed slightly uphill from the inground pond. We then created a small creek bed of rocks and now pump the water from the lower pond - up to the higher pond - where it overflows and flows back to the lower pond and so it goes on! As our existing pump had two outlets we also still have a small trickle of water streaming down the big iron stone water fall at the back. We are going to look for a solar power pump on e-bay so we can in good conscience keep the pond going all the time. We also sourced some disused offcut bamboo to accommodate the plastic tube, and rescued some trampled water grass from a muddy water hole (being used by motor heads to drive through) and have given the grass a new home. The main big goldfish will be soon moved 'upstream' to their new water pot - and the little non frog egg eating fish will be left in the small inground pond to hopefully attract some frog life. (for the history of this pond click here for old posts)

From Pond

From Pond

Our new Ducks

Please meet our new Ducks. Just brought home only a few mintues ago. Muscovy ducks are apparently the best 'pet' ducks to have - don't really quack and get along fine with chooks. Now while they aren't the most attractive adult duck - in fact a lot look like they are just plain ugly - I am sure raising them from ducklings I will acquire an attachment to them. And importantly for me they will contribute to our sustainable mission with their Duck eggs. (good for pavlovas apparently!). Click here and here for some recipe uses (including pavlova)

From animals

My PUMPKINS have started!

I am so excited - the pumpkins flowers did the right thing and fertilised themselves (some articles I have read suggest you often have to do this manually) - and I have now spotted a few tiny tiny beginnings of what will become my pumpkin patch. My first pumpkin patch. This is truly a great day. Here is the evolution - from the beginning of the leaves growing (right side closest one in bed (behind them are the cucumbers and they look similar in leaf). The next is a few weeks on - and then the last ones are my precious pumpkins. I needed to carefully look under the leaves to find these, like finding little suprises bit by bit.

From pumpkins

From pumpkins

From pumpkins

From pumpkins