Saturday morning

The sun is shining outside, no doubt the chooks are respectfully enquiring after their breakfast.

The superannuated Italian sheepdog is snoozing in the hall and the neurotic kelpie is snoozing at the Practical Reinventor's feet.

Breakfast has been had and the Creative Reinventor has been at the coffee roastery for more than an hour dispensing caffeine, which is the nearest thing to happiness made tangible.

Rage has finished off with ABBA.

The reinventors are going to dinner tonight with dear friends, which requires the making of a birthday present and card.  What does one make (or even buy if inspiration does not strike) the gentleman who has everything?  Wine, while appreciated, does rather lack imagination.

And there is housework to be done. 

Re-evaluations and starting again.

So things just went stupid for a bit there. 

The Creative Reinventor is managing local council stuff, too many people asking for extra-hot coffee (don't.  Just don't) and increasing wholesale orders for his magnificently roasted coffee.

The Practical Reinventor, who had been doing the catering in a leased commercial kitchen suddenly found the Person-To-Whom-She-Was-Paying-Rent showing her true colours and they weren't pretty.

Then the reinventors did the sums and reluctantly, the Practical Reinventor went back to work.  Luckily there were two pleasant contracts in the offing, with a week off in between.

And now...

Who knows?

The catering business is officially dead - there's no money in food.  Unless you're a celebrity chef with a cookbook contract.

Meanwhile, the garlic is thriving, the broad beans have just started blooming, and the poor citrus trees have ripe fruit, blossom and juvenile fruit.  Which would be the effect of climate change.  Exhausting.

In among the hard decisions, we decided that since the feijoa tree had had four years to produce, and hadn't, it had failed its probation.  It's been replaced with a lime, and there's a cumquat squeezed into one of the chook exclusion zones.

Chooks

The Marmalade Cottage chooks get to free range pretty much every day.  They're pretty feisty girls, and this is not compatible with growing vegetables.

This is our new improved chook exclusion zone.  It's a bit bigger than its previous incarnation and a whole lot neater.

Thelma made the mistake of wandering in where she's not wanted and got cuddled for her trouble.

The end of summer

The reinventors consider if the majority of the garden makes out of summer alive, that's success.  Summer in Perth is brutal.  Long, teeth-achingly hot, dry and unpleasant.

It's not a nice heat, it drains one, there are rarely summer rains to break up the unbearable, shimmering blue of the sky and everyone gets crotchety.

The chooks pant and lose their feathers, egg production drops (who could blame them?), the dogs search for shade and cool spots on tiles, the cat whinges if the air-con isn't set at arctic.

The people just complain and sweat and endure.

But summer appears to be waning.  Most of the garden has survived.  Unlike many chook-owners we know, our whole flock survived, and there are new green shoots in the gardens.

The self-sown garlic is already growing strongly, so we've planted several dozen extra cloves with more planned.  Ordinarily garlic wouldn't go in until ANZAC day, but nature is telling us it's time.

The deciduous trees are confused, not sure whether to lose their leaves.  We shall refrain from pruning them for another month or so.

It might even rain tomorrow.

Nothing to worry about, then.

Last year, the practical reinventor managed to get stung by a bee twice.  And twice she had a serious reaction.  Lots of red and itchy and swollen, to the point she grumpily conceded there might an issue, and said issue should be dealt with.

The dealing-with involved a GP visit, a referral to an allergy specialist, then a five-month wait for the privilege of paying $400.

Which is a little unfair, but still.

So yesterday was the long-awaited visit to the allergy specialist, in a converted house in one of Perth's more soulless suburbs.

He drew a grid on her arm, applied various venoms, pricked the skin, and we sat back to watch what happened.

Turns out she's allergic to bee stings (hmm...) but not to other bitey/sting-y things.  And allergic in little more than an uncomfortable/annoying manner.  Although it does look rather dramatic.

Nothing life-threatening.  No need for panic or an epi-pen.

So that's that, then.

The bee hive can remain in the back garden, and so long as there are antihistamines, cortisone and ice on hand, all should be well.

But really, she should just avoid being stung.

On the logic of dogs frightened out of their wits

It's one of those Perth things, it hardly ever rains here, so when it does, it's quite an event.

There have been summer storms over the last week.  Proper storms with thunder and lightning.

The dogs have been beside themselves.  Trembling and clinging to the reinventors' ankles at considerable risk of tripping, kicking and stepping on paws.

During the day, the reinventors have been out doing what they do, and the dogs have been deputised to take care of the house, chooks and cat.  Ordinarily this arrangement works in a most tickety-boo manner. 

Except for the storms. 

Day One, the Practical Reinventor got home to find one dog missing, but only a whistle away, and the other home but sheepish and with great scrapes on either side of its face.

The red dog, being skinnier, had gotten though the gap at the bottom of the gate.  The white dog musts have gotten painfully caught and wrenched itself free.  If there was blood, the rain washed it all away.

Nasty.

The next day, the white dog was still in the yard, and there was no sign of the red dog.  Then the phone rang.  The red dog had managed to get out, cross two major roads and a nice bloke drinking at the pub about a kilometre away had caught her and phoned us. 

Embarrassing.

The third day of storms, D, our lovely 95-year-old neighbour had intercepted both dogs heading for parts unknown and corralled them in her yard.

Again, embarrassing, but at least there was no further canine injury.  You have to wonder why a dog would, when scared, leave its nice, safe yard and house, where it knows its people will be, and run off to... somewhere.

There's a bloke been to look at the gate and what might be done about it.

Fortunately the storms seem to have passed.

It probably won't rain again til May now.

Every house should have one!

In a spontaneous act of... spontenaity, the reinventors picked up a pizza and a bottle of plonk and went to see an outdoor movie.

Paddington.

It's so terribly English, with rather lovely quirks and some pretty amusing CGI.  Nicole Kidman is completely wooden as the baddie, but you can ignore her.

Best of all, it features marmalade, and in a big way.

Every house should have a marmalade day every year.  Perhaps even more than one.

Under the sun

Summer in Perth is nasty.  Marmalade Cottage bakes and the reinventors are pretty pleased if they manage to have 75 per cent of the garden survive the season.  They apply wetting agent and spread mulch liberally.  There is no reticulation so they spend lots of time holding a hose.

Last year, the Creative Reinventor's mum found a shade house at a garage sale and for the second year it's been installed over the main vegie garden.

This is what grows in the shade.

Butter beans

Zucchini

Figs

The silverbeet still goes to seed, but that means next year's crop is already planted.

Absolutely no idea what these might be.


















As well as the aforementioned wetting agent and mulch, we mucked out the chook pen and dug that in, then scattered about a dozen or so packets of expired seeds.

Exciting, isn't it? 

Visitors.

Yesterday it was hot.  Nasty on the concrete, and baking even in the shade.  These guys turned up.  The practical reinventor, about to go out, found them on the path between Marmalade Cottage and Daphne's place.

They're domestic ducks and only just starting to lose their fuzz for proper feathers.

We've no idea - really no idea - whose they might be.  Given their age, we suspect they were Christmas presents, which might explain them wandering loose on the street, as they're approaching adulthood and are a bit less cute than they were.

 They still squeak.

We put some big tubs of water in the front garden, where there's shade and hidey holes under the hydrangeas, and expected them to disappear.

They quite happily tucked into some chook food and snoofled about in the mud when we watered.

There's an ad on Gumtree and postings on several local facebook pages, but not a peep.

The Creative Reinventor would dearly love to keep them, but accedes that with two dogs, a cat and seven chooks, Marmalade Cottage is at capacity.

If no-one claims them in the next day or so, they'll go up the hill to lovely friend J's house where there are three ducks already.

A very Marmalade Cottage Christmas

Random photos from Christmas 2014 at Marmalade Cottage.

The Creative Reinventor's youngest sporting a fleece hat (wholly inappropriate for Christmas in Perth, but cute nonetheless).

Christmas breakfast - buttermilk pancakes, smoked salmon, sour cream and excellent coffee.

Jodie the neurotic kelpie snoozing in the sewing room as the Practical Reinventor hurriedly finished sewing gifts.

Last minute decision to sew a new top with fabric that was off grain and rolled in a most difficult fashion.  

The only iPad case like it anywhere!  A present for the Creative Reinventor.

Are we sitting comfortably?

This is the old lounge suite.  The Practical Reinventor has always hated it.  It's not fitted into any house in which the reinventors have lived and it dominated (and not in a good way) Marmalade Cottage.

And this is how much space we discovered when we removed it.

And the new rug

And the new lounge suite with Creative Reinventor ensconced

And suddenly there was enough space to put up the Christmas tree!

And in the meantime...

The Practical Reinventor has been busy.  Stupidly so.  But she is still ashamed at the lack of blogging, and after gentle chastisement from Carol, will endeavour to catch you all up.

The Creative Reinventor has possibly been busier, what with running Bolt Coffee and all, but he never blogs so that's immaterial.

Ahem.

So, since... May, Marmalade Cottage has:

• A brand new, shiny rangehood.  We're still wiping that greasy film off everything and marvelling at its ability to suck;
• A new (old) lounge suite that fits in the lounge/dining room and looks gorgeous.  It's a 1930s merry widow suite (three-seater and two armchairs) loving reupholstered in luxe gold, green and plum fabric.  The purchase also necessitated the purchase of a new rug for the lounge, which involved some quite funny conversations in a number of rug shops;
• Gotten rid of the hideous queen sized bed that took up far too much space in the spare room.  (How wonderful is social media - where you can post a picture and have someone come and take it away and pay for it, all within in the hour?!);
• Also gotten rid of lots of other bits and pieces, again via social media, to create lot of space; and
• Acquired quite a nice sofa bed and another new rug (no funny conversations about that one, the Creative Reinventor just went and bought something he liked) thus transforming the spare bedroom into an art studio.

There's also been some upgrading of MacOS and iPhones which has rather messed up the smooth transfer of photos to blog.  Sorry about that.  Hopefully that'll be sorted soon.

Slow cooking

What with recovering from a nasty workplace injury, then starting a new business, the plinth for the back yard pizza oven got pushed to the back of the list for a while.

 

And now it's ready for the base, which we'd like to be marble or granite, then the oven itself. 

You can't hurry these things.

In which the Creative Reinventor is outnumbered 10 girls to one.

 

Meet Maddie.  Years and years ago, we were around when lovely friends L and D rescued her.  They've had her for all those years and have just upped and moved to Canada.  Somewhat rashly the Practical Reinventor suggested, that if the worst came to the worst, and L and D couldn't find a new home for her in Melbourne, she'd be welcome at Marmalade Cottage.

And so it was the poor dog had the worst day of her life at the end of March.  Taken away from her home without even a blanket, loaded into a cage onto a plane and flown across the country to Perth.

And here's what you do when you're a bit settled in and you've had your first bath, it's a beautiful day, and there's a new park to explore.

She's a Maremma, an Italian sheepdog, and we suspect of quite a distinguished bloodline.
Jodie the neurotic kelpie is very, very slowly getting used to the idea of not being the only dog.  They're not friends yet, but after a fair bit of resentment and a bit of blood, they've reached some sort of detente.

And yes, with one wife, two girlie dogs, one girlie cat and six hens, the Creative Reinventor is the only boy in a multi-species household of girls.

Stay of execution

This plum tree came with the house.  It's properly mature, probably 30 years old and the neighbours kept telling us how much fruit it produces.

Except it's never produced fruit for us. 

One or two, despite clouds of divine blossom and the efforts of our bees.

We gave it a savage prune.

We fed it.

Talked to it.











No change - just a few sad fruit

Our lovely next door neighbour has a similar tree.  Same problem.

We'd just decided to cut it down and replace it with a productive tree when a farmer friend suggested that the problem was likely to be that it needs a pollinator.

As it used to fruit, we think the pollinator was in someone else's back yard.

There are a lot of old houses around us disappearing to make way for blocks of three and four units.  The developers clear the blocks completely.

The practical reinventor managed to pick one plum and take it to a specialist propagating nursery.  Turns out it's a Kelsey plum.  Fairly unusual and a lovely fruit, with sweet pale yellow flesh and lots of juice.

This is a mariposa.  It's a blood plum and should provide both ours and our neighbour's tree with the right kind of pollen.