The last weeks of autumn

It’s nearly officially winter but we have been experiencing some beautiful weather still. The Awatere Valley is beautiful in all it’s golden autumn spendor, the vineyards will soon be bare, the garden will soon just be bog but for now everything is just lovely. These two photos are of each end of our street.

The view at the end of one end of our street. I don’t know if this photo shows very well the old Seddon Flax Mill built during WW2, in anticipation of needing to produce our own fibres. It was used but not for long

Looking down our little street, you can see Roger’s dead blue truck parked outside our place, it’s next to the cream house on the corner

Roger has been tidying up the garden, pruning back all the fruit trees, berry bushes and boundary trees. I took this last weekend, he is in there somewhere. all of this along with all the others has been stacked into huge heaps, sorted into firewood, long straight branches to use for staking etc, all the finer stuff put onto next seasons garden spaces, it will kill all the weeds and shed its leaves directly onto the soil which he will then dig in. What remains to be burned will be done at the end of winter.

I sit on a little step out the front on a nice morning to have my coffee. Everything is dying off but still a nice place to enjoy. This, down the front of the house, is the feeder trough we took out of the old shearing shed that was being pulled down. We grew strawberries in it.We have heaps of Chillis growing in the glasshouse and I need to make more Chilli Sauce, I have made two batches so far and not liked either so if anyone has a tried and true recipe for Sweet Chilli sauce they would like to share….?

Feijoas and Figs are still coming thick and fast. Most have been frozen but I have made lots of Feijoa and Walnut cakes, Feijoa and Fig crumbles and a large quantity of Feijoa Wine, which at this stage taste more like a cider than a wine – and a wickedly potent one at that! The Feijoas have been huge this year.One of my readers and dear friend Linne (A Random Harvest) recently sent me money to buy stock to raffle for the people of Vanuatu, recovering from their cyclone. It raised $160 which was awesome, thank you so much Linne. Another here, who I feel would rather remain nameless, gave a very generous donation to a fund for them and I thank her on behalf of our friends there xx you lovely ladies.

When I do my wrappings I make alot of mistakes and have been frustrated at the waste involved so decided to try and recycle those mistakes. My first effort at handmade paper drying in the sun, it has dried Calendula petals and Lemon Verbena in it. I wanted to experiment with something I have plenty of before I use precious Rose petals etc….I need lots of practice!

Other than that I am still busy making soap etc, seeing to Freeconomy which now has nearly 750 members, still drying herbs and flowers and working a little. We have had another spate of quakes so all our stuff has been taken down and lies around the outsides of the rooms, the house looks a mess but better than risking losing everything again. My heart goes out to the people of Nepal who have lived with such terror and lost so much, I can’t imagine what life is like for them these past few weeks!

I almost forgot to say – tomorrow Syd starts his new job as a rest home visitor, a petting dog. I am hoping we both enjoy it!