When Guy died earlier in January, Larry plummeted into a life of quiet aloneness.  He stopped making guinea pig noises and would sit for hours totally still.  I guess considering he spend almost every day of his 5 years with his buddy Guy, losing him would have been earth shattering to the poor little dude.

P also had a lone guinea, Rusty, whose own friend died about a year ago.  So there seemed an easy solution and when TnT came over for dinner last Wednesday night they brought a little box with holes in it that contained Rusty.  Cliff put Rusty into Larry’s cage and they quickly introduced each other.

It has now been almost a week and both are very happy.  They eat together, sleep together and are both making all the proper guinea pig noises again.  Today is Australia Day 2010 and the boys are enjoying their daily feast of freshly picked grass, lettuce, carrot, cucumber and a bowl of rabbit mueslie!

Ingredients - Mushroom soup

Our

Cream of mushroom soup with sauteed mushroom garnish

home grown mushrooms became mushroom soup tonight.   I sliced the mushrooms and set aside 1/4 of them.  Dice two potatoes, one sliced leek, dice 1/2 small red chilli and several garlic cloves.  Add all ingredients to hot wok with olive oil and cook for a few minutes, add knob of butter and cook for further 5 minutes then add water to just cover and simmer for 10 minutes until all veges are soft.  Set aside into a bowl and then cream with food processor.  Put the set aside mushrooms in hot pan with olive oil and diced parsley and sautee until brown.  Plate the soup, add a sploosh of cream and top with the sauteed mushrooms and a parlsley sprig.  Eat with crusty bread.  Delicious!

First Mushroom Crop

Watching mushrooms grow has been amazing.  Mushrooms literally grow before your very eyes.  Even checking them at a 2 hour interval you could easily see their growth.  By day 6 they were just about ready to harvest but we waited until Sunday afternoon to do it.  By then the buttons had mostly opened up.  The first crop weighs a little under a kilo so already the yield value is greater than the purchase price of the mushroom farm.  Growing mushrooms is great fun… you can grow them inside (I grew mine in the bathroom - under the towel rack!), they don’t get attacked by bugs, they grow very fast.  I find I can be a little impatient waiting for veges to grow enough to harvest so the mushroom experience has been great!

Mushrooms (10 + 3 days)

Growing mushrooms at home is just the easiest thing.  You buy a box from the plant nursery which has a thick layer of peet moss at the bottom that has already been inpregnated with mushroom spore.  There is a separate plastic bag containing moist, rich soil which you add water to until you can squeeze drops out through your fingers.  You spread out the wet soil (but don’t press it down).  Then you close over the plastic cover and re-close the box and leave it for 10 days in a non-drafty spot.  I’ve been keeping the box in the bathroom and check the progress each day.  On day 12 there were tiny little button mushrooms showing.  By day 5 they had increased five fold (photo).  Their growth is astouding…. you check in the morning and you can SEE the growth they’ve made during that day when you check them at night.  I imagine we’ll be eating these in a few days.

Fence destroyed by strong winds

Finally after 5 dry months we had our first wet week of 2009.  This didn’t come in the form of a mere drizzle but hit with 120km winds, storm clouds and very heavy downpours.  We certainly needed the rain badly.  Our small dam at our Piesse Brook property had been completely dry for the past few weeks which is a first in the 6 years we’ve had it.  Of course the road drains, house gutters and ground couldn’t not keep up with the deluge so there was quite a bit of flooding around.  By far the biggest damage however, was done by the wind.  An area near us (Riverton) bore the brunt of the storm and the news showed homes without roofs, huge trees flattened as well as one poor sole who lost both of their cars and their home to a massive gum tree which pulverised the lot.  We however suffered our first major storm damage at our new home, exactly one year after moving in.  During the night on Thursday 21st May, well at 3am on Friday 22nd to be exact, squawling winds hit our place.  There was lots of banging and crashing, which we discovered in the morning, was our side fence being smashed to pieces.  This fence is the divider between us an the neighbour on our left. (which is actually the RIGHT side on the top photo as I’ve take the photo from the back fence looking down to the front of our property with OUR house on the left!)

We contacted our insurance company who sent out their assessor this morning.

32m of (ex)fence

They will pay 1/2 of the 32 metres of fencing that needs to be replaced (our neighbours insurance company needs to pay 50% also).  We are hoping our neighbour will agree to replace the hardiflex (cement panel) fence with colourbond instead as this will match the other 2 sides of fence and not only look beter then the grey cement but will be far stronger as it has a cemented in downpost both sides of every panel.

We were very greatful that our guinea pigs were not in their wire cage on the grass up in the back corner because the fence fell in that direction (to the right looking at this photo towards the back fence) and would have squished them flat!

We we also glad we didn’t have Mahli (JR) as she would have no doubt done a runner with the fence down before we woke up!

We’ve had some nice cold nights in the past week that have been brought with this weather front.  Last night was a chilly 5 degrees… lovely!  Nothing nicer than a chilly night, with the windows open snuggled up with someone you love and your fluffy doona!

Is it only me or has Gretel Killeen new ‘pixie cut’ exposed her as a Romulan?

After a year of slowing turning blonde I have decided I am ‘over  blonde’ and am contemplating going back to being a brunette.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, blondes do have fun but I think as I was born a brunette and having lived 42 years as one (and 1 year as a blonde) and can say without any shaddow of a doubt I prefer life as a brunette.  Now, just to convince my hairdresser!

Pityriasis Rosea

Mid January this year I had a small red circle on my left hip that looked like ringworm.  I couldn’t imagine why I would have a ringworm but decided to treat the offending patch with anti fungal cream.  The day after I first applied the cream the small red patch had grown in size to double the prior day and was red and angry and a bit sore.  Over the next few weeks the patch got bigger and bigger until it was 5cm long.  The raised edge lessened and the patch was dry and scaly.  I decided the time had come to go and see the chemist to get a different cream.  The chemist had a look and said he thought it was bacterial, not fungal, and that was why the cream had not worked.  He said I would need antibiotics and so I booked a Dr appointment.

By the time my appointment came around a week later I had developed about a dozen other red patches on my body mostly on my stomache and breasts.  Each was the size of a small coin.  The Dr took one look and said the sore on my hip was called “The Herald Patch”…. and is called so because it ‘heralds’ the onset of my inflication - Pityriasis Rosea… which apparently is a viral infection that teenagers and young adults catch.  Hmmm… so here I am just weeks away from being 43 and I have a teenage virus…. great!   Anyway….. PR usually lasts 8 weeks and is likely to cover your entire torso, upper arms and legs, neck and sometimes face.  Great!… NOT.   There is no cure, no treatment, just a waiting game.  The Dr gave me cortisone cream to use on any of the sores that were itchy or very sore… but I found the cream was like vasaline and very unpleasant to have plastered on your body.

So… here I am 7 weeks down the track and I have about 100 of these…. they are worst on my breasts and stomach…. they have crept down the tops of my arms, under my arms, on the back of my thighs, the back of my neck and into my hair and now on my chest and creeping up my neck.  I ITCH…. I itch all over.  Apparenly only about 5% of people itch.  Apparently it is supposed to be gone in 8 weeks but as I head into week 8 new small spots are starting all over my back and along my arms.  I looks like I may be one of the lucky 5% who have a longer inflication….. I may be even super lucky to hit the 6month record!  I just hope I am not one of the 1% who keep it or get it several times!

The 'S-man' - Fashion Statement or Human Fly?

From time to time my kids surprise me with their bizarre fashion statements.  Normally teenagers, especially boys, don’t like standing out in a crowd.  They don’t like to wear leary t-shirts or shoes that are ‘different’.  then….. out of the blue weirdness happens!

Last year M got this weird hat… it is sort of blues brothers meets old man driving!  It is black and seems to be a permanent fixture on his head.

Step-brother S decided he liked THAT hat so at Christmas I managed to track down another one.  However, S’s is white with thin black stripes.  The two of them are quite comical and neither bats an eye lid when adults (or anyone) pokes fun at them for wearing their old man hats.  In fact they seem to take this with delight rather than distane.

So…. Saturday comes around and S has pocket money burning a hole in his pocket.  He decides to head to the city wth his sister C to go to ‘Skunks’ which is (apparently) a very “cool shop”.  An hour later he arrives home with his prize!  Of course ‘THE HAT’ and ‘THE FLY GLASSES’ had to come camping with us to Dwellingup.  Cool huh!

Redback Spider

Outside of our house has been over run with Redback Spider lately.  Redbacks are an Aussie icon… but they are totally evil.  They are very poisonous.  Though we have a lot of poisonous animals and insects here in Australia… from spiders, octopus, fish to snakes and even platypus!

Redbacks have a very messy web.  They put out web in a messy, criss-cross, type of setting that leaves and bugs settle on.  They tend to put their nests at floor level and the spider hides in some crevice being or under something dark.  This particular spider is a nasty big female.   She was hiding behind some bags of potting mix but her tell-tale web branched out messily between the bags and a big terracotta plant pot.  It was close to the floor and had leaves and numerous beetles and bugs in the web.  She also had two huge egg sacks hidden away behind the bags - which I squashed straight away.

These nasty redbacks seem to be in plague proportion at certain times of the year…. mostly it seems from spring through to summer… just in time when you are outside doing gardening.  It is always wise to wear gardening cloves this time of year because you never know where redbacks are hiding.  Their bite is painful and requires a cold pack to elliviate the pain while you get to hospital.  I squashed this one after I took the photo!