Babushka with Pine Cones!

Another useful thing to do with vintage fabric bags.

Gets me out of going for an official walk today.

It's pretty chilly, and wet under foot. I didn't fancy walking up our busy road because I have to dive off into the long grass whenever a car comes along. And get wet up to my knees! UGH!

So I went off down to the 100 Acre Wood to look for a Woozle.

Didn't find one, but I did find a few pine cones along the fence line.

Meanwhile, I have been progressing with the picnic quilt a bit more.
It will be quite spectacular on the lawn in the summer time.

Sitting inside by the fire now, burning pine cones because I can!

And reading my June NZ House and garden, and dreaming of spring.

I'm such a sook about the cold!

Once there was a little yellow bunny...

Once there was a little yellow bunny who was bought from the op shop for 50 cents.

She was a cheerful little bunny, in a very sunny shade of yellow.

She made friends in the garden with the other bunnies - except they didn't say much.

She thought they must just like to play statues a lot.

She kept a look out for other yellow things, of a more ferocious nature...

that might also be in the garden.

On occasions she hid from the ferocious things behind a rose bush - but not very well!

Nasturtium leaves work better. And they make good umbrellas if it rains!

Next she hopped up on the sewing trolley, to try it our for size.

And posed amongst the tea things...

And cuddled up to the Granny rug, which she
noted now had two completed rows.

Then it was time for tea...

And sticky date puddings with caramel sauce.

Which she ate with a runcible spoon ...

Of ducks, rhubarb and pianos.

It's opening weekend of the duck shooting season here in New Zealand. An important part of Kiwi culture or (culcha as we call it:P). It runs from the first weekend in May till some time in June. I don't know when, but I assume the duck shooters do. Preparations are made for weeks beforehand. Ducks are fed grain to attract them to your particular water way, Mai-mais are constructed or re-furbished (hut made out of whatever is to hand that will afford reasonable camouflage and access to said ducks without said ducks noticing - yeah right!) on the edges of lakes, and duck calls are practiced (there's a special device used to make duck calls something like a mouth organ crossed with a reed), and decoys are dusted off in bloke's sheds all over NZ. This year there are supposed to be slim pickings in the Waikato and Northland due to the drought conditions, but I don't expect that will put anyone off.

In the Taranaki Daily News on Saturday morning in an article entitled, "A day for 'real' men",

a certain Mr Mc Donald is quoted as follows: "Any self respecting duck shooter has a black lab. You can get away with yellow or brown labs, but anything that's not a lab is not a dog."

(Lab = labrador ). Get the picture?

My weekend has been very busy blog chics, although no duck shooting was involved, and no ducks were harmed in the making of this blog post I assure you. It began with a four hour trip to move a piano, bought on Trade Me for my son's 21st birthday. I managed to find one in Hamilton, where Callum is at uni, and to press gang flatmates and a friends into muscle power to move it. It took four of them, and was such a delicate and intense operation, I completely neglected to take photos because I was very busy telling Jessie not to trip over the flower pot and Jason to mind out for that low branch!

This is where we always stop for coffee on the way to Hamilton. It's almost exactly half way, and is very remote, but oh so cute, and always good coffee and scones. It's a little coastal village called Mokau. This is the River Run cafe. Famous for it's whitebait fritters, but I can only vouch for the coffee!

This is over the road. State Highway something or other. Can you believe that? This is a main road.

Had to have a go at a woolshed or too as we sped past.



Today I have been very busy domestic goddess wise. Everything at the Magpie House is spic and span, and even the garden is weeded and the lawns mown.

I found this when I was cleaning Sarah's room.

The blog Goblins got me for a while as I procrastinated about weeding and mowing. I had to take a little diversion around the blogs first - while the ground dried out you understand...

Having achieved all that I thought I might cut some of the rhubarb
that grows in my weed /compost heap
and make it into something.

Which I did. I put it into a modified ginger crunch recipe that originally came from Sweet Mary's blog.

And it came out like this! I did a little taste test, and you can't taste the rhubarb that much, as it is a bit overpowered by the ginger. It's kind of a bit like a rhubarb ginger crumble slice.

Very elegant I think.

Today's blog was brought to you by the colour blue.

Callum's birthday cake.

My beautiful blue plumbago which is flowering madly at the moment.

I think this is a little campanula.

Plumbago against the old iron fence.

I just bought this from www.shabbyfufu.com
It's just so lovely.

Have a great weekend everybody.

A small explosion in the universe!

A small explosion happened in the universe over night!
No, it was not the Large Hadron Collider blowing up again!! (Did you know that one of the guys that does the night shift on the LHC is a Kiwi?) It was what's known as "the Happy effect". It's a new law of quantum physics that I just invented. There is now a mall black hole out there somewhere in the blogaverse and it'll suck you in.... to reading my blog. It happened because Happy http://happylovesrosie.blogspot.com/ blogged about designing my blog graphics and now I have 20 followers! Such a lovely surprise for a new blogger. Thanks for your lovely comments too. I have enjoyed visitting you all .






I did eventually get to the weeding that I was supposed to have been doing five days ago. It's looking much better, and my autumn pansies are growing well. I just love purple!!
Autumn in my garden is a bit of a clean up and put everything to bed time.



Chooky doesn't put himself to bed, he just stays out in all weathers gathering a lovely layer upon layer of lichen.

These are my sturdy stockman's boots that I ware in the garden. I inherited them from my sister, so they are actually about two sizes too big for me, but I love them. When I went through customs coming back from playing jillaroo in Australia a few months ago, they had to pick out all the raisins from the treads! It took ages...Raisins you ask? Well, that's what you do when you're keeping a one year old and "The Woozle" who is three amused on a trans Tasman flight. You give them raisins of course, then you stand in all the dropped ones when you change a nappy, and they end up in your boots.
Thanks for stopping by blog chics!