Moving right along

G'day all!

Lots of things are happening around here at the moment.

The garage gnome.

DH and friends have been slaving on the garage.  Seriously.  Last weekend two different lots of people came round and got totally soaked working in the pouring rain and helping reframe and roof the garage.  We really really appreciate their help!  Today another friend came round and pretty much all of the framing is done, only the (short) north wall needs to be done at this point, then we can close in the walls again, put in new windows and doors and do the final, proper roof rather than the temporary plywood one... and get it inspected and put insulation in and then plasterboard and and some flooring....  Only a little bit of work to go!  LOL

All of this bit now is framed up with the new trusses.

It is good to see progress being made.  More than good, exciting!

When I said lots of rain, we got this
in less than 24 hours...

I finished my quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild Riley Blake challenge.  I know a number of people obsessed about what to make.  I sewed strips together with some solids and then played with my Hex n more ruler and made hexagons (that came together much more easily than my last attempt when I cut two different size hexagons!)

 Some of the hexagons are matchy matchy.

Matchy matchy 1

Matchy matchy 2

Some are a bit scrappy

Scrappy-ish 1

Scrappy-ish 2

And apparently the quilt fell off the railing before I got a picture of the completely scrappy hexagon.  I quilted them all with stars of different sorts in them.  The scrappy one has a pointy star, the others more regular stars.

The back will give you a headache if you wiggle it up and down too much!  The central panel is made out of challenge fabric too, including the solid grey.  And I just noticed that I reversed the top panel so it is a mirror image of the bottom one.  Oh well.

Once the weather gets a bit better, I'll wash this quilt and the green one, and the Riley Blake challenge quilt will go to a charity and get a new life there.

We are seeing signs of Spring.  Forced tulips have appeared in the shops.

I buy expensive market ones

An extremely early evergreen Clematis.

A rather excited Rhododendron.
I was excited to see it too.

The crocuses didn't croak in the snow!

Instead more came up!

Real snow drops!

A Rip van Winkle daffodil in a pot

The French Tarragon not only survived
but is apparently thriving!

Today I saw the first cherry plum blooms.  I didn't get a pic of them as the phone was at home charging, plus it was raining at the time.  I've been watching buds getting fatter and fatter.  It is a very exciting time of year.  Two mystery plants in the back yard are Forsythias - one of them is getting fat yellow buds.  It is pretty amazing to think that in another month, everything will be greening up madly and there will be blooms all over the place cos at the moment it feels like winter will never end.

Oh, I went to the city last week and got my dodgy vocal cord looked at.  The specialist said it is working quite well now, not perfectly, but my voice is still rough and I'm still having issues with breathing.  He suggested I see a neurologist - he thinks my tremor is playing into my larynx issues.  (I have a tremor, presumed familial because my mother had one too.  Thanks, Mum, for all the rubbish genes you gave me!)  He said that my larynx is showing signs of spasming, which is probably not helping me breathe.  I'm getting a bit over the whole thing.  I am working on regaining some fitness but I have to be careful - if I get too breathless I go into a panic loop, oddly enough, but if I can get past that breathless stage I'm ok-ish, well as ok as you can be when walking makes you puff because you've lost all fitness.  I'm still doing my rehab exercises though and they are now about as advanced as you can go.  I hope.  LOL  They are pretty darn challenging - one legged pelvic bridges and we are working on getting me onto dead bugs on a foam roller plus other things.  I rubbed my belly the other week and freaked because it felt all stringy and lumpy and weird.  Yup, those would be muscles.  I'm rarely getting back pain any more so the exercises must be working!  Plus I read that for women at least, strengthening your glutes is excellent for your pelvic floor, better than Kegels because it is stabilising the whole area, not just exercising one little bit.  Sorta like doing bicep curls might give you great biceps but your triceps and shoulder muscles and torso muscles and leg muscles are lacking.

Finally, I went up to Swanson's garden centre with a friend yesterday.   I may have bought quite a few bare root fruit trees for our back yard orchard.  At 40% off plus a $25 gift card they didn't cost as much as I thought they would.   They will surely make guest appearances on the blog over the next while. 

Berries!  Blue, tay, boysen and logan.

Today I dug a hole.  Then I dug another hole.  Neither filled up with water.  This is a good thing.  So is the fact that my back didn't give out on me. Then I stuck an apple with five different apples grafted on it into one hole and another apple, an espaliered apple with four different types of apple on it in the other hole.  Digging holes is hard work - the turf is quite thick and then once you get through that, you are into glacial till, which locally seems to be quite loamy but with a lot of pebbles in it.  Gardens grow well in it, but some mulch and stuff would make plants really sing.  I'll look at that sort of stuff once the rest of the major expenses for the garage are out of the way.  I'll also look at paying about two grand to get the lower whorl of the Douglas fir pruned off so it doesn't interfere with wires or next door's plants and also get the laurels removed, including the stumps ground.  Some of those laurels are about two Arnies around.  They are HUGE!

One apple tree planted. Ah-ah-ah.

I'll finish with a couple of links that I've had hanging around for a while.

Go Luke!  I always did like the "good boys".  Sigh.

The Wife and Blake is entertaining me.  I remember when Blake's 7 was required viewing at 7:30 on Friday nights on Auntie (Australia's ABC).  Mum and I would plot how to get everything ready for the Old Man's lodge night and not miss any Blake's 7.

anon!