photography

Maybe a Mabey Bridge

/ one2travelfar / 1 Comment

 

The bridge separating from shore

 

 

We spoke with engineers last week about our closed bridge.  I thought they told us we may be  getting a new bridge.  Or we were maybe getting a bridge.  But what they were actually talking about was a Mabey Support Bridge as a stopgap measure.  It seems like it arrives, prefabricated and is rolled over the new bridge relying on a longer portion of the road as its support.   It’s a good thing too because the rain we had the past couple of days is really undermining the support and the adjacent road.  Our neighbors walked home last night and luckily missed this new gaping 15 foot deep hole.

 

 

 

Since the High Peaks were closed this weekend, we explored our backyard and the views were beautiful.   We walked up to a very large beaver pond behind our house.  The dam raised the water level by six feet and the beavers had worked on some enormous trees.  Now it explains why I heard a tree fall one day from home.

The view above our house

Beaver dam with pond behind it

 

Tim dwarfed by an abandoned log

Tree fungi

 

What would a beaver outing be without some fungi?

Whose stool?

Backyard backcountry

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We had a chance to caretake in our backyard, almost.  We spent last weekend as volunteer hosts at Johns Brook Lodge, three and a half miles into the woods.  We had a huge tent on a platform, near trees carved with bear scratches.  Someone said they scratch trees to mark their maximum height to gauge their prey?  or to see who is the biggest bear around?  I wanted to get a ladder and make my own marks way up high.

I now have 3 and 2/3 “46’s” under my belt.  46 mountains in the High Peaks region thought, when they were originally selected, to be over 4000 feet high.  To make up that 1/3, when I thought the view was just fine from below the summit, I’ll have to hike the whole hill again. So only 43 left to go!  The weather was mostly fine, the water, crisp and clear and the food at Johns Brook Lodge, abundant and delicious.

Back at the ranch, I ate half our apple crop!

I may be lazy but the beavers are not

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

IMG_0643.JPG

After a wet start, the summer has been beautiful. I’ve enjoyed a few hikes and bicycle rides, not nearly as many as I should but I’m working on this quilt…and working and even got to crew a couple of days on the Friendship Schooner, Whistling Man, with Tim. He got a big kick telling people I was his mate on and off the boat. I refrained from saying he was always my captain! We had nice wind the first day and dead calm the next. I had to enlist paying customers to help me raise the sails. Kids that came on the boat really only wanted to check out the head.

IMG_0652.JPG

IMG_0661.JPG

We spotted this porcupine lumbering in the woods when we went for a hike on a quest to find some beaver dams I had seen earlier in the spring. He wasn’t in a rush and didn’t even flinch when I whistled for Tim who had gone on ahead. He casually climbed this tree and perched there and watched us as we entered the woods.

I had a couple of non-believers when I kept saying I was sure I had seen the dams on the Beaver Flow trail. Wouldn’t you think? It turns out they are near the Beaver Flow trail but not exactly on it. We had to bushwack quite a bit along the flow to find their work after we made a phone call for better directions.

Finally we were rewarded with lots of evidence of beaver work and at least one broken and two functioning dams.

IMG_0672.JPG

The fungi take over where the beaver left off.

IMG_0666.JPG IMG_0671.JPG  

These are the country roads we ride close to home. Luckily this was only uphill in one direction.

IMG_0679.JPG

I eat eggs benedict while beavers and fungus eat trees

/ one2travelfar / 1 Comment

IMG_0636.JPG

I didn’t know dragon flies came in bi-plane varieties

.IMG_0638.JPG

I am not sure if he had it before, but Tim’s recent fascination with log construction extends to logs cut and used by beavers. We’ve watched The best dam movie, about beavers, and visited his favorite beaver dam on route 73, more than once. It’s right on the road and has defied man’s attempts to stop it, dammit.

IMG_0641.JPG

In the meantime, fluorescent fungi take a slow approach.

IMG_0650.JPG

I was under the weather the other day and it was hot out so I sat in our cave-like basement and watched cooking shows. Cooking as a competitive event takes the fun out of it. Except of course when a contestant wanted to sample something he was making in the blender while it was blending. You get the picture.

One show’s final challenge was eggs benedict in 20 minutes. I decided to give it a try since I had made a fresh batch of english muffins. I pulled out my good old Julia Child cookbook and away I went. The canadian bacon turned out perfectly and I lost a few pounds whisking eggs when the temperature was 90 degrees.

Then I decided, Elizabeth Zimmermann is to knitting as Julia Child is to cooking. That’s why I am a fan of both.

My head is still in the clouds

/ one2travelfar / 2 Comments

I can’t believe we’ve been home a month already. We’ve been busy organizing and getting reacquainted with family, friends and our lovely home in the mountains.

.IMG_0178.JPG

I made my first batch of cream cheese from a batch of yogurt that I heated too high and killed all that good bacteria. It was delicious on home made toast with jam. ‘ve got bread, bagels and, almost, english muffins perfected, I still need to get those nooks and crannies like Thomas’ does. Now that I’m discussing food, I imported ten boxes of Tim Tams and gave them away to a select few (and ate a couple of boxes myself with a little help from Tim). I was shopping in Brooklyn, NY and right at the checkout counter my son discovered Pepperidge Farms Tim Tams. Apparently they are an affiliate of Arnott, the original Tim Tam baker and sell them in the United States from October to April. So we can all enjoy the Tim Tam slam next winter and fill the void when the Girl Scout thin mints are all gone.

IMG_0181.JPG IMG_0203.JPG IMG_0215.JPG

We’ve got a new visitor too. This pheasant seems to enjoy our house, walks up to the window and pecks and cleans up after the birds at the feeders

IMG_0263.JPG

Our last night in Tasmania

/ one2travelfar / 1 Comment

We’ve said a lot of goodbyes lately. Goodbye to the islands of the Bass Strait-Deal, Dover, Erith and Flinders; goodbye to the people we met; and now goodbye to Tasmania after four wonderful months. We loved how people here know how to embrace life with clean air, wonderful food, beautiful water and islands.

We spent a few days outside Hobart and I got to visit a fiber guild and then a day of dyeing. I needed a fiber fix with ladies. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with guys this summer doing manly things.

The wildlife is different from Deal Island, but interesting nonetheless. I never got any good photos of the Black Swans in Hobart.

P3160119.JPG P3170133.JPG

These ladies laid some glorious eggs for breakfast.

P3170125.JPG

We spent a morning in the brand new MONA in Hobart, the Museum of Old and New Art, which displays an interesting private collection. Tim’s favorite was the poo machine, which mimic’s the human digestive tract. It’s fed twice daily and produces once a day like clockwork, with the aroma to prove it.

P3170129.JPG

Mine was the goldfish juxtaposed with a huge knife. P3170130.JPG  

Local lizards, beetles, possums and snakes

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

I’ve grown fond of the lizard who hangs around the sun room. I can hear the little pitter, patter of his feet as he runs across the linoleum. He no longer resides in my sneaker but I found where he was storing his food stash. He made quick work of a little beetle.

P3030121.JPG P3030123.JPG

These beetles give off a strange scent. i thought I was smelling mildew in the house, but Tim figured out it was the beetles that get inside the house. Stinky bugs. Other huge beetles remind us of the “Cluster Flies” from home. In the morning, we find them lying on their backs doing the back stroke to death. They are so large, when they land on their backs, their legs aren’t long enough and can’t give them enough leverage to flip back over. Then I sweep them outdoors.

P2220156.JPG

This beetle was floundering around the other day. It’s very ornate with a superstructure antenna. Unfortunately, it makes it unstable and top heavy and it also has a hard time flipping over when it lands on its back.

P3010141.JPG

We watch movies on the computer and have been sitting in the sunroom at night. Since it is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows on three sides, the light shines around the periphery outside. We have learned a possum makes a nightly trek around the house, checks out the barbecue for snacks and heads off.

This is the largest white lipped snake I have seen here. I guess it does have white lips. I stamped my foot and it slithered off into the tussocks. It left the wallaby turd behind.

P3040118.JPG P3040121.JPG

If you want to learn to cook, go some place beautiful where there is no food

/ one2travelfar / 8 Comments

I guess it could backfire, but it has worked for me. I’ve enjoyed figuring out what to eat and trying new recipes to expand the menu. The other day, I wanted something different to drink and made a batch of ginger ale. It was a little nerve wracking because it carbonates and makes its fizz in the sealed bottle. If you let it go too long, the bottle explodes. I found myself testing the plastic bottles for fullness a lot. The recipe came from a Google search and worked well.

P3010117.JPG

 

My techniques for making bread, yogurt, bagels, pizza and english muffins have been refined and perfected over the past three months. And I have had a good workout to boot. I don’t have any power appliances, so I knead, stir, cream and mix all by hand. Sometimes, I even work up a sweat. How nice if you could burn off the calories before you actually ate the food!

Often, I just look at the provisions and figure out what I have a lot of and need to cook. So I made gnocchi from potatoes; creamy tomato soup, sloppy joes and lots of sauce from tomatoes; oatmeal cookies and scones from oatmeal, chicken curry from the large tin of curry powder; beet soup, carrot cake, semolina pudding, and risotto.

P2110134.JPG P2140118.JPG P2140119.JPG P2160122.JPG

Things really become interesting and unpredictable when I have to substitute ingredients. The other night, I tried to make an icing from yogurt and thought I would counter the acidity with baking soda like you do when baking. Instead, I had an acid-base reaction in bowl and inedible icing. I tried again without the baking soda and it was fine.

P3010126.JPG

Now where is that recipe for roast goose?

It’s March 1 and the first day of Fall?

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

Seasons are strictly by the calendar in Australia. None of this equinox, solstice stuff. Summer ended on February 28 and Fall began today. I’ve made a silent vow to walk a track a day until we leave. These photos are along the creek to Little Squally Cove on the south eastern side of the island.

Little Squally Waterfall Little Squally cairn Little Squally Creek

The view from the lighthouse overlooking the compound and Erith Island.P2270140.JPG

Returning home on the lighthouse track with a mother and joey wallaby.P2270142.JPG

Yesterday, I submitted the monthly totals of rainfall to the Bureau of Meteorology. We had 121.6 mm of rain for the month, which is the most rainfall on Deal Island since 1939. We experienced one of the wettest summers in 72 years! And it was wonderful.

Since it’s the first day of Fall, we have cold gale winds. The garden is looking so good. I hope it survives. When the sun comes up, I’ll check and consider setting up barriers around the smaller plants again. Then rinse the sea salt and keep my fingers crossed. We’ll see if I take a walk today.