The Vividness ...

by Simone McPherson

I have finally put the Flannelette sheets and the Doona on our bed.  The days have been slowly getting cooler and cooler.  Though we are very fortunate for the way that our house has been designed ..... 

 ........ facing North with big windows and the concrete floor - for the moment, tiles one day! – that captures the heat of the day - Solar Passive - it is so lovely and warm in the evenings, that we still have no outside heating that we have to rely on. 

We are so lucky here, for in this climate we still have blue endless skies that go on forever and sunshine which is a great ‘Plus’.   For one thing you don’t get the ‘Blues’ with all that vitamin D from the sun and I do believe that the colour Blue also has an effect on your psyche as well.

The wonderful rain that we had over summer ........

........has filled all the dams and it is at this time ....... 

........that water becomes critical as we do not get as much rain over our winter months here.  

And especially at the moment, as the rest of the Eastern seaboard of Australia and the Southern States are going through their worst Drought for many years and the loss of Stock is starting to take its toll on those people that are holding cattle and other stock on their properties.  Our thoughts are with these People and their families at this time, it's hard for producers when they depend on the weather for rain.

In between mustering this week, we managed to slip into Stanthorpe to see how the Camp draft Championships were going.  

They had more than 700 entries and all the riders – of all ages and backgrounds were having a wonderful time for what we could see. 

I don’t have much of an idea on the pros and cons of Camp drafting so El Ranchero was my interpreter ......

.....as the riders and their horses went through their paces.  We were only there for an hour or so ...... 

as we had to get back home to finish up on our own Stock work waiting for us ........

I also have been working on three paintings that I have entered in our local little art exhibition held by the Granite Belt Art Group.  I am not a member as such and have not entered an art exhibition for a number of years now.  The exhibition of Arts and Crafts is held every second year at the start of June at a local old Woolshed at a property called Bendee, which for us is only about half an hour’s drive north of where we are.  The theme this year is – to do an image reminiscent of the District – landscape, wool, sheep, cattle etc.  

 

SIR ARTHUR STREETON 1867 - 1943

I would love to paint – one day - the Australian landscape like one of Australia’s most famous landscape painters from the turn of the century, Sir Arthur Streeton – 1867-1943.  Sir Arthur Streeton was part of a group of Australian Impressionist artists that belonged to the ‘Heidelberg School’ in Victoria, Australia along with fellow contemporaries Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin.  

APPROACHING STORM by SIR ARTHUR STREETON - private collection

Sir Arthur Streeton was a wonderful painter, in my opinion ..

GOLDEN SUMMER - EAGLEMOUNT by SIR ARTHUR STREETON

....he really captured the vividness of the  beautiful Australian ‘Light’ and his pallet of colours are just magnificent, they are so true to the Australian landscape, the Australian Bush! I hope they bring you as much joy as they do for me ........

... make me smile

by Simone McPherson

For the past week Porky Girl has been off work due to a sprained fetlock.  That in turn has meant that I too, have been off work as well – well not really, but it sounds good.  The other morning while we were attempting – and I do mean attempting - to bring in a mob of Weaners, the little blighters ‘Split’ and all Hell broke loose! … And that is putting it mildly. 

I in a split second of bravery thought that Porky and I would race off after the little ‘poo-heads’ – I spun her around and …… Oh! No!  I knew what I had done as she has a weakness in her front leg from a past injury and in my lapse of not thinking I had damaged her Fetlock, again!

   

She did not want to miss out on all the action as she gets quite excited when we start bringing cattle in and wanted to keep going, Bless her little cotton socks!   

So I dismounted and we walked back home together to the yards, a good 30 minutes away ….. 

There is always some other jobs to carry on with when you have interruptions like this including, following El Ranchero around as backup in the Land-rover.  
  

And it has also given me time to get on with a little job that I had started a few weeks ago and needed to finish – the Salad Garden!

My little garden had come to its end after many, many months of lovely salad greens and herbs, now that the cooler months have started to encroach on us, though the days are still magnificent …. 

I had to say goodbye to all the beautiful Silver beet and ..... 

 ......the ‘Hello Dolly’ daisies until next year. 

So it was down to the yards, we had been keeping a few of the weaners back to put into different paddocks and ....... 

 ...... they all left me some lovely manure. 

So over the next week in-between here and there, I filled up

 ........ nine chaff bags of goodness! .........
   

 ......... I also dug out the old containers as I had had tomatoes in one, they are heavy feeders.  So lots of agricultural lime went into that container and I also had to do some rearranging as I did not have enough clay in the bottom of the containers - just to hold a bit of the moisture in - being steel drums they do tend to heat up a little, so I try to keep them cool with mulch and by doing a layer of clay on the bottom, seems to work.

I am not planting too much over the winter months as we get frosts and there is no sun on the southern side as the earth shifts it's axis in winter.  It's also our driest time and water is at a premium here …..

So I have just planted some Violas – Pink Surprise, and some Pansies – Chianti, they are really for colour and they have happy little faces too .......

....... it can get pretty bleak as we head into winter.  This is one of the many storms that went through here last year - we got ice which was very unusual!

I also transplanted some of my little Johnny Jump Up’s – they are so sweet and hardy ...... 

......... they have all transplanted themselves into the rocks along the side of the veranda .......

 ........ from last year when I had them in pots on the veranda.  I still have an abundance of Italian Parsley, Thyme and plenty of lavender to make me smile over the winter months that are coming up and that keeps us both happy and smiling our little bits of Sunshine ......

...there they are

by Simone McPherson

 

For the past week or so we have been mustering cattle.  The weather has been glorious to say the least and the musters have been good without any anxiety, you know the sort that one gets working with animals, so along the way I've been thinking .......

Being a bit of a collector of ‘things’, yes I am guilty of picking up and searching out, for these ‘things’ that catch my eye and my imagination. 

It could be a colour or colours, I found these pieces after doing some gardening and coming across an old house tip, what a find! just precious ..... 

..... it could be a texture, a shape or even the way a particular object looks .....

...... old and weathered perhaps; the telegraph poles were only taken down in the early 1970's and phone lines were put in, does not seem that long ago ....

 .......of things rusting away or ....... 

.......just a piece of nature like a rock - I find these 'love hearts' everywhere - do you think it's a 'SIGN' ? - ah! well ..... they're gorgeous ....

Then I find myself picking up that ‘thing’ and putting it into my pocket or putting it in the back of the Land-rover much to El Ranchero’s dismay?....

 ... there are a few old 'tips' around the property and in these old 'tips' there are wonderful examples of old glass and ...

 ....... if you are really lucky you find 'whole' bottles - now that is a treasured find!

I have also found, that in my search for ‘things’ - that living in the Bush one has to make do with what is around the place - bush ingenuity – I believe it’s called.

It’s a type of craftsmanship of creating something with what is found in the shed.  This is a big old tin, and El Ranchero tells me that it has been turned into a type of portable heater for when the Drovers were droving sheep, back in the 1930's & 40's.  It gets very cold here in winter, in the evenings and these Drovers would camp out for days and weeks on end, there would not have been a sole around for miles, back in those days, totally self-sufficient ..........

They would also use what ever they could find in the yard or lying around the paddock somewhere ....... a chain for dogs perhaps? out of wire ....

or a chain made for a gate? ........and I have found many objects that have intrigued me that come from this type of ingenuity.

And then there are the things of the past, things of a time gone by that have been forgotten about but have silently just slept as the world has gone on around them.

And these objects are like little bits of a ‘Pirates Treasure’ when I do come across them; I feel like a little girl on a Treasure hunt and become very excited upon discovering lost riches, well to me at least.

And then there are the other ‘things’ that mysteriously appear out of the washing machine?  Now, these ‘things’ are intriguing, as one does wonder, how on earth did they get in there in the first place? – I have no recollection at all of ever putting these ‘things’ into the washing machine – but there they are all washed and cleaned!