The Windmill Paddock: November 2015

A Wedding by the Sea: Cec and James #1

08:22:00

She sells sea shells by the sea shore....

Ha Ha!!

Okay, time to get serious.

I am fully aware this post is well, well, well overdue, however I have been waiting for a moment whereby my creative talent and witty writing flow could finally come together to eventually nut this post out.

I have also been waiting very, very patiently to get a hold of a few 'professional' photographer pics to accompany my behind the scenes shots.

Being in the bridal party sure was awesome fun, but my pics clearly do not compare to the quality of the professional photographers.

Hey, we all know we just want to see the bride and groom in their element; To showcase how beautiful my sister looked on her wedding day. OMG!!!

So without further a-do...Here is the Wedding of Cecilia and James.

Part One: From the inner sanctum of the bridal party.

Getting ready to get married should be a fun and relaxing process and on this particular day we, as in the bridal party ticked all of the boxes.

Hair, Check.

Make Up, Check.

Laughs, Check.

The most beautiful flower crowns ever, Check.

Bubbles, Check.

Flowers, Check.

Happy bride, Check, Check, Check!!!

Finally, after a very cold and miserable rainy day the previous day we were treated to some sunshine and a glimpse of what would become the most perfect, sunbeam filled afternoon.

The weather gods sure did turn it on and finally at midday all of our weather apps were put away into the darkest compartments of our bags, totally ignored; and we were basking in the sunshine.

Time to tie up tulle bows, assemble more colourful tissue paper pom poms, sip on bubbles, prepare the after ceremony drinks and then all the rest that entails; the details of wedding preparations.

photographers pic.

Those Flowers. Oh Ruby, Ruby! You did good.

It was fun. It was relaxed, it was easy and it all came together. Perfectly.

I loved that people were coming in and out all afternoon. Our Aunty Michelle and our cousin Fiona were there assigned to make-up, making us all beautiful. Ruby and Kiera arrived to deliver the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. Our good friend Ellie who was the talent behind our awesome hair was part of the day and with Great Aunts making fleeting visits to say hello, uncles dropping in and our brothers finally arriving, it sure was a busy house but it was good busy.

Some brides I know would be aghast that anyone would see them before the big reveal, but not Cec. I think that is part of what made the whole entire day so special. Being able to share it with so many people.

Awwwww!!!

The wedding for us, particularly on the bride's side was pretty special. How can you not get sentimental in a place where much of your childhood summer holidays were spent at the beach at Aireys Inlet.

And lets not forget the whales. How did they know the wedding was happening?

I had never seen any whales out in the ocean here until this particular day. Even the photographer whipped into National Geographic mode when we saw the water spouts at the light house.

It was pretty magical.

Photographers pic

We celebrated this momentum occasion by the Pankiallac Creek at Aireys Inlet. The sun warmed our back and it really was a superb afternoon.

Whilst the bridal party was whisked away for all the photos at various locations in the best place on earth, all the guest sipped on a congratulatory drink or two at the house before embarking on the Fairhaven Surf Life Saving Club.

The caterers and staff here were fabulous and you could not fault the venue. Oh for that view!

The volunteers of the Fairhaven Surf Life Saving Club who helped put this event together did the most wonderful job and the food was outstanding and plentiful.

We danced the house down thanks to The Velvet Arches band and Merril saw us into the evening with all the greatest dancing tracks we know.

For our family, a wedding is a great opportunity to get together and to catch up and lately we have been fortunate to catch up a lot over the last couple of years.

For James' family who are not so large in numbers and who are spread out across the country as well as the continents, it was so awesome to see and hear how happy his parents were that this was the first time is forever that they had ALL of their family and friends together all at once. All in the same room.

Now that is SPECIAL!!!

See weddings really are the best.

I wish Cecilia and James all the happiness in the world. We all had the best night ever and I feel so blessed to have been part of the day.

I hope everything you touch turns to gold.

Cheers!!

Thanks for visiting today.

Elisha xx

P.S...The Professional pics and more of the finer details of the wedding will be up on the blog tomorrow, I couldn't fit them all in. For now i'll just let you all wallow in my Canon 700D snaps. He he!!

P.P.S...and yes you did hear correctly that the bride did stab herself in the leg with the cake knife. Funny story to end the evening but you'll have to commission the bride to tell you that one. I can't stop laughing!!

chickens

A tale of Mite-ee proportions.

08:00:00

The chickens are gone.

Off to greener pastures. No, no, no, not to Steggles, but off to Aroona and by reports and after checking on them on the weekend they have settled in very nicely.

I threw my hands in the air last week and we got rid of the chooks. Bye Bye!!

Why you ask?

Mites.

Teeny tiny, fullstop (.) sized mites.

Horrible things they are.

The kids had been getting bites on them for weeks. Red, flea like bumps that itch like crazy.

Last Monday Hugh was scratching the sides of his thigh and his crotch on overdrive and I asked if he was okay and checked him out of course as all good mums do.

Well, the sight?? He had about 40 bites all within the vicinity of his undies and it was itchy. Really itchy. Poor kid. Cam actually had to tell his kinder teacher when he dropped him off last week that he wasn't suffering some horrible disease or infection of his nether regions because he was scratching so much!!

What the hell?

Then Cam and I put two and two together and remembered the kids playing down in the chook shed on the weekend and realised it was from the chooks.

So out I went to inspect and yep, under the perch crawling in the corner were mites.

It was Quarantine time. I shut the gate of the chook pen to keep the kids out and to keep the chooks in. Then Cam put Pestene powder everywhere. Hopefully this would help until the weekend when we could get rid them and clean out the entire coop.

Then I googled!!

Oh man. I should not have googled. I had bed bugs, mite infestations in the house, mites in the bed, mites on the walls and infestations that could possibly never ever go away. I also felt itchy. You know like that feeling you get when you think of head lice. Yuk!!

One way I was going to combat these mites if they were actually hiding in the house from travelling in with the kids, was to clean, clean and clean. I vacuumed, I washed all the sheets, all the bed covers, I sprayed with all the Eucalyptus and Tea Tree I could muster and wiped over all the walls, and all the beds, basically everywhere. The house was and is spotless.

We didn't have any bites for a few days. Keeping the kids out of the pen was working. Then of course Ollie somehow snuck into the chook pen after the kids went behind the gate to check the raspberries. He was at the hanging feeder, throwing seeds everywhere the little angel. So I grabbed him and once we were out of the pen I took all his clothes off then and there. I spotted two mites on me and then chucked him in the shower just to make sure they were all gone.

At 2am that evening I awoke to Oliver, the usual thing that happens at that time and then once he was settled I was back in bed. Within minutes of turning the light off I could feel them crawling on me. I just had to make sure that it was not just my imagination, so I went into the bathroom and low and behold there they were, three tiny little suckers crawling along my forehead, right on the hairline. Yuk, Yuk Yuk!! I was not impressed at all.

The worst thing about these mites is that they hide during the day and then go looking for food, blood that is, at night time. They attack the chooks while they are on their perches at night time. On humans if they get on you, they feast always in the warmest of places, armpits, groin and even the waist line of your undies and bra. Clusters and rows of bites. You never see the darned things. Only to itch through the aftermath the next few days. The bites really are bloody itchy.

So then of course I nuked the house as any sensible person would do in this situation.

I flea bombed the shit out of it and washed all my bedding...again and sprayed and sprayed more Eucalyptus and more Tea Tree Oil. The mites hate the stuff apparently.
At this stage of my epidemic I knew that is was from going to get Ollie earlier in the day and a few mites had got on me, but just the thought alone of them hiding somewhere sent me into another cleaning frenzy. On the flip side, the house smelt really good again too!!

So last Saturday, Cam cleaned out the pen and we sent the chickens away. Bye Bye chookies!

I know we could have just managed the problem with treatment and Pestene powder, but I just couldn't deal with this happening again. Too much bloody work in my books.

Too itchy!!!

What did I learn from this whole experience??

1. We needed to look after the chooks a little bit better, especially with the sudden humidity and rain. We have obviously had mites forever but proportions were kept in check from the chooks regularly dust bathing themselves. The change in the weather sent the mites into population overdrive and they took over the coop! Next time I will regularly dust the chooks and pen with Pestene or DE powder to keep the mites in check.

2. I discovered a wonderful online site called BackyardChickens.com. They have a service whereby you can ask any questions related to chooks and someone will promptly reply within minutes and in my instance they were very helpful and certainly reduced my worries about mites. They assured me that I wouldn't have a mite infestation in my home, and that once the problem was treated, simply with DE or Pestene Powder, the mites will go away. If only I had found this site earlier instead of Google.

3. Do not google chicken mites. Do Not!! See above.

4. Clearly I am not ready for chooks as much as I would like to think I am. I like the eggs and I enjoy watching them strut around the yard, but clearly with the kids and the inside of the house, Im busy enough. Maybe when we are out at the farm and when the kids are older to help and where we dont have the problems of all the mite carrying sparrows, pigeons, magpies and minors frequenting the cage to steal all the seeds, we wont have this problem again.

Thinking of keeping chooks?
Beware the mite!!

I hope you enjoyed my sentimental pics of our lovely girls throughout this post.

Ill miss them but I wont miss them.

Got any mite tales to tell?

Thanks for visiting today.
Elisha x

gardening

A Tomato Growing Venture #3: Staking Time

22:10:00

image source

Hopefully you are fist pumping the air with all the success you are having out in your garden with your veggies, particularly with the tomatoes. Thankfully and finally we have had some decent rains here this week, so the veggie patch and the tomatoes are very happy indeed.

If you are following along, I thought id share the next instalment of my tomato growing venture as I had another visit form Norm on Thursday.

He came over as it was time to show me how to start stripping the stems as well as staking and a tiny bit of spraying. Those earwigs really are a menace.

As always, its so much easier with pictures so without further a do, here is what has been happening next on this tomato venture.

Do you recall in the second post of this series where I mentioned to bury the lowest shoots of leaves when you were planting the seedlings?

Well, Norm bought over this particular seedling pictured below to show me how abundant the roots on the tomato plant were from planting the seedling this way. As you can see, the top arrow is pointing to the roots that have formed from the first set of leaves.

Below you can see that I have pointed out the little shoot growing in the 'V' where the limb and the stem of the tomato meet.

These little shoots have to go.

You need to check over all your plants and carefully knock these little shoots off. Norm actually used a stanly knife for this and whilst you could probably just use your fingers, for the cleanliness of the cut, a sharp knife would be ideal. You will need to continue to do this over the next few weeks as the seedlings grow.

Norm also cut off a couple of branches that were touching the ground and that were looking a little sad and limp.

Tomatoes sure are hairy buggers aren't they?

The next thing was to stake the tomatoes as they are starting to get some decent height now and need supporting. Norm uses a figure '8' tie for this as the string doesn't slip as easily and the loops around both the tomato and the stake still allow for a tiny bit of movement.

I did take the little windbreak away and probably could have taken the entire shade cover off as the plants are strong enough to survive in the sunshine now, however with the impending rains and storms forecast over the next few days, I thought it'd be safer to leave it on. Its also starting to get very hot here in the afternoons and the plants could also use the protection from that hot afternoon sun.

Last but not least of the major jobs was to give the plants a spray of a mild insecticide. As you can see below, the earwigs are having a lovely feast in the patch and they just have to go. This will be done every 2-3 weeks, depending on the damage and the weather of course. I couldn't tell you what Norm used. He brought over his little spray unit and went to town. Though he did say any Yates insect spray or similar product would be fine.

I also pulled out a few competing weeds that were sprouting and that was it.

So there you have it in a nutshell, 4 more easy tips for your continued tomato growing.

1. Take off those unwanted shoots at the 'V' on your plants.
2. Stake and tie up the vines for support.
3. Spray pests
4. Keep the weeds at bay.

I hope your tomatoes are looking good.

What else have you been doing to nurture yours along?

Thanks for visiting today.
Elisha xx

Dont forget, you can catch up on all the tomato growing fun here in the paddock in the last two posts of the series: