Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I had a birthday about two weeks ago, and spent about 10 days celebrating it in various ways!

My birthday was a weekday and a work day for me, so we started the weekend before and continued on into the weekend after it.

On the first Friday we drove down to Albany (Western Australia, not New York!), where we stayed for two nights. On Friday night we went to Rustlers Steakhouse where we both had the enormous on-the-rib rib-eye steaks. I had mine medium rare with blue cheese butter and my husband had his with pepper sauce. The sharpness of the blue cheese was a match made in heaven with the char grill flavour of the steak! Mmmmmmm….. Wonderful food!

On Saturday we drove to a neighbouring small town (Mt Barker) where my husband went hunting (vinyl) records in the most amazing ‘collectibles’ store. Amazing because it was almost impossible to move in there — there was SO much stuff. I had to remove my jacket and purse as I was sure I’d knock something over. There were thousands of books, hundreds of records, lots of kitchenwares, tins, toys, and all sorts of STUFF. The guy who owns the store is a real bower bird and I might have found something for myself if his store wasn’t so overwhelming! My husband found about 10-15 records he wanted (he didn’t actually want the records — just the info on them about the tracks, the producers etc. and the liner notes), so he bought those. Oh, and we bought some really nice shiraz from a local winery (Plantagenet Wines).

Later on the Saturday we were back in Albany and it was my turn to shop — this time at the local quilting fabric store (I lead such an exciting life!). We also drove around Albany and out to Frenchmans’ Bay, where stupid me decided I wanted to see the blowholes where the Southern Ocean meets the Australian coast. Surprisingly, my husband came with me (normally he sits in the car and waits until I’ve ‘been there, done that’). It was a long and fairly steep walk down to the blowholes — and it seemed like an even longer and steeper walk back up. I was stuffed!

We had dinner that night at an Italian restaurant in town.

Sunday we drove back home (it’s a 4-hour drive to/from our house to Albany).

On the Monday I went to lunch with two friends at the Apple Basket quilting store and cafe in Donnybrook. I didn’t buy any fabric! We also went to a clothing boutique in town where I bought an outfit.

On the second Saturday we went to my parents’ place about 45 mins drive away. Mum had her 79th birthday on the 22nd, so we combined my birthday and hers plus Christmas by going out to an Indian restaurant on Saturday night. We stayed overnight with Mum and Dad and came home Sunday.

My LONG birthday was over!

Some pictures from the area near the blowholes; I was amazed at the almost perfectly straight split in the large granite rock! Click a small image to show it in full size.

Here are the most recent items I’ve added to my Etsy store (http://RhondaMadeIt.etsy.com). I just love the ‘Finding Nemo’ tropical fish fabric — it’s so bright and cheerful; and the pea fabric. I’ve had the watermelon fabric before, so it was nice to find it in a store again. And the turtle fabric was for some of the people I work with.

Because of my recent shoulder surgery, I haven’t been into the garden for a few weeks. But this weekend I made some progress. I pruned the overhanging vegetation from the fence line (not too much, thank goodness, as I keep it pretty much under control — otherwise doing the perimeter of an acre would be a nightmare); shredded the hard cuttings and put the mulch back on to the garden; and binned the rest (the shredder doesn’t like palm fronds). That was Saturday.

Today (Sunday) it was time to tackle the vege garden where I’d noticed that the spinach plants (Swiss chard and rainbow chard) had transformed themselves into Triffids! They’d all gone to flower and had sprouted up to fence height (6 ft). I removed the flower heads and binned them (I have ENOUGH spinach plants that pop up from nowhere — I sure don’t want more!), then I cut all the leaves off the remaining stalks and threw them over the shredded paper I’d put down on the soil in the vege garden. Hopefully the slaters, soil bacteria and fungi will do their job and break down the paper and the leaves, helping the soil for whatever gets planted or pops up next.

Meantime, the potato plants that sprouted all over winter and that I thought had finished producing (they all died off) have started sprouting again, so it looks like I’ll have a continual crop of potatoes (not that we eat many).