Sunny Summer Days continued

Following on from my previous post, I'll fill in some gaps of what I was hoping to share before I went off on a tangent.

I mentioned that we went visiting a fair bit, and one place we went was over to the mountains to visit my youngest sister. She is now living in a peaceful town where the birdlife is vibrant and Puffing Billy runs along their back fence. Can you see it there, in the background? We weren't quick enough to catch it going the other way as it was headed downhill, but on the uphill trip we had time to grab the camera, and wave to the passengers.

I also found a lovely selection of new dvds and books from our library, one of which I'd like the children to read next. It's very much a 'living book' for English titled the "The Return of the Word Spy". Ursula Dubosarsky writes in an interesting, conversational fashion which is also a lot of fun. Here are some samples I couldn't resist sharing (click to enlarge).

As far as dvds go, we've been watching "Bleak House" and "Lark Rise to Candleford" (series 1) from the BBC. These have been lovely, and I've been surprised at the interest the children had with Bleak House in particular (although, I think a lot went over their heads ... and Maestro is now interested in reading the novel).  We're now watching some episodes of the "Lark Rise to Candleford" series, which is just delightful.


On the home front, our window painting has halted with the rain and hubby's return to work. Here you can see that one window has it's undercoat on; the other front windows are sanded and taped up ready to go. Even the bird feeder will get it's coat of paint soon .. when the weather dries up again.

In the kitchen, I'm having my very first attempt at making fermented ginger beer. Rhonda has all the instructions over on her blog, Down to Earth. I started making this batch last Thursday, so hopefully we'll be ready to bottle it up by the end of the week. The only set back I'll have is if I don't get enough plastic bottles by then .. and I'm thinking that asking around the neighbourhood won't go astray (yes, we do have some lovely neighbours who don't mind passing on their recyclable rubbish!)

Oh, and last of all, I'm so glad that our hens are laying so well at the moment. When we were visiting our friends (see previous post), most of their hens were having grief from mosquitoes, so laying was erratic. We were also told how some egg suppliers now dye their eggs brown, to promote 'wholemeal eggs'. Now, I haven't seen any labels on egg cartons, but it's something worth checking.