Hanging Around Home in Autumn

 Our trees are now doing this.
And for the first time in 7 months I'm wearing socks.

 Chuck Norris occasionally needs to wear a jumper when we go out for our daily walks.
Doesn't he look sweet and happy in this photo?
Mr Norris is actually a bit of an asshole on his walks.
Yep. Asshole. 
As we approach the park he starts barking his head off to announce his arrival to everyone and starts pulling very strongly forward. So we do the proper training thing where we give a little tug on his leash and say, "No!" to let him know it's not good behaviour.
But he now does this nasty little trick where he barks, and pulls so he makes an awful choking sound. He does it! Not us! He bloody does it to manipulate everyone else into believing we're horrible, mean dog parents who choke our poor sweet Pugalier when all he wants to do is to get to the park as quickly as possible.

 Asshole.
So now we detour through a few random boring streets before heading to the park so he becomes a little worn out to be bothered trying his assholery on us.

 When we walk, we can sort of forget that there's this coronavirus drama in the world. Until we see some others out walking wearing facemasks.

There's a random assortment of water birds who live in the muddy puddle called a lake at our local park.

 All jackets came off as the sun came out, the kilometres passed by and we warmed up.

Hey there sexy man! You've got a cute bum!

 These small native flowers smelt sweet enough to be reminiscent of spring wattle.

 The trees aren't big enough to have hollow trunks yet, so the council built nesting boxes for local honeyeaters or ring tailed possums.

A council built torture device.

I've been crocheting basic granny squares to make a blanket in yummy, warm colours.

They're just 5 rounds of doubles, then one round of single crochet in a different colour. I'm still not sure if I love it yet? 

 Autumn means Autumn gardening!  I started planting daffodil, Bluebell, Tulip and Hyacinth bulbs along with some pansies, violas and primulas.

Those two maaaa-hoosive tomato plants have finally died back. They gave us kilos and kilos of tiny toms! Now they're just 2 stringy dead vines. I have left them as there are still tomatoes green on the vines. They will continue to ripen. Then I can clear everything from around the lemon tree, give it some fertiliser and a good layer of mulch.

 About 6 weeks ago I threw a few generous handfuls of sulphate of potash around the blackberries. They gave a gorgeous 2nd flush of flowers and now we're getting more blackberries than we had back in January. And they're also much bigger!

 I threw them into this choc drop muffin batter.  Yeah, I know. I baked! A rare event. Very rare indeed. But I was trying to get Sonofagun NO.2 to come and help bake. 
He initially said, "Yeah sure, I'll bake muffins and stuff."
Then after I got everything bakey out of dusty cupboards and announced it was time to bake, he looked at me and said, "Oh, you were serious? Yeah, nah I'm not baking."
Takes after his mother.

 They were alright. Very unattractive for a muffin though. I used to bake muffins ALOT when Sonofagun No.1 was a toddler and I always remember the muffin mixes being wetter. This recipe I found online was kind of dry. I added extra milk. However they tasted delicious and the whole batch of 18 muffins were gone by lunchtime the next day.

We have also like other families across Victoria commenced 'Remote & Flexible Learning'.
Our teachers have worked extremely hard to deliver lessons to the kids every day. Sonofagun No.2s teacher provides us with a PDF every day with a structured lesson plan filled with videos, exercise sheets and links to online resources. It's awesome. 

Here is his efforts for art. He had to draw a face shape, then using grid lines (shown in a video) sketch out the details of the face. He went further than he was supposed to and did the body and a scene around. Then spent more time on the scene when all he was supposed to draw was a face. 

He told me he had never drawn a person before and said he did better than he thought. This person is his favourite Youtuber.

How are you spending your lockdown? I hope you're all safe and healthy! 

Louise

Red Haired Amazona