Autumn

Autumn has definitely arrived, we have abundant fruit from the garden, the trees are turning golden and I'm having to trawl through my recipes for 101 things to do with pears! I have a fabulous little book written by fellow Tasmanian, Sally Wise called; "A Year In A Bottle", it's packed full of great recipes for times of glut. Later today I'm going to try her Pear Ginger, which sounds delicious.

The Kurrawongs are feasting, they're driving Lily mad and she spends alot of the day racing around the orchard trying to catch one, though I don't know what she would do if she managed to do so. I've given up shooing the birds out of the trees, we have too much fruit as it is.

I'll have to put some of the apples through the juicer and freeze it. I did this last year and was totally blown away at how fresh it looked and tasted after several months, makes you wonder what happens to some foods in manufacturing that it seems stale before you've even brought it home from the supermarket. I've noticed this with the jams I've made from our fruit, the colour is so vibrant compared to what is available commercially.

Yesterday a big parcel arrived from the US with a couple of yards of wonderfully long and dense alpaca fur fabric inside, some more black and white to make more pandas! I'll have to rework my large panda pattern some more, I want to get it just right before I cut into these pieces, because the fabric is so beautiful and it was very expensive.

I've almost finished my collection for the Black and White Ball, which is just as well since the deadline for submission of the photos is the 1st of May. I'm going to try and set up a light tent inside to get the photos, the days have been very gloomy lately and I need a more reliable set up so that I can get a really good set of pics.