Soap

I have been collecting the scrag ends of soap for quite some time.  All kinds of soap.

The jar I've been collecting them in gradually filled up.  At the weekend I decided it was time to do something with them.

So I tipped them into a saucepan and put a gentle flame under them.

Nothing much happened.

So I put them in a plastic pot in the microwave, with a bowl of water on the side.  

Nothing happened.

So I did what I should have done in the first place and looked up how to melt soap.

It seems you are supposed to add water to your saucepan.  This seemed slightly counterintuitive to me, but I gave it a go.

And lo - the soap started to melt!

I hadn't put enough water in, so I topped it up with water from the kettle, which I had just boiled to make cups of tea.

Allow me to warn you, should you ever be minded to melt soap, that adding boiling water to melting soap is a Very Bad Idea.

It frothed up and went everywhere, even as I hastily moved the saucepan to the sink.  I ended up with soap all over the stove, all over the floor, all down the cupboard doors and in the sink!!  I now have a lovely, clean kitchen which smelled of soap for a very long time!

But I also ended up with useable soap.  I put some in a silicone mould, and some in a sandwich box.  When the soap in the sandwich box had set, I cut it into squares. I also had little soap Scotty dogs

Scotty dogs waiting to assist visitors to wash
their hands

It was kind of fun, making little hand soaps from soap scraps. I must do it again.

Usually when I take photos of the morning light, I take them from the front porch, looking down the driveway.  I took these looking over the fence from the backyard. We still have lots of trees around us, even after they cut down the trees on the far side of the reserve

It was a beautiful morning, but it was definitely on the cold side.  I think it was about 5d when I took these photos!

Somewhat surprising

I was peacefully watching the TV yesterday evening, quietly contemplating bedtime but enjoying the program.

It wasn't really a Jim program and he was dozing quietly.

Suddenly there was a slight commotion.

What in God's name is that, yelled Jim

There was something leaping up onto the flywire screen outside the front window. It couldn't get a grip and fell off.  It tried again. Fell off again.

Wotizit?  demanded Jim.

It was a small possum.  I am not sure what it was doing in our front yard, nor why it was trying to climb up the wire screen.  But we are at the top of a cul de sac.  If you come up the driveway as far as our lounge room, you can't go any further.  The fences are all made of metal and possums can't climb up them.  I assume it had wandered up the driveway, found itself at a dead end and decided to head up for the roof.

It failed spectacularly and disappeared down the driveway.

I can't say I have ever seen a possum trying to climb up a window screen before.

Just as well it was a small one.  If it had been a full sized ring tailed possum it would have shredded the  flywire!

Checkpoint Charlie

It wasn't our weekend to go on a care visit to mother.

Originally we had intended to have a luncheon party at our place on Sunday. A "First Sunday Lunch in the Home that We Own".

Alas.  The Melbourne lockdown meant that that had to be postponed. We can have up to 5 visitors at our place at the moment, but the guests are located in Melbourne and are not allowed to travel into the regions.

Lindsey and Ian had planned to head to Sydney for a week, to meet their new granddaughter, leaving us in charge at Hill House.

Alas. The closure of the border into NSW meant that that too had to be postponed.

This was all just as well. It had been Matthew's turn to make the care visit to mother.

Alas.  He had come down with a cold during the week and had, quite rightly, been tested for CV-19.  After that, of course, he had to quarantine at home until he got the result.  In any case, you wouldn't want to visit mother if you have a cold. She really does not need any respiratory issues.

Given that all weekend plans had had to be postponed and we were in bounding good health, Jim and I went for the care visit.

It was very quiet on the roads. We had a good run down. We did Useful Things at mother's house. We stayed for a few hours. Then we headed home again.

There was even less traffic on the roads.

So much so, that at Checkpoint Charlie, just outside of Bacchus Marsh, there were lots of checking spaces and virtually no cars.  I think they were quite pleased to see us!  There was a car in the first spot which pulled out as we got there.  Then us.  A pleasant woman from, I think, the ADF (she was in fatigues, not in a police uniform) checked my driver's licence and my reasons for being on the road.  She didn't query Jim's presence. She didn't ask for my letter confirming that we travel for care reasons. She didn't arrest me and send me to Manus Island or Nauru. In fact, she sent my on my way with good wishes for a safe journey and a pleasant evening.

I suppose, given that we live near Ballarat, if we had fancied a day at the beach there are plenty of beaches closer than the Mornington Peninsula which we could have gone to entirely legitimately. We could have gone to visit Matthew and family in Warragul, even driving through Melbourne. Except that he was in quarantine. And care giving is a legitimate reason to visit locked down areas. The lady at the checkpoint didn't seem particularly perturbed.

Though she might have done had we been trying to flee from Manky Melbourne into the Pristine Purity of Ballarat :-D

The next car that came along was pulled in for questioning as we were driving away. Normally on a Sunday evening there is lots of traffic on the freeway and they would have been run off their feet.  I wonder if they were bored.

(Matthew's CV test was, you will be pleased to hear, negative.)

Ceremonial planting of the lemon tree

I didn't have a silver trowel.

But Bunnings does have more of the hexagonal raised beds in stock.  So we bought two more (one for each lemon tree), acquired more potting mix and planted the first lemon tree to claim the garden as our own.

Grow well, little tree. Be happy in your new home.

We'll plant the other tree after we've got more potting mix.  Though it might be better to see if I can get a trailer load delivered from somewhere.  And buy wheelbarrow to move it in.

Our "New" House

It all seems to have gone through very smoothly and required close to no activity on our part. The rental bond is to be repaid - no inspection required 🤣  Overpaid rent is to be repaid.  I can now see the home loan on my online bank account. The keys the estate agent was holding are ready to be collected.

I might go wild and get some raised beds and actually plant the lemon trees.

Ice cream and Potatoes

I have had several dreams recently which have involved ice cream.  I have no idea why.  I have also seen several recipes recently which have involved pancakes in one way or another.

I decided at the weekend that I was clearly being called by the Dessert Dogs to make pancakes.  And ice cream.

As it happens, I have an ice cream churn.  If only I could remember where I had put it.

I found it at the back of the pantry, on the shelves with the kitchen toys. I really must sort those shelves out!

So I made some custard and cooled it, then churned it until had become ice cream.  I made pancakes. I stewed some fruit.

Apples from Bacchus Marsh. Blueberries from Buninyong. Milk and cream from the local dairy. Eggs from a local farm. The flour came from the Farmgate shop. I'm not sure where they source their flour. I shall find out. But our Sunday pancakes with stewed fruit and ice cream had very few food miles, even taking into account the custard powder and sugar I bought from the supermarket

I have a Hairy Biker recipe book which I have had for years.  I use it quite a bit.  I hadn't noticed the recipe for potato bread until last week.  I have potatoes.  I gave it a whirl.  It was lovely.  Soft and fluffy and delicious.

I also have some tiny loaf tins

One tiny loaf tin, with the  butter dish
for scale

I made four small, tiny loaves using the potato bread recipe. We had them with Lindsey's mushroom soup.  A splendid lunch.

Monday sunrise from our front door.  Ready for the new week:

And this week has brought settlement on the purchase of our house.  I had a phone call early this afternoon from the solicitor and email confirmation from the bank that settlement had been finalised at lunchtime.  The house is now ours, and the bank's.  It seems strange that we don't have to go and collect keys or pack up all our possessions.  But I am happy to offset that slight sense of oddness with the very considerable convenience of not having to move. We woke up this morning as renters and will go to bed this evening as owners.

Cool!

Not Locked Down - yet!

The whole of Greater Melbourne, plus the Shire of Mitchell were put into lockdown last Thursday. Back to the "four reasons to leave your home" (work/education if can't be done from home; essential shopping; care or care giving; exercise, local to your home).

The rest of the state remains under slightly less onerous restrictions. So the good people of Ballarat can do some non-essential shopping and meet for lunch and other fun things.  We can have up to five visitors at our place, should we so choose.

It's a bit confusing for those who live around the "border" between Metropolitan Melbourne and The Regions.  Schools inside the restricted zone have an extra week of school holidays. Those outside do not. Those inside will be mostly doing home learning for five weeks.  Those outside will be attending school as usual.  If you live inside the restricted area you can travel to work outside it, if it is not possible to work from home. If you live outside the zone, you can travel inside the zone if it is for one of the four reasons.

Still with me?

We made a care visit to mother at the weekend.  This is a legitimate reason to travel into Melbourne.  I had heard Lindsey mentioning to someone that she had been writing medical certificates for people who needed to make a carer's visits to people and rang Stella's GP to get one for me - just in case I should be challenged about my reasons for traveling in Melbourne. We took supplies with us, which I got at the Mushroom farm shop, the Elaine farm gate shop and the local IGA. She had asked for a "stuffed" giant mushroom for dinner.  So I got some giant mushrooms, some local blue cheese, some fish and seafood from the seafood van and some veg from the farm gate shop.  We had it with fried rice

She seemed to enjoy it.

There is a checkpoint on the Western Freeway at Bacchus Marsh, on the outbound side of the road.  When we came back from our care visit there was a checkpoint on the outbound side of the Peninsula Freeway checking on people heading towards Mornington. It wasn't there when we were going that way.  The Bacchus Marsh checkpoint I believe is permanently there while the restrictions are in place. They didn't stop us.  Nobody challenged us at all.

The roads were much quieter than you would usually expect at the weekend. It was quiet in Mount Martha, when I dropped into the shopping centre to visit the Grog Shop. So far the cases of Covid-19 aren't dropping but it hasn't been a week yet since the new lockdown came into play.  Let's hope that the quietness means that people are taking the restrictions seriously and the numbers start to drop soon.

We are more or less observing the restrictions anyway, even though they don't (yet) apply to us. Better slightly inconvenienced than in hospital. Or worse.

The view from our front door,
late afternoon

Sunday Lunch

So here we are, at the beginning of July. The second half of 2020.

Victoria is definitely evolving into a pariah state in the Hermit Kingdom on the Far Side of the World.  The number of CV-19 cases in Melbourne is growing. The border with NSW will close at midnight tonight.  Tower blocks in Melbourne are in hard lockdown. Whole suburbs are in slightly softer lockdown.

Who knows when the rest of the state will also be put back into some sort of lockdown.  I had better lay in supplies of wine!

But until then, we can still have up to five visitors at our place. On Saturday I impulsively bought a gigantic piece of pork, so Lindsey, Ian, Rupert and Hugo just had to come for lunch on Sunday to help us eat it.

Hugo, particularly, was a bit disconcerted by the people who walk down the laneway on the other side of our fence.  He is not used to complete strangers wandering so close to the house. Fortunately there isn't a steady stream of passers by, but enough that he felt he had to be vigilant. Until we called him in for lunch. He is easily distracted by the promise of food 🍖

Nothing  much else to report.  Things are fairly quiet at the moment.  Until tomorrow when I need to leave good and early to be at the surgery. I am covering reception for someone who is on holiday. This may come as something of a shock to the system!

A Miscellany

We managed to unwrap and install the new mattress with no trouble at all.  Took a bare, few minutes.

Now the bed is snuggly and cosy, and much firmer than the old mattress was.  I wish I could say that I am sleeping better but that would be an exaggeration.  I am, however, much more comfortable.

Grumpy cat cushion nice and cosy

New friend who came with the mattress

Speaking of new beds, Lindsey bought Rupert and Hugo new dog beds.  Hugo's is in front of the heater in the hallway.  He loves snoozing there on cold, frosty mornings.  Rupert took one look at his new bed and loudly declared his intention of ignoring it completely and remaining on the blankies on the couch.

He has recently changed his mind

When we moved from Tupton to Mount Helen I converted all of my cooking books that could be converted from hard copy to ebook format.  I would counsel you against doing this should you ever find yourself needing to move from one hemisphere to the other.  Since we got here I have been (expensively!) converting them back.  I have been buying new books as well.  In one of the new ones, Good food for bad days by Jack Monroe, I found a recipe for bread cooked in the slow cooker.  I gave it a go.  It was an absolute revelation.  Because it is steamed rather than baked, it is quite soft.  It looks undercooked because it doesn't brown, but it has a fabulous crumb and tastes delicious.  Once I've properly mastered it I might have a play with other kinds of bread

My first attempt. I forgot to flour my hands when I took the
dough out of the bowl to put it in the cooker.
It stuck like sticky glue to my hands and couldn't be shaped!!!

Tasted lovely, though

We've had some beautiful sunrises and sunsets.  We see the sunrises at our place.  Lindsey and Ian see the sunsets, from their hill looking out over the plain.  They get the better deal

Sunset from Hill House

Oh - and we've finished one of the fiendish jigsaws that Lindsey gave Jim some time ago

And so we reach the end of the first half of 2020, where we find several suburbs in Melbourne locked down again because of a surge in Covid cases. Not as bad as in some parts of the world, but then you really wouldn't want it to be.  In a burst of possibly misplaced optimism, and in defiance of my experiences in March, I am planning a holiday in November.  A road trip. With hotels booked that can be cancelled without penalty should the need arise. I am hopeful that 2020 might have got bored with messing us all about by November.  It will be an old year by then. Running out of steam. Slowing down.

Or so we can hope.  It may, of course, have more surprises yet in store!!

Bugger

Most states in Australia have very little to no active CV-19 circulating.  In Victoria, alas, we have had a spike of cases over the last week, mostly in and around Melbourne. Regional areas are not affected as much - we've had no active cases in Ballarat for a month at least, and very few cases before that. But we can't assume that that will continue

The upshot of this is that some of the CV-19 restrictions, which were being slowly relaxed, have been put on hold, or rolled back a bit.  So we are back to having no more than 5 visitors in our homes (plus household members) instead of up to 20 people in total. Pubs and restaurants, which were expecting to be able to have up to 50 people per space from this week, are still restricted to 20. Some things are still going ahead, but more cautiously.  And people who live in the local government areas which are most affected by the clusters and spikes are encouraged not to travel unnecessarily out of their local areas - and certainly not out into the regions.

This is mildly inconvenient for us.  Freyja and Simon have recently moved from one "hotspot" area in Melbourne to an adjacent "hotspot".  We had been trying to organise a weekend when they could come to Ballarat, have lunch with us, catch up with Freyja's dad, gather in an appropriate physically distancing manner with some friends and generally have a nice weekend out of town. We have put that on hold.  Better to be mildly inconvenienced than for us all to create a family-transmitted, regional cluster.

Here's hoping that by re-applying some of the restrictions and holding back a bit on easing some of the others we can nip this outbreak in the bud. We do not want CV-19 spreading over the state like some sort of noxious weed.  Otherwise we'll end up as a pariah state within a hermit nation forever isolated on the far side of the world!

In other, happier news, the For Sale board at the bottom of our driveway now looks like this

I don't know who has bought #2. Our neighbours said that they weren't interested in buying it because it is too small for them long term.  But we are definitely the buyers of #3.  The rental property manager rang me up yesterday to congratulate us on our conditional finance now being unconditional and to discuss the dissolving of the lease after settlement.  We definitely do not want to be renting from ourselves - the tax implications don't bear thinking about!

For some time now Jim has been complaining of a bad back.  And I have been aware that I am waking up during the night with a sore back, uncomfortable hips, grumbling shoulder, sad neck.  Then we go to Hill House and sleep in our room up there and think how comfortable that bed is.  It seemed ridiculous that our primary bed is very much less comfortable than what was a spare bed at Hill House before we rocked up and took it over.

Time for a new mattress.  Freyja and Simon have a Koala bed and mattress which we found remarkably comfortable when we stayed there at Christmas.  Koala was offering End of Financial Year discounts.  I ordered one.  It arrived yesterday

We will put it on our bed this morning.  Later.  It is still much too early to be doing such energetic things as changing mattresses.  Anyway, Jim is still tucked up in bed.  As I should be really.  It's only just after 4 am.  I am hopeful that a new mattress might encourage me to stay asleep for longer.  Waking up in the Wee Smalls is getting to be Very Tedious Indeed!