Dementia Friendly Forest and Sensory Trail

A week or so ago the Ballarat Council sent a magazine intended for older residents. We are certainly registered with the council as older residents which, I assume, is why it was sent to us. It wasn't posted to us individually, though. It was addressed To The Householder. No matter. It arrived and I read it. I wonder how many more years it will be before services for older people stop assuming that they are computer illiterate, or that they struggle with digital technology. I am nearly 66 and there have been computers of one sort or another in my life since I was a teenager at least (my father was an enthusiastic user of technology and happily engaged in technological advances as they came along and encouraged his children to do likewise).

Anyway. In amongst all the Staying Safe stuff there was a little article about a new Dementia Friendly Forest and Sensory Trail in the Woowookarung Regional Park, which is a large area of forest around the edge of our bit of Ballarat. I drive through it sometimes and assumed there were walking tracks but have never stopped to explore. The sensory trail sounded interesting and as though it might be worth a look.

It was a public holiday in Ballarat yesterday. The morning was cool and damp but the afternoon cleared to be almost sunny. So I abandoned Jim, Brandy and Whiskey and went to see what was there. I only walked the first half, the wheelchair friendly part. I'll do the rest of it another time. Not that I had a wheelchair with me but I wanted to call at the IGA on my way home and didn't want to be away too long.

It is a lovely little trail:

I walked this trail

But didn't go as far as this one.
Next time!

The trail isn't finished. They're putting in boardwalks and a few other things. I do like a good boardwalk!

The starting point

The trail is well signposted

Things to see along the way:

A very friendly dog that I met along the trail.
His name is Jasper and he was having a really lovely afternoon

The trail is obviously quite popular even though it was only opened about six weeks ago. There were Jasper and his human, plus a number of groups with small children and other dogs.  There were older adults and even some young men . Enough people so that I didn't feel as though I was out in the forest all on my own, but not so many that it felt crowded.

I went back to Mount Clear along one of the forest tracks. I had intended to stay on Katy Ryan Road but ended up turning onto Dozed Track by accident. It took careful driving, for it is a track and Ziggy is but a little car, but it was a lovely drive.  At one point a kelpie came trotting round a bend, with a ute driving slowly along behind it. I pulled off the track and let them go by. The kelpie was very excited to see my car. The driver of the ute seemed a bit surprised!

I kind of feel as though I have had a run of three Saturdays.  I'm not sure why. Thursday had a distinct Saturday feel to it, even though I did Thursday things. Yesterday had a distinct Saturday feel to it.  And now it actually is Saturday, and I am intending to do Saturday things. The market is back at Zoo Drive today and the Mushroom Farm is calling.  It's a bit early yet, though.  It's not quite 07:00

Earthquake

Well now. That was an exciting start to the day.

I was at work yesterday morning, just after 9:00, talking to someone on the phone when my chair started to sway, my computer began to rock and the building shook. This is unusual in Australia. It's certainly unusual in Reservoir. Everyone was evacuated out of the shopping complex to the far side of the car park. It caused a certain level of consternation among people who have not encountered earthquakes before. 

The seismologists say that we get lots of small earth tremors each year. Mostly only the seismologists notice them. We hardly ever get proper earthquakes that shake buildings, although we do get tremors that make the ground shake from time to time. They cause excitement enough.

We were allowed back into the building after about 30 minutes when it became clear that there was unlikely to be any structural damage to the shopping complex. I was ready for a cup of tea by then. It was cold in the carpark!

I didn't know until yesterday that Australia doesn't sit on the edge of a tectonic plate. I didn't know that there is an active seismometer in Mount Clear. I definitely didn't know that Victoria sits in an active volcanic region. There are no currently active volcanoes in Australia but I suppose the hot springs around Daylesford should have suggested some sort of volcanic activity. To me, at least. The seismologists and vulcanologists had already noticed.

The earthquake was felt far and wide around Victoria, and as far afield as Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Launceston in Northern Tasmania. It was noticed in Ballarat. It was not noticed at Hill House or at Tani, where both Ian and Jim were completely oblivious until their wives rang them from the Reservoir car park to tell them about it!

In other news, Ballarat has yo yo-ed its way back out of lockdown. Once again we are free to go out at will. To maintain balance, however, Geelong and two shires have gone into a week's lockdown. It can be a bit confusing, just where we can and can't go in the state. I can, though, if I am minded, go to Hepburn, near Daylesford, and look at hot springs. 

10 km

For those of you worried about the cat biscuits and the risk of my extremely pampered cats starving, I am pleased to report that the state government has extended the lockdown limits from 5 km to 10 km. This puts the Delacombe shops (easily) and the mushroom farm (if only just) within reach. It also makes the vegetable farm accessible to me, although it is accessible even at 5 km to Lindsey, who lives almost exactly 2km from here. 

Victoria has now reached one of the vaccination targets set by both the state and commonwealth governments.  We have reached a minimum of 70% of the eligible population who have had at least the first covid vaccination. I think it's about 40% fully vaccinated.  We are waiting to hear the state government's plans for the next few months as the state reaches the next vaccination targets. I think that only God knows what the commonwealth government is thinking - it seems to have got itself distracted and over excited by some submarines and the disgruntling of the French and Chinese governments. Great fun, I'm sure, but a bit of focus on the crisis in hand wouldn't go astray

It is a dismal day today. Not a day for picnics in the park or even a bit more sorting out of the garden. It's gusty, grey, drizzly, cold.  I have lit the fire and am considering a cup of tea. However, if I do nothing else today I must do something about the snails. They are eating my sugar pea plants, my teeny tiny carrots and my broccoli. In fact, I  might go out and do that now, while it's not raining and the sun is oh so almost shining!

Brandy frolicking in the long grass,
oblivious to the weather

Sunrise yesterday morning

Yo Yo - ing Lockdowns

I knew that the lifting of the lockdown wouldn't last long.  I knew that covid had arrived in Ballarat after more than a year away, and that it was making its way secretly, silently around the community. I knew the lockdown would be reinstated.

I hoped it would wait until Friday or, even better, Saturday.

Alas no. It was reinstated at midnight last night.

I had intended to head out to Elaine today. When I was there on Sunday I bought a giant bag of bread flour. Sadly, when I got home I realised that it was rye flour.  I do not care for rye bread at all! I was planning to head out and see if they had big bags of white bread flour. But for now the Elaine farmgate shop is unavailable to me.  As are the mushroom farm and the Delacombe shops. This unfortunately means that the cats' favourite biscuits are also unavailable.  I have enough for now but if the lockdown is extended I'm going to have to get their biscuits at the IGA.  This did not go well the last time I had to do that 😂 You would think that rescue cats would be grateful for whatever they are given. Not Brandy and Whiskey - although I suppose they did come from a household and were not rescued from the street.

It is very tempting to think dark thoughts about people who carelessly bring contagion into the regions. However, I had a video call from my 10 year old granddaughter earlier in the week. She had been tested for covid. The only reason she had been tested was because her 5 year old brother had been exposed to children with covid in his school class and he had to be tested. He wasn't going to be tested if his sister wasn't, so she agreed. It came as a considerable surprise to everyone when she tested positive. She is completely asymptomatic. (He tested negative, ironically enough.) So I suppose it is entirely possible, even likely, that people are moving around in our local community entirely oblivious to their covid status and unwittingly providing transport for it. The Covid Monitors are convinced that there is a Typhoid Mary wandering around Ballarat - if only they could find that person and make them stop.

In Between Lockdowns

Most of country Victoria was released from the Stay At Home orders on Friday. I am not necessarily expecting this to last long. Contagion is pottering around in the regions, but fortunately not rampaging as it is in Melbourne. So not all restrictions have been lifted but we can at least go out for no particular reason. For now, at least.

So we went to Bunnings 😂

It wasn't really a random thing. I had been waiting to be able to go to Bunnings to have a look at solar path lights, particularly for the front porch but also to look at lights for the courtyard. I don't think Bunnings was quite ready for the return of the public. The store wasn't as tidy and orderly as it usually is, and it seems that I was not the only person who had been waiting patiently to be able to visit.

While we were there, I bought this:

It looked a bit lonely on the front lawn on its own so I ordered some more online, ready to collect on Saturday. And now the front lawn looks like this:

And in the evening, it looks like this:

There is one box left.  I am intending to clear up the little bed under the trellis by the back fence and put it there, in the hope that my sweet peas might actually grow this year. First, though, I need to get some more garden soil from the Buninyong Farm and Garden Supplies place. I was going to buy a yuzu tree for the short part of the L but I see that yuzu trees are blessed with vicious thorns, ready to demolish innocent passers by. This doesn't seem entirely desirable by the entrance to our house. I might buy a mandarin tree instead.

We went out to the Inglenook Dairy on Saturday morning. They don't usually sell at the farmgate but opened up early in the most recent lockdown to help move excess stock that had been intended for the hospitality sector. They shifted all of that and decided to open on Saturday morning. I usually buy their milk, yoghurt, cream and butter so, en route to the mushroom farm and to Bunnings to pick up my new garden planters, we drove out to have a look and to stock up.  I have to say that their farm is in a really lovely spot, about half way between Warrenheip and Dunnstown. A pleasant Saturday morning drive, which Jim enjoyed as a change from sitting at home and watching the TV. The sausage sizzle was back at Bunnings and placed right next to the parking for the click and collect. We might have been mugged by sausage sandwiches for morning tea!

They are making steady progress on the construction site. So much so that activity has reduced significantly. There are roads and footpaths in place now, ready, I assume, for the houses to come.

The street lights aren't working yet, but the street lights in our court have had new light globes put in, including the one at the bottom of our drive which hasn't worked since we moved in. It's all much brighter at night in our street.

Harking back to the Hero of Zero wine, Freyja says that she has been drinking it for a long time and that its heroing of preservative free wines  considerably predates the interest in non-alcoholic wine which arose during the early days of the pandemic. But you can see why I might have thought it was alcohol free:

I have pointed out that this is
just slightly misleading!

I must remember to look the next time I am in there to see if they have put the actual non-alcoholic wine under the sign.

When Zero isn't Zero

As you may be aware, I never drink alcohol if I am expecting to be driving afterwards.  My mother only drinks alcohol on special occasions. I don't usually drink alcohol at lunchtime. And sometimes a non alcoholic drink is preferable.

I really enjoy the range of non alcoholic spirits and mixed drinks which are available but I have long thought that non alcoholic wines were a waste of money, being too sweet for my taste and not carrying any weight or depth. If I wanted to drink grape juice (which I don't) I would buy grape juice - at a fraction of the cost of non alcoholic "wine". However, recent advances in the production of non alcoholic and de-alcoholised wines has improved them hugely and I am enjoying sampling them.

I am also easily swayed by a pretty, interesting or quirky wine label, provided it is on a bottle of an appropriate wine.

So I have a selection of non alcoholic wines at home, ready for occasions when wine is appropriate but alcohol is not. Such as a light Sunday lunch on a care visit to mother.

We were eating seafood pies which I got from Shop 29. via the mushroom farm. I thought a light  sauvignon blanc would be pleasant on the side. Jim had a glass of proper wine. Stella and I decided to have a second glass of our 0 alcohol wine. 

I was packing up, ready to return home when I decided to take a photo of the wine bottle for future reference, for it was a rather nice drop. It was called The Hero of Zero, made in Australia

This is why I assumed it was a non alcoholic wine.
Plus, I picked it up with a selection of other
zero alcohol wines

And this is what I noticed when I took a photo of the label
Not zero alcohol at all.
Zero preservatives - about which I could not possibly care less

It is, indeed, a nice wine.  But it is not a zero alcohol wine. And I had had two (small) glasses so clearly couldn't launch myself out into the Sunday afternoon traffic. No real harm was done. I noticed before I got in the car and just waited for a couple of hours before we finally left. But I do think it is a bit misleading. My guess would be that most people who see a 0 on a bottle of wine will assume alcohol content and not preservatives. I had noticed that it was preservative free but I hadn't read the circle with the actual alcohol content. I hadn't thought I needed to (also, I hadn't noticed it!)

Anyway, the car was packed and ready to go, so we had a cup of tea and settled in for a couple of hours. Nice and peaceful. Then Jim and I drove home on lovely, quiet, locked down roads.

It was only when we got home and I was unpacking the car that I realised that I had left the bag with my books, reading glasses, iPad, laptop and various other things on a lounge chair at Stella's place because, of course, it hadn't been packed in the car ready for us to leave. We were using some of the things in it while we waited for the alcohol to leave my system and I simply forgot to pick it up as we finally said our goodbyes and took off.

It's not a major catastrophe, more an inconvenience. I have another laptop at home, although it is set up for work rather than specifically for me. We also have a spare iPad, which wasn't set up for me but which is getting that way now. But I will eventually need the books, being library books which the library might eventually want back. And I am missing my reading glasses more than I expected to. I had planned to go on Thursday but someone is now coming to clear the gutters, which I would rather like to be done. Grass growing in the gutters is not a good look! I'll fit it in at some point.

We have had some lovely spring weather recently. Today, alas, is damp, gloomy, misty and a bit on the chilly side. I am hopeful that it will clear up just a bit so I can carry on with the intermittent clearing, tidying and organising of my springtime backyard. Otherwise, who knows when it will get done.  Much like the rescuing of my bag of tricks which is holidaying by the beach.

A Sunday Stroll around the back of the house

Once upon a time, when you put photos into Blogger, it put them in chronological order. Now it just puts them in random order and it is almost impossible to move them around. Short of putting them up individually, there doesn't seem to be much that can be done about this and, truth be told, I really can't be bothered putting them up individually.  

So here, in random order, are the photos I took late yesterday afternoon when I went for a potter around the back to see what was going on:

The tiny little bit of woodland at the back of our place
That's our fence on the left

You can tell spring is on the way:
the wattles are in bloom

Progress, such as it is, on the building site

More wattle flowers

The local children have built a bike track around the trees
Very enterprising, in my view

Our place, as I was walking back up the drive

The walkway over our side fence

Another view of the construction site.
They'e been very busy lately but don't seem to
have achieved very much

 It was a gloomy, drizzly day for most of Sunday. I lit the fire first thing and settled in for a day at home.

I enjoyed the online cooking class, which was from a rural setting somewhere near Nagasaki. The translator was the same person as Monday. The cook was her mother and the entire enterprise was supervised by one of the household cats. Both classes were people in their home kitchens showing how they make Japanese food. Not professional chefs, not professionally produced. Ordinary Japanese people showing their skills to ordinary people in Australia. A good way to spend an hour on a drizzly Sunday afternoon.

Inspired by the class, I made a prawn and noodle stir fry for lunch

It was a quiet Sunday, as befits a Lockdown weekend. Jim spent most of the day watching car and bike racing on the TV and seemed quite happy with that. And Brandy and Whiskey enjoyed the "tents" that I had made for them. Not that I thought I was making tents. I thought I was drying sheets in front of the fire. But obviously, sheets on clothes horses make perfect cat tents

Brandy

Whiskey

My Lockdown Life (with pictures)

I have been doing some experimental baking. I tried making dough with flour, dried potato, yoghurt, yeast and a little salt. I was intending to use it more as pastry than as bread. And I made these:

This was filled with mushrooms and cheese.  It was very tasty but the mushrooms cooked down and the cheese escaped.  Next time I'll cook the mushrooms first so there is more filling and less air in the middle - oh, and seal the edges more firmly.

These were filled with chicken, asparagus and feta. The bread dough rose more than I had expected. They were like a toasted sandwich with thick slices of bread.  I'm definitely going to make them again, but I'll roll the dough much thinner next time. They made an excellent lunch with a side salad for Lindsey and me at work on Wednesday. Jim had homemade chicken and vegetable soup which I left in a picnic flask for him . He's struggling with the microwave now and he definitely would not have enjoyed cold soup.  He had one of these, filled with cheese on the side:

These are non-experimental plain white rolls

With the left over yoghurt dough I made some flat breads, which were very tasty with some hummus and tzatziki

Our current bread supply came from the Mount Clear bakery, which I called into yesterday morning when doing a top up shop. I had intended to call into the butcher as well but there was a long queue waiting outside plus the allowed number of customers inside. I decided to go to the butcher on Monday and went to the IGA instead, where I might have accidentally run into Lindsey.

In a further foodie adventure, I went to Tokyo for a cooking class on Monday at lunchtime. We learned how to make rice and sweetcorn, chicken wings in a rice vinegar sauce, yucky horrible okra and yummy miso soup. There were two other students, one in Sydney and one in Margaret River. I am doing another class today at lunchtime, although the leader isn't in Tokyo but somewhere else in Japan. The classes are part of the Japanaroo festival which is usually an actual physical festival in Sydney but which this year has gone online, to the advantage of those of us who do not live in or near Sydney!

We have had some lovely late winter / early spring weather lately, although Friday morning didn't start quite so well:

Very atmospheric, especially as it rolled in from a clear, dawn sky
and obliterated it

But then it went away and the rest of the week has looked more or less like this, interspersed with some rainy spells, largely overnight:

I am quite pleased with progress in the back garden, though it could do with considerably more attention. The front yard has had no attention at all!

Perpetual spinach, which I might replace
in a few weeks. They're beginning
to get a bit stalky 

View of the veggie garden, which needs some attention

Silverbeet / chard.
Can you see Brandy hiding in the picture?

Sprouting broccoli and celery
(with little pots of sand in the corner)

Last year's asparagus plants are starting to throw up new spears. The gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes are starting to grow new leaves. The herb bowls are starting to reshoot. Although, it has obviously been a fairly mild winter - most of the mint didn't die back at all. But spring is definitely in the air.

Oh - and it turns out that I hadn't ordered a greenhouse. Had I read the page further I would have noticed that I was entering a lucky dip. I might very well have entered the lucky dip just for fun, but it wasn't at all clear that that was what you were doing until you had scrolled way, way, way down the page, which I didn't until several days after I thought I had ordered a greenhouse. I was surprised to get a pair of gardening gloves in the post and even more surprised to find the pretty card thanking me for entering the lucky dip.  An expensive pair of gardening gloves. Mind you, had the greenhouse turned up, it would have been a very cheap greenhouse. Oh well. Caveat emptor, as they say. And you can't have too many pairs of gardening gloves.

In the meantime, the boys are all enjoying the lockdown conditions. Mind you, I'm not sure that things have significantly changed for them

Whiskey, helping me not to make the bed

Hugo, surveying his estates
 from the comfort of his new snuggly chair

Rupert, passing the time of day
on his beloved, ancient couch

Brandy thinks that if the bedroom clock says
that it is before dawn -
then it is much too early to get up. 
Jim is much inclined to agree 😉💤🛌

I'm beginning to think it's my fault!

We were supposed to be going to Gillie's place on Sunday with the rest of the Sunday Lunchers. Alas, the no visitors at home restrictions were still in place so Gillie postponed it (again) and rescheduled for a date in September.

I decided that we might not be able to have visitors at home but we could still go out for Sunday lunch so I booked a table for Lindsey, Ian, Jim and me at the Swiss Mountain Hotel and invited Gillie to join us.

Alas. I think the virus noticed what I was doing and wandered out into the Regional Victoria to have a closer look at my plans.  It got the directions a bit wrong and headed north from Melbourne rather than west. But it was enough to signal the reintroduction of a regional lockdown.

I was on my way out to the mushroom farm at 11:00 on Saturday morning. Lindsey was working so I was on my own. I put the radio on to catch the premier's daily news briefing, to see when the lockdown would start. I was disconcerted to hear him handing over to the State's Chief Health Officer. He had obviously said what he wanted to say but earlier than his usual time. This did not presage good news! I turned to the news radio station to learn that the expected lockdown had indeed been called - but for 1pm! It was already a little after 11 😱

I certainly had time to continue out to the mushroom farm. Probably not to get to Elaine and back in time if I also needed to go to the supermarket. Perhaps I'll go from the mushroom farm to Woolies, which isn't really a diversion on the way home. One of the routes I can take goes past the Delacombe shops, plus there's one in Sebastopol. However, common sense suggested that Woolies might not be an entirely delightful experience given that a lockdown had been announced with 2 hours notice.  I stocked up as best I could at the mushroom farm and went home via the butcher, bakery and IGA in Mount Clear. The number of people in the Mount Clear shops suggested that not going to Woolies had been a wise choice!

In fact, as I have said before, the Mount Clear shops can keep you perfectly well stocked even if their vegetables can sometimes be a bit hit and miss. You obviously get more choice at the larger supermarkets and you can often buy things in larger quantities. But we are definitely not going to starve if we have to rely on our local shops for a fortnight or so. We aren't going to starve if we have to rely on them in the long term. Plus, the Buninyong shops are also within our 5km limit so we even have choices.

But no Sunday lunch out. So I prepared a Sunday lunch at home. Again. 

It certainly wouldn't have outdone what the Swiss Mountain would have offered but it did well enough. I had a butterflied leg of lamb, plus loads of fresh veg. I had a nice bottle of locally made wine and cracked out the wine glasses. I only wish that I had turned over the teeny tiny cauliflower before I took the photo, so you could admire its cuteness.

I made an experimental loaf of Lockdown Potato Bread, experimental because I used dried instant mash rather than proper mash, just to see what would happen. What happened was a tasty, fairly fluffy loaf of bread. Not quite as fluffy as it would have been if I had used real mash, but more than acceptable.

We had some lovely weather over the weekend. At one point, later on Sunday afternoon, I went for a wander on the building site to have a closer look at what they've been doing. 

That's our place just over the fence.
We are towards the top of the site

I have cancelled my trip to Marlo. I was supposed to be going in three weeks and had planned to leave Jim at Lindsey and Ian's place while I was gone. It doesn't seem likely that we will be able to have visitors at home in three weeks, even supposing that we will be able to travel around the state. I realise that care giving is allowed under the Covid restrictions, but it seems a bit cheeky to take advantage of that just so I can swan off to play with the Snowy River for the weekend. I'll reschedule it when I can do it without being cheeky.

In fact, I have decided to stop planning things in advance, even if only a day or two in advance.  I think in future I will simply see who, what and where are available on the day and organise things with no notice at all. By the time the virus has noticed what I'm doing, it might be too late for it to interrupt it.