Aston Cres Market Garden

The fruit trees have flourish this year - in particular the plums. These beauties are not great for eating but are sensational poached. I found a delicious recipe - star anise, cinnamon quill, balsamic vinegar and caster sugar. With over 8kg of plums, I ended up supplying family, friends and work colleagues with a jar or two!

The nectarine tree produce a good harvest but as per normal much of the fruit had bad bits. Despite this I stewed up a large container worth of nectarines and they were also great with ice cream. Blueberries were awesome for a few weeks too.

As for the vege, the yellow squashes have been going great guns as have the beans. The zucchini, basil and tomatoes were all very disappointing. 

First Day of School 2023

Ella started Year 10, her final year at Canberra High School a day early. As part of the Lead team, she helped the newbie Year 7's find their way around the school and settle into their schedules. Katy began Year 8 the next day!

Tathra

Back to our favourite place for a long weekend to celebrate the end of the school holidays! Originally we booked for 3 nights but ended up staying for only 2 as Ella had an athletics carnival to participate in on the Sunday morning.

Thursday afternoon was overcast and warm. As I am not able to bend my knee enough, I was sidelined and hung out near Katy, body surfing the occasional wave. This meant that everyone moved up a board. Surfing conditions were surprisingly good with not too big rolling waves. Katy had an awesome session catching loads of the little waves standing up lots and gaining a heap of confidence in the process.

It was more of the same on Friday - morning ride / walk, coffee followed by a surf. Then back for lunch and rest before an afternoon surf. We bumped into loads of friends and ended up at the pub for dinner with a large group.

Saturday dawned and it was going to be a hot one! After a run / walk and coffee we headed to the beach but the conditions for surfing were terrible. Instead we swam to cool off before returning to our accomodation. We met up with a work friend of Andy's before leaving Tathra early afternoon.

January Hols

Not much hols for Andy or I as we continued to work. Katy enjoyed a week of sailing camp on Lake Burley Griffin with Mira. Ella did a Road Ready online course - the first steps to getting her L's!

I was trying to catch up on the gardening. Unfortunately the raspberries were all finished. We did get a good crop of potatoes, blueberries plus beans, a small handful of tomatoes and a few nectarines and the plum tree was laden with fruit not yet ripe.

The warm light evenings allowed for longer walks!

We had Ember stay with us for 5 days. She is a lovely fluffy dog who enjoyed playing around with Indi!

Sunday Sprint Series for orienteering started with everyone (except me who still can't run) taking things a little more seriously!!

Belated Hogg Family Christmas

With too much happening before Christmas, the Hogg Family Christmas gathering was delayed until the new year where we gathered at Guthega for a weekend of hanging out together and walking!

Christmas Day was held on the 14th January in no real traditional way apart from opening presents mid morning! The activity for the day was to walk the 'new' Guthega to Illawong track as several family members had not walked it at all or only walked half of it last year.

A car shuffle involved Andy and Patrick driving cars to Charlotte's Pass before running home as their morning exercise. This meant most of us only needed to walk one way.

It was a lovely day for the walk with the sun mostly out, nice temperature and an occasional cool breeze.

Back in Canberra!

Home sweet home and was super nice to see Indi once again! She loved her holiday time Nana and Grandpa. It was back to work for Andy and myself while the girls hung out at home. 

It was good to see progress on next door - the slab was down.

We had Leo come for a sleepover as Cath and Eoin drove Aoife to Sydney leaving a 5 week exchange to South Africa! Indi was excited!

Unfortunately Only a Brief Glimpse

We were all really excited about returning to play with the sea lions. It was a lovely morning, a light easterly meant a few small waves but no one got sea sick on the 15min boat ride to Essex Rocks. The tour was fully booked with two boats venturing out.

On arrival we were keen to get into the water. The easterly resulted in a strongish current and choppy water pushing us across to the left of Essex rocks. We could see the sea lions lazing on the beach in the warmth of the morning sun. Sadly none of them were keen to join us. After being buffeted by waves for around 30mins the girls and I headed back to the boat for a rest.

We watched from the boat, with the occasional sea lion making half an effort to move before flopping down again. Sometime after chatting to our tour guide we decided to return to the water. Making lots of splashes and noise, we had one sea lion who came out to investigate. Only Ella and I were in the right spot to see it.

The interaction lasted a whole 15 sec as it ducked by before deciding to go back to the beach and then it was time for us to return to the boat - our snorkelling time was up! Cheekily, the sea lion did come back out to swim a loop around both boats! We were all really disappointed but accepted the fact that these are wild creatures. They are not fed or rewarded in any way to come out to the boat and today they wanted to be lazy!! 

On the boat ride back to the jetty, we were informed that new laws are coming in regards to swimming and interacting with these wild creatures. Hopefully Turquoise Safari's will still be able to continue offering this wonderful opportunity to swim with these amazing creatures of the sea!

In Jurien we stopped for food and coffee before driving back to the Grandies place. It was going to be a hot last day for us. We compared the temperatures between Perth and Canberra - it was sad to see Canberra's max was 23°C which was Perth's minimum temperature! We were in for a shock!