a productive rambling monday...

I fell asleep on the couch this morning, for fourteen minutes. It felt like an eternity. After a broken nights sleep, I woke feeling like a train had crashed into my forehead. You know the spot, right between the eyebrows. So couch time made everything good again.
The boys were both asleep; so I stoked the fire, read some frankie & pottered about the kitchen. I baked apple & cranberry loaf,a loaf of bread & drank several cups of tea.

early morning dew atop the spider's home
I ate porridge for breakfast, cooked by me. This is a great accomplishment. Up until a few weeks ago, I'd never cooked porridge & that first attempt was absolutely disgraceful. So porridge is something I leave to the husband, unless of course I'm starving & can not wait. Then & only then, do I ever attempt to cook it myself. This morning's effort was pretty good, almost as good as Samuel's. I was quite chuffed. As I enjoyed my porridge, I researched recipes. Some dear friends gifted me the '1080 recipes' cookbook for my birthday this year. Today I studied the rice section. Very inspiring.

I could take a hundred photos of these flowers, just stunning
Outside this morning, all there was to see was cloud. I love it when it's like this. We can usually see for miles & miles, so it's quite the novelty when you can't see past the fence twenty metres in front of you. The ducks were amongst the fruit trees, foraging away. I hope they eat all the pear & cherry slug larvae for me. We only have five ducks now, after discovering the black duck was really a boy. Boy ducks are lovely... until they start to violently attack the chickens, in a "let's make duckens" kinda way. He was a bad, bad boy. Poor Ruby (Samuel's favourite chicken) was thrown against the wall, getting her leg caught in an engine fan (of all things to get caught in... really). That was the final straw & so the black boy duck has been shipped out. So now we have five lovely girl ducks, who hang out at the dam, forage in the garden & do laps around the house. Lovely.

five girl ducks, doing important ducky things
The rest of my day consisted of being mama to the Huckster, two more naps on the couch (so tired), a moroccan mezze plate for lunch (think dips, vegies, bread, olives), time in the studio tidying, a load of washing, alot of list writing (they keep me sane & relatively organised), chinese mushroom & tofu stew for dinner & reading the latest issue of country style magazine.

the first rose of the season

So now, I am ka-put. I have a few more things to finish before feeding my babe & nodding off to sleep.

Such a productive day.
I hope the start of your week has been wonderfully productive too.