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Eggplant success!

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Our backyard was laid to waste some time ago by four chickens. In an effort to get some greenery back into the yard, my wife bought a few plants from Bunnings. The kids were with her and, to keep them engaged, she offered to buy them a plant each. My youngest chose an eggplant, which my wife was sure would die.

The eggplant has been a huge success. The first fruit was only golf ball sized, but the second one was this whopping great fruit!

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Wines — Penfolds, Best’s and Yalumba

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It has been a couple of years since I have retrieved any wine from our collection cellared at WineAway. I was getting a bottle out to drink with friends, so I thought I would clear out a few older bottles that needed drinking too.

Water — just in case

The Courier-Mail is currently reporting, “250,000 people in Brisbane face the threat of no water overnight because of the earlier shut down of the Mt Crosby Water treatment plant.”

Just in case, I have pulled out the camping gear again to store some water — 2 x 20 litre tubs should be enough drinking water for a couple of days.

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While I do not want to sound smug, my observation is that people who camp — and therefore have ready access to camping gear — generally tend to do better in natural disasters than those who do not. Things like ice boxes, gas stoves, lanterns, jerry cans, even solar panels and generators come in very handy when there is no electricity or other utilities.

In the last few days I have used our camp mattresses, ice box, dual fuel lanterns, torches and now our water jerry cans. The moral of the story — get out and camp more often!!

Gum tree at the back of our house on neighbour’s land

Gum trees are renowned for their shallow root bases and for falling over in strong wind. This gum tree is on neighbour’s land, but would crush our bedroom if it fell down. With mini tornadoes predicted on the nights of 26 and 27 January in Brisbane, we decided to vacate our bed and roll out our swags in the living room. The gum tree shed small branches during the wind, but fortunately stayed upright.

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