mernie in LA

Mernie has arrived safe and sound in LA.

Bye bye Mernie

Mernie left for the great US of A this morning and will be missed by all here in OZ ;especially by this little black duck. Had a nice little send of last night with a few drinks at the Doggie and deli ( local pub and general store). I took him to the airport at about 8am but it didn't really sink in that he's gone until I came home to this particularly empty house. Of course we'll be together again soon but we don't know how soon. I have to sell the house and vehicles and take care of a few fiddley things first. Bit of a waiting game. In true form, I bet nothing will happen then everything will happen at once and I'll be catapulted out of here and lob in the states thinking now what was that all about?
Mernie has taken the camera so there wont be any piccies for a while unless i figure out a way to get them off of email. Possible? Please stay tuned.
Bloggfully yours, Ronnie.

What an experience seeing all the things you paid good money for go off for a song. Funny the value people put on 'stuff'. A box of odds and ends that I was thinking of giving away went for $17 and our 2year old lounge suite we bought for about $1500 went for $37. OUCH! We all had a lot of fun though and 15% went to the footy club.Now we have an empty house to sell and we are sleeping in a swag.

auctioning of all our worldly goods

What an experience seeing all the things you paid good money for go off for a song. Funny the value people put on 'stuff'. A box of odds and ends that I was thinking of giving away went for $17 and our 2year old lounge suite we bought for about $1500 went for $37. OUCH! We all had a lot of fun though and 15% went to the footy club.Now we have an empty house to sell and we are sleeping in a swag.

lavande

Romantic candle lit dining at its best at Lavande of Callington with hosts Chris and Terry.Gorgeous place, superb food.
www.lavande-sa.com.au

Of course later we let our hair down and danced all over the place.

The Evolution of the Ishchicks

The Funny Chickens (or The evolution of the Ishchicks.)
by Stanley Gilbert Eden Editored and illustrated by Ronda Eden.
(A children’s story)
(Well at least one version of the story)


Once in a far-away place called Funny Land there lived lots of funny animals. The pigs were funny. The horses were funny. The cats and dogs were funny. Even the insects were funny. It was a great place to live because they could have fun all the time being funny. All the animals loved it. That is, all except for the funny chickens. They spent the whole time whinging.
One day the leader of he funny chickens said,
“There must be a better place for us to live than this Funny Land!”
So he ordered all the funny chickens to build a sailing ship. Off they sailed in search of a better place for funny chickens. All was going well as they sped full sail over the waves with great hope in their hearts. Then suddenly….. the wind stopped. And they waited and waited not going anywhere for a very long time until the leader announced,
“THIS WILL NEVER DO!”
And he leapt over board and started to swim. The others follow and although they weren’t very good at it at first, they got better and better until they became expert funny swimmers. And they swam and they swam for days, weeks and even months until they finally struck land. They staggered up onto the beach where there were people lying everywhere sunbaking.
Wet and exhausted they plonked themselves down amongst the people and started making their funny chicken noises. The sunbakers laughed at them because they sounded so funny. They were quite amused until this racket went on for about five hours! Then they didn’t think it was funny any more!
So they chased all the funny chickens back into the sea. They swam and they swam once more in search of a better place for funny chickens. (But that’s not the end of the story!)
The sunbakers shook their fists and shouted,
“GOOD RIDDENS!”
Then went back to their sunbaking.
All was peaceful for a while until some one yelled out,
“LOOK!” and pointed to the funniest egg you have ever seen. It was pink with purple spots and square instead of round. It was so funny everyone started to laugh.
“HEY, IT’S STARTING TO CRACK OPEN,” shouted someone else!
It trembled and spun then started to wriggle and bounce all over the beach. “HOW FUNNY,” they all screamed!
Suddenly it exploded open and out popped the funniest creature you could ever image. It was half chicken and half fish! Now the sunbakers were laughing so loud they were rolling on the sand. The funny creature was terribly insulted. After all, they were the ones that looked so funny. So it poked out its tongue at them, ran across the beach, leapt into the water and swam as fast as it could toward Funny Land...... where it knew that it belonged.

up date

G'day y'all.
Won't be long and we will be back in the great USof A. Mernie will be heading back at the end of the month and I will be tagging along behind after the property sells. We sold the float (horse trailer)on the week-end so that's a start. Now we need to sell the ute (truck), house and all the doo dads collected over the last four years. Why do people need so much stuff? We all have it! Loads of 'I might need this someday stuff!'
I'm making the best of the time left here by spending as much time home in callington as possible enjoy the surrounds, friends and the horses that people have loaned me since the boys went to Horse Med.Typically I'm really loving the place now on the verge of leaving it. Anyway we a heading for a great place so I can't complain. We are fortunate people.

horse float

horse trailer

Inside of the horse trailer (float for Australians) for sale. More images to come.

cold in Cally

This looks like a picture I may have taken in Wyoming or Colorado but it was taken yesterday morning in Callington, South Australia! Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!
The piece of ice was lifted off of the bird bath in our backyard.

Have you ever gone by Pelican?

Latest Kiddie Lit.

Have you ever gone by Pelican?

Have you ever been all cosy

tucked up in your bed

so warm your cheeks are rosy

just you and little Ted

But then you heard some noises

and wished they'd go away

Coz you and litttle Teddy

would like ot sleep all day!

So you opened up one eyelid

to see that noise you heard

then both your eyes popped open

to see a GIANT BIRD!

Staring down upon you

along that big, long bill

A super, gianormous pelican

was standing really still

Then it started dancing

all around your bed

knocking things right over

the ceiling bumped its head!

And then it snatched your teddy

right out of your hand

and held him it that floppy bill

How much can one kid stand!

"GIVE ME BACK MY TEDDY?"

you screamed 'til you turned blue

but then it snatched your nice warm beanie

and held it in there too!

It was trying to tell you something

What was it about?

Its cold outside.Was that a clue?

It was without a doubt.

So you got up and said "Hello,

Mind if I hop inside?"

It opened up its great,big gob

And took you for a ride.

Out of your bedroom window

up into the sky

just you and little Teddy

Above the world so high! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

our house in Callington

This is our house for sale in Callington.................only joking!! Please scroll down.

more pictures of property for sale

The Gazebo is a great place to spent a quiet afternoon relaxing with friends. Or a rowdy one depending on the friends!
Don't forget you can click on the images to enlarge them .
Outdoor 'living area' where we spend a lot of time.With the bbq there under the porch we don't need to cook inside a lot of the time, summer or winter. Less mess and dishes!
This is the sleep-out that has served as an art studio, a bathroom, guestroom, a meditation room, a store room and is now my writing and drawing studio. It's a 'working mess' inside so I was too embassassed to show it. It's very cosy and heats up easily with the smallest heater.A lovely warm, sunny place in the winter and a cool place in the summer where you can feel like your outside but can lock out the mozzies.
Chooks in one of three chicken runs on the property. You could have fifty chooks here if you so desired. That pepper tree was a tiny sappling a couple of years ago. Must be the fertilizer!
Stable two. It has a good size yard in front of it.
Stable one.(With Forrest) The door at the back leads into the tack room. Both stables have feed bins that can be fed into from the tack room.

more pictures of our home amongst the gum trees

One of the bedrooms.There is another much larger one that was originally designed to be two rooms but was never divided. I'll try to get a picture of it later.
Large open living area.
Kitchen.
Side of the house with double garage that served as an art studio, gallery and workshop among other things.
Fonz and Forrest in the bottom paddock.
Mernie and Fonzie in the top paddock.
Fonzie showing off in the low part of one of the paddocks.
Top part of one of the paddocks.
Scroll down for more and a commentary. Please check in later on as I plan to add more pictures as I get them.

Home Amongst the Gum Trees for sale

From the back paddock.

From the front.

A little background

After leaving the our ranch in the US in 2002 we came to Prospect SA to look after my Dad.We are not city people by any stretch so we soon started to look for a rural property still close enough for Mernie to commute to Adelaide each day and yet affordable enough for a couple on one full and one rather iffy income.We found the prefect place . A spacious, comfortable and extremely functional home on 4.2 acres and still only about 45minutes from the city.It had lots of outbuildings including stables, tack room and sheds for hay. We bought it and it wasn't long before this couple grew into a family of 2 horses, 15 chooks and 8 ducks.
A litttle about the place: It has an orchard of about 20 fruit trees and plenty of room to grow herbs and veggies.We had plans to do all kinds of fancy things to the house but found the riding places around Callington too irresistable. I guess you could say we got a little distracted! Anyhow the place is very livable just the way it is.
Between Callington and Monato are strips of forested and scrubby areas where the SA endurance riders hold regular events ( they just had a 160 km of international standing there). We were in heaven. We are into 'barefooting' our horses so we found the terrain that nice mix of rock, dirt and grass to ease and toughen their tooties.
Oh, but I'm supposed to be writing about the house. We are outdoorsy types so we never spend a great deal of time indoors. What I like best about this place is the backyard 'living' area. There is a cosy alcove for eating and entertaining and a private backyard and garden to spread out into. We often sit around our brazier enjoying a drink and a good ole chin wag.There is also an indoor stove fire that gets pretty cosy on a cold winter's night.
And in Summer the house stays comfortably cool. Providing you close it up during the day and throw the windows open at night you'll stay as cool as a cucumber .We have never felt the need to purchase an airconditioner.
The Community here is wonderful. The town is quaint ...."it's a pub and general store, what's the use of any more...") Actually there is more. We have an amasing French cafe retreat called Lavande. Check it out www.lavande-sa.com.au and a world class Tuscan restaurant down the road in Kanmantoo.And you can even take part in our belly dancing classes across the road every Wednesday night if you like that kind of thing!
So sadly we need to sell up and return to the USA to take care of business. If there was a way we could hang on to this property we would but our finances at present don't allow it.We do plan to return in a few years and who knows, maybe it will come up for sale again!

bundaleer

The boys at Bundaleer waiting to be let loose on all that grass! Scroll down to see where two leggeds live! Gorgeous!

North Bundaleer

This is North Bundaleer Homestead! If anyone wants to treat themselves to a piece of heaven this is the place.( stay@northbundaleer.com.au) We took our horses here on Tuesday to be taken care of for a couple of years in our absence. They are out the back on hundreds of acres of lush pasture, so they too are in their own little piece of heaven.We have our wonderful friends Graham and Biddie at Bundaleer Stud to thank for putting us onto these people. Marianne and Malcolm, the hosts at North Bundaleer are so lovely. Extremely warm and welcoming.Gosh, it seems as if good people just grow wild in this part of the country!

the boys off to camp

Our boys will be off to North Bundaleer Station next week. www.northbundaleer.com.au

They will be taken care of by the owners of this plush B@ B retreat for a couple of year while we are in the States. We are going to miss our wonderful laid back neddies soooooooooooooo much!

Here they are doing what they like best!

sexy chicken

Latest commission for Sarah Filmer, Intimo Lingerie Consultant.
18 x 12 inches Acrylic on canvas.

Adaptable artwork

The cricketers have been changed to golfers for the Community Lifestyle crew. Sort of a mini mural to go on the putt putt course.

Duraguard paint on tin.

approx. 1m x 60cm