Seasons... turning....

I love to watch the Seasons change and I think that Summer into Autumn, particularly in Tasmania is my favourite. The Earth around us seems to sigh and slip into Autumnal colours and cooler weather and our family starts to come alive as the fierce bite leaves the sun. I am looking forward to an end to daylight savings, our boisterous boys bounce off the walls until the sun goes down regardless of the time and during Summer heat and light there is no chance of getting them to sleep early so Autumn heralds a golden age of going to sleep at the right time (praise be to deity of choice!).
We have installed a solid, fierce little woodheater in preparation for Winter (but being impatient we want o be using it now!) as we have lots of old hardwood not good for much except burning lurking behind our giant sheds. The heater and flue cost $75, the wood is free and we had to buy a sort of hat thing to seal it in the roof (it was installed by the ever handy husband) so hopefully we won't have such ginormous (yes I know- not really a word!) electricity bills as the old 1970's storage/fan heaters we had in situ last Winter were less than satisfactory, the air has a nasty quality to it with electric heating, the house doesn't warm well, it costs a bomb and lets face it- we love the ambiance of the fire (and burning stuff, I love burning stuff!).
Our boys have gone retro and discovered cassette tapes. This was by necessity, they had started having music in their bedroom (a tacky cd of children's music) at bedtime which kept them from rampaging as much until the Lincoln Imp (I'm three!) tried to find out which parts of the stereo were compatible with carrots. It turns out the CD player wasn't. It tries valiantly to work sometimes but never lasts long...so we have had to start using the cassette player which, as it turns out seems to be more compatible with carrots. We had no audio cassettes so a few trips to the charity shops have loaded us with some already much loved tapes. I let Sir Chats A lot ( this name is hopefully temporary as he is five and I am hoping that the chatting is a phase....) choose the tapes and he doesn't seem to like Toy Story or the Lion King but adores Wind in the Willows (he keeps calling people Old Chap a la Mr Toad!), a Beethoven string quartet tape and oddly a tape designed to teach the times tables. As the tapes only cost twenty or fifty cents each and they can both operate the cassette player I let them go for their lives!

We have Jalepeno chilies ripening which are beautiful but I don't know what to do with them now! The boys chose the plant and we are going to have to research the recipe possibilties together ! I also have to figure out what to do with parnsips, Florence fennel and curly kale from our huge vegie box this week... I think Kale chips will be made, I hope they are as nice as I imagine them to be!
We are in fair and festival mode in Tasmania, yesterday we went to a Victorian Fair at a National Trust property and next week it is a colonial fair at another Heritage property, so lovely in this Autumn sun...