Last week, as we were getting ready to go out, I thought I’d checked the hole in the staghorn for no apparent reason. Suddenly, a little brown head popped out from it and scared the daylights out of me! I think likewise, the bird had a scare too.
I managed to have a good look at the bird as it flew away and can vouch it’s a Rufous Woodpecker. I saw enough pictures of the species on the internet when I was googling up the possibilities upon discovery of the woodpecker. So it’s good our feathered friend did not abandon the hole that he made.
Maybe in due course, there will be a family? We have to be cautious when approaching the staghorn especially when raking the leaves in order not to scare the woodpecker or ourselves in the future.
We have a new pet! Sort of… The Golden Retriever actually belongs to our neighbor and he sure is a friendly one. Every now and then, he would come sit at the border between our houses and stares longingly into our garden.
And whenever hubby is out there with his plants, hubby would stretch over to give the adorable dog some love – scratching and petting the head, massaging and tickling the neck, and at the same time, absorb some doggy love in return. I do the same too if I am out in the garden and see the chummy canine.
Once the exchange is over, our adopted pet would saunter back inside his house and we’d go about our routine. I find this unexpected ‘arrangement’ rather therapeutic. While we sometimes long to have another four-legged furry ball to replace our beloved English Bulldog, the thought of the long term commitment makes us rethink again.
So for now, we are perfectly happy with our adopted pet, the Golden Retriever from next door, with his borderless love for us.
The baking bug seems to have gotten me. After the success of the carrot cake, I itched to bake again! And so I did. This time I picked up two boxes! A the Zesty Orange Cake Mix and a Banana Honey Muffin for various reasons.
Green’s baking mixes make you look good in the kitchen!
The main reason being I had leftover milk and butter from the last baking episode. They are food that I don’t usually consume, so baking was the only option to use them up.
Reason number two: the brand’s website showed an orange cake with poppyseeds choice but our regular grocer did not have this, only the one sans poppyseeds. And because I love poppyseeds—I used to eat poppyseed bagels whenever I could when I was living in New York City dinosaur years ago—I went out of the way to buy a pack of poppyseeds to add to the orange mix. Clever, ain’t I?
Reason number three: I actually have a muffin tray. Yeah… I know, for someone who doesn’t bake, my baking gadgets seems to be quite comprehensive. Previously, the tray was used to make mini quiches for M2 to bring to school. But now with her being away in college, the tray has not been used.
Back to my baking novelty, this time I was super efficient and needless to say, the Orange Cake was simply delicious as it now comes with poppyseeds. Next week, muffins! With poppyseeds as well.
I skipped the icing topping and the cake is just right with a slight crunch of the poppyseeds
I must attribute the baking success to the brand, Green’s Baking of Australia and not so much of my skills in the kitchen. It’s the mix that makes me look good and feel good. Forget the 16/8 diet for the time being until this baking novelty wears off.
It seems that the woodpecker is a family bird, that’s why it was creating a comfortable soft cavity for a nest! Although I managed to take a picture of it, I could not see the coloring and features clearly. It flew away when I attempted to get closer.
But from what hubby described and a quick check on the internet, it resembled a Rufous Woodpecker, a species that can be found in our region. We could be wrong though. Anyway, this was a male woodpecker and typical of them to excavate a home for the missus.
While woodpeckers may be good for the ecosystem, they do not bode well with nature lovers (hubby here in this context) because they destroy the plants/trees with their pecking. Case in point the staghorn now has an ugly huge gaping hole on its shield frond.
See the fella napping inside the deep cavity of the staghorn fern? Zzzz…
And after our discovery of it sleeping inside the staghorn that Sunday night, we have not seen the woodpecker since! We wouldn’t mind if the staghorn was used as a nest but to destroy it and then abandon without use, hrmph… I’m not pleased too.
Well, I guess we cannot reverse the situation and only hope the woodpecker will come back to use the cavity for nesting.
Hubby saw a woodpecker on Sunday morning and he was not pleased. The woodpecker was pecking away at his (hubby’s) prized staghorn hanging on the tree in front of the house.
Now isn’t a woodpecker supposed to be pecking at a tree and not a fern? What a lazy woodpecker, going about his business with an easy soft surface instead of the usual hard wood.
I managed to get a picture of it before it flew away. And the damage to the fern, holy moly… quite a deep hole. I hope the staghorn can be saved.
I gave up the idea of baking with my Kenwood Rapid Bake but not baking itself. So another box of cake mix I bought and another attempt.
This time, I opted for a carrot cake that comes with icing! An improvement because there’s another step involved instead of just adding eggs, milk and butter to the cake.
The cake itself was easy – this time, an egg with water and oil instead of milk and butter to add to the mix. And for someone who doesn’t bake a lot, if not at all, I have a fair bit of baking essentials, like the loaf pan that I found. So I didn’t have to use the round pan.
Top: straight out from the oven; Bottom: drowned with icing
After 40 minutes in the conventional oven, my cake was done! Excited I literally drowned the cake with the icing that was mixed earlier, a separate fun task I must say. Maybe I’m not supposed to drown the cake like this? Hmm… but the overall taste was good, not too sweet and just right.
Maybe I can bake after all if I put my mind to it by using the correct equipment, that is the conventional oven and not a bread maker. Having said that, true baking skills come from doing it from scratch and not from a ready-mix box. What I have attempted the last three times was simply novelty and I’m far from being a pro at baking.
If I truly want to pursue baking to hone my kitchen skills, I should keep trying. But do I really want to? Hubby says we will gain weight from having to eat all the cakes, muffins and what nots. Given that we are still at the 16/8 diet, I think this baking novelty will be short-lived.
Just when I thought golf is fun again, back to using my driver and woods, reality sucks. After the Iron Challenge Tournament on Sunday, I played a game on Tuesday and couldn’t get used to teeing off with the driver.
I have been so in tune with my 4-iron to tee off that switching back to the driver felt so strange. My coordination was off and consistently inconsistent. There were times when I could fly the ball off the tee, the ball would go so very far. But when I couldn’t launch it, the ball would just sputter off the tee to a pathetic 20 or 30 feet in front! Terrible.
As a result of this problem, I lost five balls playing at the Lakes course! What a confidence spoiler. Hopefully this setback is a temporary thing. I need to play more games to get my rhythm again for better golfing days ahead.
So I attempted to bake again, on Saturday. And you wouldn’t believe the process of this second attempt. It’s simply incredulous.
I bought the same brand of cake mix but this time Vanilla instead of Butter. Despite this little flavor difference, the ingredients needed were the same – eggs, milk and butter to add to the mix.
Like a pro, I put everything into the pan efficiently and switched on all the buttons and my Kenwood Rapid Bake came alive. It was put to work to churn the ingredients before baking. Oh yay I thought, let’s hope it works this time.
But no, that’s when all the problems started!
It went straight into Mode 1 before I could even select Mode 7 for cake. Then it was user problem because somehow, I couldn’t press the buttons—any button or all the buttons—in a semi-panic state to change the setting. After that it was machine problem as it went into overdrive mixing because it was in the bread making mode. Quite a comedy…
Finally hubby had to help me and he managed to change the setting. By now, the ingredients were thoroughly mixed which was probably good. Or maybe not… I don’t know.
With Mode 7 selected, the machine started another round mixing the ingredients all over again. Gosh! Can a cake mix be over mixed? Suddenly several funny knocking noises could be heard…
The next thing I knew, there was a power outage!!! My Kenwood Rapid Bake in cake mode setting tripped a fuse in the house. Amazing or is it just me being totally hopeless?
As for the thoroughly mixed cake mix, into the round pan again and into the conventional oven again. Thirty minutes later, the Vanilla cake was done but a little bit more crusty on the edges and more brown than the first cake last week. The taste? Quite nice I must admit in spite of all that crazy problems.
A little burnt, a little brown but yummy
If I had known baking with the bread maker can be so hazardous, I wouldn’t even attempt. But will I bake again? Hmm… it’s hard to say because both cakes did turn out okay. It’s the idea of using the bread maker that was problematic.
So if I do want to bake, the easy way of course, I should just bake the conventional way and leave my Kenwood Rapid Bake as an extension of the upper kitchen counter.
This year the Iron Challenge Tournament was held early, just over the weekend! And I was the only lady golfer amongst the men in the club soldiering on by myself in the event. I was unperturbed by this fact and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, held on the less intimidating Hills course.
I should stand proud because I held up well in the field of all men, 16 flights in total and tied for 11th placing with a nett score of two over my handicap! A very good achievement.
I was very focused and basically played my own game without any external distraction. With my red tee box way up front, ahead of the field for all the Par 5s, some of the Par 4s and a couple of the Par 3s, it was certainly advantageous for me. One of my flight mates, however, jokingly lamented that it was unfair because their tee-offs would be just slightly ahead of my tee box and I have yet to tee off.
But hey… how can it be advantageous when the men’s tee boxes are also moved up? Also, it’s not like suddenly, I tee off with a driver. I’m also subjected to using just irons for the competition like the rest of the field. Nonetheless, I brushed his comments aside and focused on my game.
Initially I wasn’t prepared in the weeks running up to the competition, having had problems with my long irons and short game, but I managed to resolve these when it mattered most. And this year, no major blow ups or bunker disasters. And not even a loss ball, a big confidence booster indeed. The only big let down was a sudden loss of focus and I four-putted an easy hole. Hrmph.
The elbow pain was hardly felt because I took a painkiller to suppress it. It worked and helped, but today, it’s throbbing to high heaven, I don’t know why. Sigh… a constant battle with this problem.
So now that the tournament is completed and out of my golfing schedule, I will return to using my driver and woods for all my upcoming golf games.
It was only a matter of time because I’m bored by the mundane commitment. The Candy Crush Soda Daily Bonus on the iPad Mini finally snapped too. Three weeks ago, it snapped on the iPhone XR.
After being at it for 1267 days, I was taken aback when on Wednesday morning, it was back to Day One. Oh… I guess I had forgotten to check in on Tuesday morning.
Oh well. Now that this mindless pursuit is no longer a pursuit, there’s a sense of relief. I had wanted to give up after passing 1200 Days but I kept at it, just to see how long I could go on. Well, it has ended.
So with this end, there’s no more Candy Crush Saga, Soda or Daily Bonus to tie me down mindlessly.
Angieneering 
Remarks