Soccer and gardening

Chicken no. 2 had a fabulous weekend of soccer at the National Primary Games.

And there's been some busy helpers in the garden.

Look closely and you can see a sharp purple spike on this green caterpillar!

More roses

What is it about roses? Their curly, uneven edges folded together so elegantly. These ones have such a sweet but subtle fragrance - I wish I could share it with you!

A day with the veggies

... For Don, that is. I'm just planting the capsicum and eggplant and getting snap happy! Don is setting up a watering system so that when we're away we can just leave it going on a timer. Every bed is full at the moment - it's lovely! The two weeks of around 40degC weather did seem to stop most things fruiting, except the zucchini - we have three varieties: green, grey and yellow!

Corn, zucchini, potato, pumpkin, carrots, onion, leek, celery, beetroot, eggplant, capsicum, tomato, spinach, chilli, violet bush beans, pak choi, asparagus. Phew!

Excitement in the mail

Chicken no.1 was thrilled today when the post arrived! She had written a letter to Jackie French about her book How to Guzzle Your Garden, and had asked if she had any spare loquat trees. Today she received a reply with some loquat shoots! How great is that?! I imagine that Jackie has plenty of fan mail to reply to, and was quite touched that she took the time to hand write a letter and pick some shoots from her garden. Lovely.

We have her Fair Dinkum Histories series too, which is very easy to read (when you're old enough for the details!) - it's amazing how much Australian history I have learnt recently!

Watering is good for the soul

I was feeling a little low this morning. So many new trees bitten by the frost. So many things broken (don't believe those types of crockery that say they won't break - everything breaks on tiles), and the almost-3-year-old being very almost-3 (grumpy).

Then I stepped outside to water some plants, and found myself catching glimpses of beauty.

A new rose,

some pak choy poking their shoots out through the dirt,

a new apple tree basking in the sunshine.

And then I heard my boy counting to 200 again. There's something so heartwarming about children discovering things on their own, and the way they celebrate it by repeating it over and over....

And I saw my big girl making puppets for her little sister.

And just now we have had a very quiet lunch due to the children listening very hard for a noise from our guest - a click beetle.

Seed identification

Chicken no.1 has been sorting through her seed collection this morning. We have been trying to identify them on the Internet, but no luck so far. Help me out if you can!

Today's discoveries

Well you'll be glad to know (or not!) that today I have already made my bed, hung out the washing, mopped the floor (strictly speaking it was at 11:15pm last night - don't ask), and watered the veggies (although that was actually the rain, not me).

Don't little broccoli's look like butterflies?

And I have made some interesting discoveries already:

1. One of my gum trees (that I specifically looked at last night and thought "No, that one is big enough not to need a tree guard now") was demolished by $&@#*! rabbits last night.

2. I really need to use the lock on my bathroom. I discovered this as I was shouting instructions through the shower screen on how to make a bar graph. (Her keen-ness to get through her maths directly proportional to her desire to get back to her book Ginger Pye - yes we finally ran out of Famous Five!)

3. Cutting a big hole in a nappy is a really great trick for toddlers who absolutely refuse to go to the toilet without their nappy on. Toddler happy. Mummy happy.

Peek-a-boo strawberry!

New seedlings in the corner

I was so pleased, on the weekend, to have the seedlings corner almost completely empty again (just the blueberries waiting to go in), but we discovered the local council nursery today so the corner is full of plants again! (Half of them free, too!). Lovely eucalyptus, oaks, grevillia and banksia. I've also been preparing some seed pots, so hopefull soon I'll be planting the winter crops in the veggie patch.

It's about time I drew up a map of which trees are where, or I'm going to forget what they all are! We must be up to at least 100 trees now. My apple trees should be arriving soon too.

A day in the garden

Another day of lovely sunshine today. After we sadly said farewell to the last of our guests, we got straight into the gardening. The veggie patch is so well mulched now, that, as Don said "I shouldn't need to get the whipper-snipper in there this year..."!

The veggie garden has even made it indoors today... (ie we're growing mushrooms in the pantry).

The children had a lot of fun on their bikes...

...and on the trampoline...

...and preparing for a picnic outside.

A day in the sunshine

We have had a string of relatives visiting over the last week. It's been lovely, and I'm glad the sun is shining again or the relatives might have been sharing unwashed sheets...! ;)

It has been a lovely warm sunny day today. Don has been in the veggie patch, turning over the beds and getting ready for late autumn and winter planting. The children have been racing around in the sunshine with their cousins. There has been a lot of collecting dirt/rock/leaf samples (to go in my nephew's new explorer bag), and observing the wildlife (although I'd prefer it if the flies stayed outside for their observation). And I have planted (with lots of help from relatives) quite a few flowering shrubs and vines.

We were all quite fascinated by the above Golden Orbweaver spider. The web it used to hold to the trees was very strong and quite a yellow colour. It was hanging at quite a perfect height for us to observe all her body parts, including the spinneret.

Canberra & tomatoes

No pictures of Canberra. Had a lovely time with friends, and you know, you can google a picture of Parliament House if you want a Canberra picture! Had a blast at Questacon too.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Tonight Don is threatening a tomato rebellion. The (lovely) lady who watered our garden couldn't work out how to get in the veggie patch to pick tomatoes while we were away (if you could see the 'gate' you would understand that quite well), so this morning we got out of bed at the crack of dawn (ok, slight exaggeration) to pick tomatoes. Never seen so many in my life. We tossed about half of them (sealed in plastic bag) because of fruit fly, but we still have heaps left over. So we're cooking up plans to make roasted tomato sauce, but first we have to cut them all to see if there's any more fruit fly.... Don has made it through about one tenth of them (that's a generous estimate) and is getting a little sick of the sight of tomatoes....

Sunburnt pumpkins

There's a strong, hot breeze coming off the desert today. My poor pumpkins are getting sunburnt. Unfortunately the pumpkins were infected with mildew, which is slowly killing off the leaves.. and so we have sunburnt pumpkins. Something to keep an eye out for next year. So... it was a good thing I planted 4 vines, or we'd have barely any pumpkins! We're putting soaker hoses on the garden beds, so hopefully that will help avoid mildew in future. Not for the faint-hearted, this gardening business!

And now, in this 37degC heat at only half past 3, we're having a little sun shower! Go figure!

1st pumpkin!

Yeeeaaahhh, baby!

Veggies!

A sample of pickings from the veggie patch this morning.



Don't you love the colour of the carrots? They are heirloom varieties. Yum! I actually picked quite a few peas, but littlest chicken gave me a great surprise by eating most of them (a few months ago she would hold her hand firmly over her mouth, and refuse to even taste them!).

Wrestling with tomatoes

I spent the majority of this morning hacking at the wild tomatoes in the veggie patch! Next year I'm only planting 6! After wrestling with tomatoes all morning I learnt what a green thumb looks like - literally, but also discovered that the water I washed my hands in turned bright yellow. I'll have to keep that in mind for if I get into dyeing felt or wool. Hmmmm.

I also spotted some limes growing.

And my birthday rose has finally decided to flower as well. It said on the label they were red, but I think they're hot pink! I dream of having these rambling all over the front fence.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and Happy Birthday to you today, Gus!

Sidetracking from Christmas thoughts to the garden for a minute... Let me tell you that when a label says that a plant is prolific, you should trust it. I planted a number of 'Lazy housewife beans' and this is about how many beans they are producing each day (see picture). I put a ruler there, because the largest bean is 22cm long... Beans, anyone?

And Don would only allow me to plant 2 zucchini plants (after the whole pumpkin vines going wild thing..), so I may have about another dozen seedlings wanting a good home.... Zucchini's, anyone?? I'm going to have to start a nursery at this rate... In fact, the patio outside our bedroom door is getting rather crowded with pots at the moment. Don gave me 2 flowering gum trees for Christmas as well, and my parents gave me another frangipani (they're very trusting, after I killed the last one!).

And this is the gift I was bursting to show you - I made a double bed quilt for one of my sisters. Well, I say "I", but mum helped me with the hand stitching (can't thank her enough!), and Robyn gave me endless advice and let me use her quilting machine (lovely lady!).

Happy scenes in the garden

I can't show you the sewing I've been doing (top secret!), so here are some scenes from my garden this morning.

A busy ladybird on the pumpkin leaves.

New tomatoes in clusters on the vine.

A bee on the beans, coated in pollen from the pumpkin flower.

The beans curling happily around the posts.

W.I.P.

You know, it took me ages of reading craft blogs to work out that W.I.P. meant 'work in progress'! Don's parent's gave me the much hoped for Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts book (thanks!) for Christmas (early celebration), so I straight away got stuck into the little elephant project. Here she is, awaiting some final stitches:

Littlest chicken was inspired to help with a bit of baking. I think she was tired of sticking things up her nose, actually, and decided to be more constructive with her time..... yeah, right! (Good thing chicken no.2 gave me all that practice of removing small things from nostrils...). Anyway, we made these little apple pie thingies (there's probably a proper name for them out there somewhere, but we kind of made it up on the spot) - pie apples mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon loosely wrapped in some shortcrust pastry squares. Quite yummy!

I made way too much chocolate fudge for a party on the weekend, so we took little parcels of it around to the neighbours as an excuse for a chat and to say Merry Christmas. One of the ladies almost had hysterics when I told her I had planted 4 pumpkin vines and 22 tomato plants! And just in case you were worried that I hadn't shown you any pumpkins this week....

For those who want the fudge recipe, it's soooo easy:

500g dark cooking choc (broken up)

1 tin sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons butter

Cook in microwave on high for 3 mins (stir occasionally). Add a crushed bar of two of your favourite choc. Spread on a lined tray, and set in the fridge. Don't eat too much too quickly!!

Scenes of domestic bliss...

This afternoon as the rain poured down, we were found engaged in the following things:

Nanna and chicken no.1 whipping up some mince pies for our early Christmas celebration.

Grandad snoring on the lounge in front of the cricket (while the youngest two created an extraordinary din in the play tent!). Hmm... better not include a photo of Grandad!

Here are those cheeky little ones.

And I am trying to finish off a promised dress... complete with Chinese buttons... (couldn't resist including my pear pincushion in that shot - I'm so proud of it!)

And I'm pleased to announce that the avocado seed has sprouted! Now lets see if it survives transplanting...

Visitors

Don's parents are visiting us this week (no relevance to the above photo!!). We like visitors! (Hear that, friends? We like visitors! Hint, hint!) They have been hard at work weeding the veggie patch this morning, bless them. It is great timing, as my back is in a sad state, and the veggies would have been completely strangled by weeds (or pumpkins!!) if it had been left up to me.

I had a lovely morning tea this morning with mother's & children from chicken no.2's music class. They all brought/made morning tea for the children that was safe for my chicken no.1 to eat - I was so thankful for their thoughtfulness! Morning tea's are in general are a complete headache for me, so this made it a very pleasant morning instead! (She is severely allergic to milk & nuts). And I finished the day with a nice sewing evening with a friend. Amazing how much more quickly the sewing goes when you're having a good chat!