An Easter treat

This year, my family has decided to skip the whole Easter shenanigans.  I've bought eggs for my students, some nice quality chocolate for my Education Assistants and a Ferrero Rocher bunny each for myself and MR because I totally got sucked in walking past them in Coles as we are both big Ferrero fans.  Apart from that, no chocolate needed. 

So I decided to treat myself to some bulbs. 

some of my selections

I am a slightly strange flower lover.  I very rarely have flowers in the house but I love them in the garden.  I admit I do quite like them inside as well but I really cannot stand the smell of most flowers.  In fact, lavender is the only flower I can think of that I like the scent of.  Smelly flowers in the house make me wrinkle my nose and hold my breath when walking past them and they always manage to permeate the whole house too. 

So give me some snowdrops, tulips and daffodils outside in Spring and I am one happy girl.  I also added a batch of ranunculus and grape hyacinth bulbs to my order, new bulbs I haven't grown before.

Right now, my garden is looking S H I T.   Apart from the lawn, which is looking green and lush and SUPERB.  MR is very proud of his lawn at the moment.  We had it vertimowed at the end of last year and it was so totally worth it.  Particularly seeing as MR has been mowing it regularly, fertilising it well and getting rid of the horrible infestation of lawn beetles we had last month.  So yes, apart from the lawn, the dreadful garden needs some major attention.  Out the front, heaps of things have randomly died.  Things that were there before we moved in as well as things we've planted since.  Most likely it is due to lack of fertilising, manuring and mulching because well, we haven't done any. 

I'm still in the learning phase of gardening and to be honest, the idea of digging the soil, digging through fertiliser and then spreading mulch sounds like way too much hard work for my poor fatigued self so it just doesn't happen. 

The purchase of the bulbs has inspired me though.  At least to get a small section of the garden sorted and bulb filled.  That is something I can manage.  And also hopefully, now that it is a bit cooler and MR has gone back onto a shift with 2 weeks off rather than 6 days, I might be able to talk him into doing a bit of garden type things with for me. 

Happily, some of the plants that died are ones I didn't like and wanted removed so my plan of removing them and then transplanting all our agapanthus into those spots (which is a lovely spot in between four hedges type tree/shrub thingos* along our front half wall, so that the flowers will drape prettily over the wall - in my head they do anyhow.. ) can be put into place.

And this is where I need your help...  what else should I be making a list of for MR to do at this time of the year?  I'm sure some of you out there are garden gurus who can help me out with what is needed in Autumn for gardens and fruit trees.  Well, I'm hoping so anyhow!





  

* just incase you thought I was tricking and am actually some form of good gardener, here's proof it is very much not the case

Falling by the wayside

A lot of things have been neglected in my world of late.  The blog, the kitchen, the tidiness of the house, friends and poor MR.

In fact, the only thing that hasn't been neglected has been my bed.  No more are the nights awake until 2 or 3am.  Now I am in bed and asleep by 11 most nights.  Sometimes even 10 or 9pm!  Unheard of, I know.  There has also been afternoon napping which hasn't at all affected my night time sleeping.

Starting back at work has been partly to blame, we're up to Week 8 of an 11 week term and Term 1 with Kindy kids is pretty full on.  I must admit though, I've got a really lovely group who are pretty independent and self sufficient for 3 and 4 year olds.  Three days of work a week is Most Definitely enough for me though, even with having a three day weekend and a day off on Tuesday I'm finding that if I do too much on the weekend I barely cope for the week.

Along with that I've had a week in hospital with a particularly nasty tummy bug back in Week 2 of term and I had Monday off this week with another one which was thankfully only a smidgeon as bad and managed to go away by itself. 

In much better and fun news, there has also been two weddings in the last two weekends.  MR's brother last weekend and the one before than his cousin (which also included a quick weekend holiday to Dunsborough for the event).  They have most definitely contributed to all the aforementioned neglected-ness.

Possibly the biggest culprit, although it is very hard to measure, is the increase of my Leukaemia medication five weeks ago.  It wasn't working as well as it should be and seeing as I was only on half of the recommended dose due to some issues with medication interactions and differing heart rhythms on ECG checks, they decided to put it up a bit higher.  I'm now on an almost 3/4 dose - 70mg of the recommended 100mg.  It's interesting how (in my mind anyhow), when I say I'm tired it somehow seems more lazy and slack than if I was to say I suffer from fatigue as a side effect from medication.  "Tired" is such a hard thing to measure.  I know that I am more tired than I was last year however, as I wasn't working this is not a good comparison.  I also know I wasn't this tired when I wasn't ill and was working full time and playing netball on weekends so therefore in my books that becomes "fatigue". 

After having a big sook the other night about how slack I have been at doing anything at all around the house lately and how everything is messy, how I am practically existing on fish fingers and a bit of salad for dinner when MR is away and when he is home he is in charge of all kitchen duties, how I am possibly the worst girlfriend ever and how MR should move on to happier and healthier pastures, I realised I needed to get over myself and sort my shit out.

I decided to reinstate my Twenty Minute Tidy sessions.  Once each day I do work and twice on days I don't will give me 2 hours and 40 minutes per week in which to tidy, clean and organise the house and garden.  My big goal right now is to do a bit more than than on the Easter weekend and get the house tidied up enough that I can get a new cleaner (our last one finished late last year), which will then decrease my stressing over a dirty house at least, if not a messy unorganised one. 

I've had two sessions so far.  The oven timer goes on for 20 minutes and off I go to work until it beeps.  After it beeps I dismiss all feelings of guilt over the state of the house and my lack of housewife skills.  I've unpacked and put away my case from my Dunsborough weekend a fortnight ago, picked up and put away all the clothes and other associated crap dumped on the bedroom floor, tidied out one drawer of my tallboy and tidied up and cleaned the bathroom basin.  Not bad for 40 minutes.  Today being a non work day, I'm doing 40 minutes - most likely in two 20 minute sessions.  I'm feeling better about it all already. 

Now I just need to work out some really quick and easy meals that do not involve fish fingers...