Today

Today has been one of those beautiful Winter days we get here in WA.  It's been cold - it didn't quite reach 14 degrees - but there hasn't been any wind or clouds so it is just glorious outside in the sun.

:: Self sown pumpkins creeping across my pavers :: The Meow soaking up the warmth :: 

:: Early jonquils starting to flower ::  Lemons ready for picking :: 

:: New towels and linens for the baby washed and on the line :: My favourite gum tree in flower ::

Quiet Days

I'm really savouring my quiet days at the moment, knowing they are finally limited and quickly coming to an end.  

Every other Thursday I don't work so an hour of my morning is spent at pregnancy yoga which I find just leaves me feeling so calm and centred for the rest of the day.  So the TV is left off, the washing machine too if I can get away with it, and I spent the day in quiet pursuits.

 

There's usually a bit of knitting happening and the cooler weather means the meow might hang out on my lap for half an hour or so if I'm lucky.  Today I also made some soy candles for my yoga instructor.  I'm still the only one in town doing it, although apparently next week (on the week I can't make it of course) a few of the other pregnant ladies in town are planning on attending.  And because I'm the only one she hasn't accepted any money, saying I'm her guinea pig.  Lucky me! So I thought I'd make her some candles in thanks.

I don't have a book on the go at the moment which is sometimes a good thing because it means I get a lot more done.  If I have a good book it doesn't last very long but on the days I'm reading it a whole lot of not much else happens!

I spent a bit of time out in the veggie garden, giving it a good watering and enjoying the sunshine until the flies were beginning to ruin my calm and I headed back inside.  Hopefully I'll head out in half an hour or so once the flies have left for the evening and before the mozzies come out to spend a bit of time doing some light weeding.  It's a bit of a juggling act to do gardening in between bugs out here.  

Our mulberry tree is having a little spate of out of season mulberries as well.  We had a couple of weeks with a lot of glorious rain and now some lovely low to mid 20's sunny days means that I'm getting a small handful off the tree every few days.

I think knowing these sorts of days will be very much ended for a while in approximately 18 weeks is making them all the more sweet but I am really feeling so recharged after a day of quietness.

I made some things

I can't claim all the credit for this but I am very pleased to share that I'm making this little human inside me right now.  20 weeks on Monday! 

 

So of course, I have been getting knitting.  With stash yarn no less! 

And I've also made us a little veggie garden.  Peas, celery, capsicum, parsley and cherry tomatoes so far.  This is only taking up about a quarter of our veggie garden patch so there plenty of room for more veggies to go in.  Mum came up to help me get this put in, she has a bit of a magic touch with gardening so I'm hoping it will rub off onto my veggies.

In other news, I'm no longer living in Perth.  I moved back out to the wheatbelt town MR lives in at the beginning of the year and it is so good to be spending more time with him on a very regular basis.  It's going really well so far.  A lady in town is doing pregnancy yoga classes so I'm not missing out on keeping my strength up and while I've only done two classes so far (she just had a baby at the beginning of the year also so has only just started them up again) I'm feeling so good afterwards.  And, even better, there's a Monday night craft group too.  Every week! 

Hopefully I'll be back on a bit more of a regular basis from now on but for now, what news have I missed out on from you? I've been keeping up with my regular blogs sporadically but I'm sure I'm a bit behind on the news.

 

Homegrown soup

Back in February, I posted about a surprise vegetable sprouting in my garden after burying some veggie scraps in an effort to improve my sandy soil.

It grew happily without much attention from me and it turned out that it was a pumpkin vine.  Unfortunately I only got one pumpkin off it, and only a small one but I turned it into the most delicious soup!

Just a baby pumpkin

Which strangely didn't have any seeds!

I used this recipe from taste.  Surprisingly, I actually followed the recipe too.  Fairly rare for me.  The only thing I changed was  just a smidgen less cumin than suggested so it wasn't too strong and using sour cream to stir through instead of natural yoghurt.  I also used my own homemade chicken stock.  I get such pleasure out of making and using my own stock.  It makes everything taste awesome and I feel so organised by have it in the freezer all ready to go.

I hadn't used this recipe before but to be honest, it's the best pumpkin soup recipe I've ever tried and I've already used it again since.  That's a pretty good referral from a not-really-a-soup-person. 




What's your favourite soup?  I'd love a recipe recommendation to try out.
 

Garden growth

While I was having lunch with Mum last week, she mentioned that the weekend was the best time (according the the planting moon calendar) to plant Spring bulbs.  Mum is quite a good gardener and she does all of her planting according to this calendar so I thought I would give it a try.  I am a middling gardener at best.  About half the things I plant either die or never seem to grow.  Plus, it was the day before Term 2 started and gardening seemed like some good productive procrastination.

Autumn has finally arrived in my part of the country with the weekend also bringing our first really good proper rain for the year.  The mornings are crisp and cool, the days are mostly sunny - the type of sun that is best for basking in - and the nights are best spent with slippers, jumpers and rugs.  I haven't turned on the heater yet but I've been a bit tempted.

I spent an hour outside, clearing a few weeds, removing old agapanthus leaves and flower spikes, planting the bulbs - some tulips, snowdrops and bluebells - pulling up the dead part of the pumpkin vine and burying it over in the right hand corner to compost.  There's still a few bits of it growing, it seems to have taken root again?  I'll just leave it to do its thing.  We only ended up getting one pumpkin off it (so far?) and that's reminded me to post about it next time.

After I had finished, I stood back and thought about how much our garden has grown in the three years it has been since we bought the place.  Certainly not all of it, but this part of the garden looks so good with the frangipani trees really taking off in height now, shading the plants below in Summer and letting the sun in when the leaves drop closer towards Winter.  I've planted the bulbs in under the frangipani trees.  I'm hoping the leaves will create some shade for the flowers in our very short Spring and help them to flower better and last longer.

The photo below was taken when we moved in.  It's a bit of a different angle but look at the change.  

So many differences.  I'm reasonably happy with this part of the garden at the moment.  I wish I could say the same for the rest of it.  Since working out we would not be in this place for much longer, the urge to plant new things has decreased a bit.  I'll be sad to say goodbye to my fruit trees though, and before I've even gotten an apricot from our apricot tree.  I'll have to keep my fingers crossed for an early crop this year.  Last years crop was a grand total of one single apricot which somehow disappeared entirely while still green.  I think a bird must have flown off with it.

How is your garden going?  Autumn is such a lovely time of the year to spend outside isn't it?  And do you plant new plants via the moon planting calendar?

 

Lately...

Crafting...
Sewing date and lunch with some lovely friends at my place.  I almost got this quilt that I started at the beginning of last year finished, only about 20 cms of stitching the binding on to go and I'm embarrassed to say, it is still not finished!  I put it down after the girls left because I had some school prep to do for the next day.  Must. Finish!

The Bertie Blankie is going well, I am getting a bit more done most nights of the week.  I'm getting close to being half way there and in even better news, I'm not yet bored of it! 

Watching...
The Block (the first reality TV show I've been sucked into, ever!)


The Riddick movies

Thor: The Dark World


Reading...
The Gentleman Bastard Series, Books 2 and 3.  If you like a bit of a fantasy/intrigue/con artist sort of thing this series by Scott Lynch is pretty great!!  I found out about it via a review by one of my favourite authors, Patrick Rothfuss, on Goodreads.  How exciting is it to see what your favourite authors like to read?  He rated the first and second books with five stars so I thought I'd give it a go and I'm glad I did.

and now back on to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  I got book 13 for Christmas and it's the final in the series but I'm determined to reread them all before reading the last one so I am all up to speed and know exactly where everything has been left off.  No missing important bits here just because I've forgotten them!  I just started book 5 last night.  Do you reread series when the next in the order comes out? 

Baking...
Banana and raspberry bread

My comfort food - sago  

Anzac biscuits for MR, and using my new biscuit barrel for the first time.

Pancakes, the last three weekends in a row!!

Growing...
My pumpkin is looking more pumpkinly every day.  Unfortunately only one flower was pollinated so there's only one pumpkin.  My dad told me (way too late to do anything about it) that I should have pollinated the female flowers with the male flowers by hand but unfortunately I really am a gardening novice and had no idea there were female and male flowers on the same plant and just thought all the flowers should turn into fruit through immaculate conception.  Clearly not.  I will know better for next time a pumpkin plant decides to grow in my garden.  Especially now that I have googled it and know how to do it and tell the two different flowers apart.

What exciting things have been happening in your world lately?

  

Mish Mash

School is back, two weeks down so far and I have to say I'm very much enjoying teacher Pre Primary two days a week this year.  I have taught Pre Primary before and I did love it then too so I shouldn't be surprised.  It is nice though, having my ex students from last year again as well as some others and what is even better is the lack of hard work that the Kindy students bring at the beginning of the year.  Pre Primary students already know how to sit down, listen, put up their hand, follow instructions, behave, cut, count, glue, tidy up and really, everything that you'd need for a smooth running classroom at the beginning of the year.  My one half a day with brand new Kindy kids is putting me in bed by 8pm due to the sheer amount of full-on-ness they bring to the room.  And then times that by 20 little bodies.  

There has been a plethora of school related photos of instagram lately because my life has been taken over by preparation of new resources, planning lessons and neverending checklists.

In other news, my mystery surprise veggie which everyone who commented thought was a pumpkin, seems to be said pumpkin of the butternut variety and has just begun to fruit.  I found this one this morning when I was heading out to the car.  I've been looking each day at the flowers and wondering when they are going to start vegetablising but this sneaky one obviously has been doing so for a while whilst hiding under a nice big shady leaf.  I'm a bit concerned it might bake sitting on the pathway like that but we'll just wait and see.  There are a few other flowers that are starting to look a bit vegetablish at one end too.  It's all a bit exciting.  Pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones and pumpkin and corn fritters might be featuring a bit in however long it takes for them to grow and ripen. 

Finally, in some craft news, there isn't realllly any news because of the complete take over of my life by school work but on the nights where I have been awake past 8pm and not dead on the couch or busy cutting for 3 hours (my Tuesday night this week) I have managed a little bit more of my Bertie Couch Blanket, only the last 2 rows of purple this week but it has still come a long way since you last saw it at just two rows long in total! It's getting to the stage where the weather really needs to cool down before I get much further on it.  Hot days and a lap length blanket draped on me are not necessarily too enjoyable.

 

Veggie Surprise

 

There are some areas of our garden that are pretty much just sand.  Hydrophobic sand that is so scared of water that it just shunts it across its surface to a section more accepting.  So we've been working (a little bit, quite sporadically) on improving it.  We've added clay particles and cow poo and I got MR to dig me a hole and I was chucking veggie scraps in it and covering them over to add some nice organic matter so that maybe, some time in the future, we might be able to get something to grow there. 

A few weeks after doing that for about a week and then forgetting, I remembered and went to chuck out some more scraps only to find a little plant growing in one corner.  It looked like a veggie plant to me so I gave it some water and threw the scraps elsewhere.  A couple of months later it is now huge, taking up a whole corner of our garden that was previously just sand and had nothing growing it in.  It is starting to spread its tendrils out across the path to our front door.  And the flowers have opened now too, they are about the size of my palm.  I've been nursing it through the heat, watering it in the morning before I go out and in the afternoon when I get home to droopy wilted leaves and it seems to be coping okay.  I'm hoping that all those flowers do turn into tasty homegrown veggies.

I have no idea what it is, having only ever grown tomatoes and peas before.  MR reckons a pumpkin and that is possible because I do remember throwing pumpkin gizzards into the hole.  I'm hoping for cucumber though because I don't really eat pumpkin very often.  Maybe I'll have to start.

Any ideas what it is?

 

First Crop

Way back two and a bit years ago, when we first moved into our home we planted some fruit trees.  One of them was a cutting of a loquat tree from my Mum.  I must admit, I was entirely dubious as to how it was going to grow let alone fruit when it was just a stick from her own tree.  But grow it did and fruit it has.  In fact, it has beaten all the other fruit trees to producing edible fruit.  I've been enjoying these since I got back from New Zealand.  MR had one the first day we got back when they were ripe enough for tart-taste-loving-me but not for him.  Unfortunately he hasn't been home since then so I am trying hard to limit myself to two loquats a day so that there are still some left for him to enjoy when he gets back home on Saturday.

It's a very exciting moment to have my own fruit growing in the garden.  Our other trees are going okay, with out apricot having one single green apricot on it and our nectarine having quite a few.  Our nectarine had some fruit appear last year but we pulled them off so it could concentrate on growing.  It is still quite small but we decided to leave the fruit on and see what happens this year.

Nectarines

Apricot

Is there anything exciting happening in your garden at the moment?

 

A facelift is as good as a holiday

What? No, no not me.  Our house.

As mentioned previously, we recently got a bit of work done on the house.  We got our gutters replaced and the fascia painted.  It's been on the list to happen since last Winter and we finally got onto it. 

Previously they were both a particularly unpleasant shade of pooey-red which (in my opinion) did not at all go with our grey roof.  I am not overly fond of warm colours either which never helped the situation. 

BLERGH!

We wanted blue gutters and seeing as there is only one shade of blue, Deep Ocean, in the Colourbond range, we went with that.  Nice to have an easy choice.

We had discussed getting the facsia painted at the same time but hadn't quite gotten ourselves sorted with a painter which we mentioned to our gutters tradesman when he was doing our quote.  He said he would bring a painter he knew over with him to give us a quote.  Brilliant, we thought.  So the day comes and they both arrive.  We get a Really Good quote for the fascia painting and ask when he might be free.  Today?  Excellent, but we haven't chosen a colour yet!

Luckily, when I was collecting colour samples for ideas for our walls I grabbed an outdoor colours card too.  We had about 3 minutes to make a decision (at 9am on a Saturday morning) before the painter was heading down to the get the paint and get started.  Sometimes, that pressure and limited lack of choices is a good thing or I would imagine it would have taken hours.  I chose a colour I liked, MR liked a different one.  I coaxed him around to my choice because his blue had green undertones and mine had grey undertones which would suit the roof better.  He thought it would be a bit light but let me have my way.  Looking at it all finished he says he likes it and I hope he's not just humouring me!

The gutters are off and the fascia has had its first coat.

All finished and looking SO much better

It really does look like a whole new house.   MR gave the bushes out the front a good pruning as well.  Our bedroom is to the right of the front door and that bush was blocking all the light which is fine in Summer but having it pruned right back in Winter makes such a big difference.  Afternoon sunshine comes in and lets the room warm up just a little bit.  Perfect!

Now we just need to get rid of the horrible red driveway and path.  Unfortunately it does not feature anywhere in the near future on our list of things to do!

  

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

Sunday Snippets

sorting through my school things

enjoying a picnic and and outdoor movie with MR

tomatoes from our self sown tomato plant

a thirsty meow

a big stack of creative books from the library

a helpful (so she thinks) meow

enjoying goodies from my Christmas stocking

more snippets over at Tinniegirl's

Happy New Year!

Look at the beautiful full rainbow I saw at sunset on the 30th December, one day early to farewell the old year and two to bring in the new one.  But I'll forgive Mother Nature, she can put on displays like this above my house anytime!  It was during the smallest of sun showers I've ever experienced, the pavement was pretty much dry the second after the rain drops hit the ground.  This was my first go at using the panorama feature on my iphone, simply because I couldn't fit it all in with one shot.  I was already standing on the road to take this and the Meow thought this meant it was okay for her to come and roll around on the road too.  That's my house at the end of the rainbow there on the right.  Does that mean a big pot of gold coming our way for 2013? Wouldn't that be lovely.

May 2013 bring you many moments of joy, plenty of good fortune and much healthiness!

Playing catch up

I've been a bit slack on the old blog of late, instagram however has been getting lots of love.  So let's play catch up on my life through phone photos...

My apricot tree that used to look like this on the right...

now looks like this after a storm last month :(

My very awesome Dala horse Christmas ornie from Kylie at Paravent Designs

One of my contributions to the Christmas ornie swap, forgot to photograph my
other one which was some red crochet snowflakes

My birthday present from Dad this year, a Christmas Lego scene!

My new handmade Christmas wall decoration being mounted, cross stitch Christmas woodland critters

And up on the wall

Gooseberry crop!

My Christmas present to MR, two bonsai fig trees (our first bonsai)

His present to me, two ceramic bedside lamps for our bedroom

Very spoilt by Sally, a new embroidery book

 I was a bit remiss on Christmas day, didn't take a single photo! MR and I spent it out in the bush with his family before driving back Christmas night so I could drop him at the airport at 5am on Boxing Day to head back to work.  We had a lovely day catching up with extended family we don't see very often and eating plenty of yummy food.  Somehow I managed to not overeat, we'll put that down to the sweltering 39 degree weather.  As to my side of the family, we don't really do extended family things so we had lunch with Dad and my sister on the 23rd and my sister and I are doing a high tea Christmas meal with Mum tomorrow evening.

The weather is fairly dreadful here at the moment - forecast for 39-41 all week in fact!  Thankfully I realised it's late night shopping tonight so I'll head out in a couple of hours once it has cooled down a tad to pick up a bit of food and have a quick look at some of the sales.

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you had a happy and safe one with plenty of yummies on your table.  x

Transformations

from the left... loquat, apricot, white peach, nectarine

I think that sometimes transformations creep up on you a bit.  You think that not much has really happened/been done/changed when in fact quite a bit has (particularly when you look back at photos).  The photo above is our backyard side garden now and the one below is the same from when we first moved in a year and a half ago.  MR has been super busy with the chainsaw, the axe and the shovel.  While it is certainly not finished by any means, all the moaning I do about how not-very-pretty and bare and unfinished our garden looks is a little bit of an exaggeration perhaps.  Because our fruit trees are thriving.

So I thought I'd make up some little collages of our fruit trees progression. 

Apricot tree - September 2011, November 2011, December 2011, October 2012

The apricot tree has gone mad ever since we planted it.  It grows so fast that MR and I often have conversations about how the apricot tree is going when he is away for two weeks.  So far is has blossomed twice but not yet had any fruit.. fingers crossed for next year!

Orange tree - September 2011, October 2012

Unfortunately, the orange did not go the same way.  We actually planted the orange out the front, in a section of garden that I have not had any luck in keeping anything I plant there alive.  We transplanted it this October as it had not only not grown at all, but the leaves were starting to yellow.  Since we moved it the leaves have gone green again and new leaves have sprouted as well as about five blossoms have appeared, the first time there has been any signs of blossoms on it.  It seems to like its new home much better and on the other side of the fence in the neighbours yard in the same spot they have a mandarin tree so I thought maybe they might like to be friends?

White peach tree - April 2012, October 2012

The white peach tree was a present from a lady I work with, a self sown one from their own peach tree which yields delicious peaches.  It's only been in the ground at our place six months now and seems to be leafy all the way up.  I'm wondering whether I should remove the leaves from lower down? 

Nectarine - April 2012, October 2012

The nectarine we bought and planted at the same time as the peach.  There's been a bit of growth and plumping out so far.  This one got a lot of blossoms at the end of Winter/beginning of Spring and actually had about ten little fruit appear which we pulled off so it could grow more.  Nice to know it will fruit though!

Unfortunately, I don't really have many good shots of the loquat from when we first planted it to show the growth but while it is going a bit slower it is still coming along well.  That one is a cutting from Mum's tree.  No sign of any blossoms or fruit on it yet either.

Gooseberry - December 2011, October 2012, the first gooseberry!

Now, I know this isn't a fruit tree but it is the only thing we have gotten any fruit off so far.  Three gooseberries in fact!  I'm hoping it will thrive and we will get heaps more next season because I do love gooseberries.  There are still heaps on the bush but they take ages to ripen.  As you can see, I picked the first one a little bit early because I just couldn't wait any longer!  When I was in junior primary we had a gooseberry bush in our back garden next to the pool and I have fond memories of jumping into the pool and then out and gobbling gooseberries and then back in again.  This bush took off when we planted it at the end of last year but the all of a sudden it started to die off.  Not sure what I did wrong but thankfully it stopped dying and started to regrow again. 


So there you go, some actual garden stuff is happening after all.  The next thing to do is get rid of that horrible red curbing edging business that we have happening (you can see it in the top picture) and edge it with some big rocks out the back and limestone blocks out the front.  After that we can get all soil level and then put in a proper veggie path and start really getting a bit more of a pretty looking garden happening. 


What's been happening in your garden lately?