#blog12daysxmas 27th December

Arrived back home!  Hooray for wifi! Hooray for my own bed!

Hooray for photos!

 

Hooray for Christmas dinner!



 Hooray for waterslide!



Even whale sized me had a turn... it is shorter than the one we had as kids.

 

The rain and humidity has had the expected effect on the garden.
The dark fleshed plums are ripening. We've already had a bumper crop of the early plum (Hawera).

 

 I have 2 nice green cucumbers growing.

 

I'm getting more zucchinis by the day.

 
 and hooray for home grown tomatoes!

Dirty deeds done..

but not cheap!

When we first bought our house one of the projects we tackled soon after settling in was re-doing the garden beside the driveway.  It was seriously overgrown and had become a dumping ground for all kinds of weird things.  We tossed out a whole lot of scraggly lavender shrubs, old pots, rubbishy bits of gardening odds, covered the garden with weed mat and then bark.

Now, 12 years later we decided to re-do it again.  A few of the trees had got too tall and were tangling in the wires to the house.  Some of the shrubs were dying off or getting past their best.  You can kind of see what I mean in this photo.  It's the garden on the left hand side.

So off came the weed mat, down came the trees and after a lot of physical work we finally had a tidier garden.  We got a bunch of new plants - mainly natives - from Oratia Native Plants, Mitre10 and Kings Plant Barn.

Stuff everywhere! We filled up the garden bag and took a huge trailer load to the dump.  There were some stubborn stumps in there that required pulling out.  DH managed to pull 2 out with the car/tow bar/rope but the others we had to dig out.

Weed mat about to go on.

Finished look. DH was keen to make the garden more attractive to butterflies so there are some plants suitable for red/yellow admirals and coppers in the mix.

 I divided up the astelia and put them around the place.

We hope to attract some skinks with these stones and partially buried pots.

The vegetable garden is planted up too.  I'm hopeful of a big harvest!  That is the best part about this time of year... the anticipation and hope of new life, harvesting a crop of vegetables from your back yard.  We're already enjoying radishes, spinach and rocket.

figs and goat cheese

figs and goat cheese
Originally uploaded by pdugmore2001.

My fig tree is starting to bear ripening fruit. I hadn't looked at it for a few days because of the rain, but I noticed the starlings and wax eyes were in the tree and helping themselves so realised I'd better check!

They are delightful fresh with Puhoi's Fresh Goat Cheese.

I'll be making some jam when I get enough.

Does anyone want a fig tree? My Dad has 3 he has struck from cuttings. All healthy plants waiting for a fig-lovin' owner. Let me know.

Power Igor...

And we have life! Yes I am still alive. Ha!

Prepare for bullet point posting:

1. Finished the A-Z of New Zealand album for a colleague leaving for Australia. Actually more for his kids who were born here. Couldn't let those tender NZers forget their NZ heritage now could I? A few of the pages. Sorry about the awful light but I finished it the night before I had to give it to him and had no opportunity to take a photo in daylight.

2. I planted 2 kinds of corn this year. Indian corn and the usual sweetcorn. The two obviously cross fertilised and we got some kernels reverting to the old fashioned corn. Tasted fine though and looked pretty. :-)

3. Went to the Steam Festival at Glenbrook. DS had a great time with all the steam technology. DD and I had a ride on the cart pulled by the Clydesdales (Guy, Jill and Star). Oh boy it was hot that day! The steam train caused a grass fire and our return trip to the station was delayed by it - having left lunch in the car we were sure hungry by the time we got to eat it. We ended up driving into Waiuku to eat because there was very little available shade and so many people! A great day though. I got lots of photos for Lianne's NZ photo calendar project.

4. I've been awarded some blog awards by some generous ladies. Thank you!

Rachel gave me the Kreative Blogger award. I'm going to give it to Vicky because I want to be like her when I grow up. I really admire her creativity, her style and her dedication to what she believes in. She may not "go in for" these awardy type things but that is ok too.

Ann gave me the Marie Antoinette award. It's for "telling it like it is" I understand. So I'm going to award it to Sandra. She and her blog-hijacking husband are not afraid to put the tough things of life on their blog.

Yvette very sweetly gave me the Fabulous blog award. I'm going to award it to Sharon because she constantly delights me with her photos and layouts. I know she thinks she needs more practice with her photography but I think (and her other readers probably agree) that she has some great stuff appearing regularly.
And Bronny has given me this award which comes with some rules!


We have to say one nice thing about the man in our life. Hmmmm. Well, I wouldn't like to be without him that is for sure. He puts up with my strange foibles, makes me laugh, still thinks I'm hot despite 2 babies and being over 30, and supports my coffee/chocolate habit. Hee hee!
And we have to list 6 ways I measure my success in life. Well that is kinda personal - I'll probably sound a bit religious but... the main way I measure success is if I'm living up to the spirit of Christ's teachings.
But there are some others.
2) if I've made somebody's life better
3) if I've taught my kids to be good citizens
4) if I've learned something new
5) if I've been able to find blessing in something I find difficult to do/live with/deal with
6) if I've been able to find time for prayer/meditation

Now I'm going to award this one to themommykelly. :-)

I am going to post separately about the January reading Round Up and the Book Club Book. Stay tuned.

Summer Jam

Following Sharon and Hannah's outing to the strawberry farm, I decided we should go too. Of course this was in no way related to the fact I have some strawberry paper and stamps at home. No really.

The kids weren't that enthusiastic pickers to my surprise! But we did get a bucket full - about 1.5 kilo I think. I made 4 jars of strawberry jam and 5 jars of plum+strawberry.


I think the size of the patch was a bit overwhelming for them.


DD is in there up to her armpits! Can you tell she isn't that enthused?

However, they both enjoyed the ice cream we got when we paid for the strawberries. There was also a tractor in the shop that DS played on while I waited in line. He had the idea that he'd get to ride on the tractors that were driving around the farm so was a bit miffed when we walked! "Those are John Deere tractors Mum" he told me.

Here is my pumpkin in the garden with clothes peg for comparison.

Pity the kids don't like pumpkin ;-)

Birthdays and Vegetables

What, you might well ask, do these things have in common?
Absolutely nothing but that is what this post is about...

But first - a layout. I finally scrapped DS's first day at school using the October kit from SBO.

Next DD's 2nd birthday on the 7th. I made her a Very Hungry Caterpillar cake because that is her favourite story right now. Funnily enough, it was DD's fav story too and he got a 'pillar cake for his 2nd birthday. We just had a quiet celebration for her. Nan and Pop came for dinner, and some cousins came for dessert. She liked the cake but didn't know what to do with the candles. Fortunately big brother did!

Now for the garden bit! We (actually DH) dug up the potatoes. We got a pretty good crop with some decent sized ones in there. These are Jersey Bennes.

These are mostly Red Desiree. There were more of these but I'd already stowed them in the potato bin.

I had some modest success with my Borlotti beans this year, but I doubt I'll get enough to make a decent stew with. Still, they are so beautiful. My courgette/zuchini is also beautiful but not very prolific. Neither is my cucumber - I'm wondering if it is the lack of bees around.

Just for Jenny. The fig tree is looking good for jam this year. Hope the silver eyes leave me some ;-)

Here is my garden as of December. The potatoes on the right are now gone and I've put in some perpetual spinach. The pumpkin on the left is now enormous and I will share a comparative photo once I down load it off the camera.


The plums are ripening so I imagine plum jam is on the project list for the coming weekend. Yum!

More entries for the Scrapbook Outlet Very Sweet Christmas Competition

For week 2: Make 3 Christmas Cards.  Done! I used the Paper Pesto kit I got (the November kit).  Lovely stuff in there and I do enjoy the little robins.

Week 3: A layout of the family's wish list (or a member of the family).  Wow - I actually completed this one on time to get into the raffle! LOL! (It's a sad indictment on my time these days.  This time last year I'd already started/made a bunch of Christmas presents.  *sigh* ).

Anyway, I asked DS what he wanted for Christmas and told him to make a list or draw what he wanted.  He loves combine harvesters.  He tells me "I've never been on a harvester before" in a sad, longing voice. He also tells me in painstaking detail what each bit of the harvester does, and all about the "gwain" that gets taken to the mill and made into flour, which then gets made into bread.  He currently likes the Little Red Hen story for this reason, and if I do any baking he tells me, "Wait!  I will get some "gwain" and make flour for you!". 

I used the October SBO kit for this one.  Another yummy kit which suits my tastes entirely with lots of green, browns and "natural" colours.
You may recall this photo of my garden at the beginning of the season.  Now it looks like this! :-)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Garden Hopes

Plum Blossoms

I do love this time of year when the garden stuff is getting going and there is so much hope! (Talk to me again mid-summer when the weeds are getting beyond me and I'll have another opinion!)












We're trying something different this year. I've removed all my herbs and put them in a separate garden so we've got 4 beds to deal with. Beans and potatoes will go in one bed, corn and cucurbits in another and the remaining two will have tomatoes, chillies, salad stuff etc etc. That's my bay tree in the pot. Fejoa and fig tree in the background. I'm hoping the companion planting will work well. I've got a mixture of seeds sprouting in the bed on the bottom left - mesculun salad, carrots, parsnips and radishs, plus some red onions. I'm not that successful with seeds because I tend to neglect them, but I'm hoping these will do ok. The radishes are up.












My herb garden. It looks a little "grave" like but I wanted to surround it so DH can use the weed eater etc without getting my stuff! So I found some old tongue and groove flooring bits under the house and used them, plus some pavers we've had left over from the big garden to do the edge with. So far the herbs have survived the replanting but the lemon grass needs to get some growth in soon if I'm to use any this season.

School seems to going well for DS. You know I never even asked how long I could stay the other day!! Oh well, as one of my friends says, it's sometimes better to apologise than ask permission. The teacher didn't seem at all concerned and as I mentioned, she put me to work drawing and cutting out masks for the kids.

His party on Saturday went well and bad scrapbooking mum that I am, I didn't even get out the camera! But fortunately some of my friends took a few photos so I'll get some off them. I was just too busy fluffing around with cakes and stuff.

My preparations for the party were a little curtailed by the fact DH lost his wallet and discovered the fact on Sat morning. So a big panic, lots of frantic hunting, cancelling of cards, driver's licence and so on. We reported the driver's licence to the police and got a temporary one and I had to go along to pay for it since he had no cash. Fortunately the wallet didn't have any cash in it so it's more the inconvenience than anything. Very frustrating. DH is prone to losing things. He needs a locator beacon on his wallet. Something like this perhaps? Or this?

Check out Vicky's cool new Etsy shop :) Such cute hats!

Violent Thoughts

Oh Slug!
Whose moist supple body
insinuated itself through a slender gap
secretively slipping on a mucusoid path
furtively

Oh Slug!
No welcome moonlight
revealed your rasping radular
ravaging my hopeful harvest
of cucumbers

Oh Slug!
I will relocate you, expose you
on this crevassed concrete
for some tightly feathered
blackbird's snack