Just Pottering

That's about the extent of it at the moment. The garden really seems in limbo as I wait for it all to grow! But I love seeing the little gains each week as the soil warms up and with the spring rains giving everything a good dowsing every week or so.

~ All silverbeet/chard seedlings are now in the ground
~ One patch of potatoes are now tall enough to have soil mounded around them (loving the ditches, certainly makes the job easier!)
~ Maori potatoes have all popped through and the rest are all up too, so we're in potato production!
~ At least a dozen self-seeded pumpkins have come up in amongst my pea/sunflower/tomato/daffodil bed - how's that for intercropping lol. Not so sure about my choice of companion planting though lol, but I don't think they despise each other but probably provide no benefits.
~ I keep finding self-seeded lettuces (and more potato plants) all around the place too which is exciting, love that! This is one of the fantastic things about producing your own compost and being onto a 2nd year of gardening I guess.
~ My new tamarillo, apple and raspberry canes are all producing leaves.
~ The plum tree has nice sized little plums forming - but does look like an in between year as there aren't many growing.
~ I've put up some bamboo poles and string for my peas to start to climb up
~ Chickens have almost completed their work on preparing all vege beds (hehe, love the way that sounds), so they'll be shunted off to the side do sit the summer out until some of the beds come free again.
~ Have dug up a few more beds in preparation for the Three Sisters combo which I hope to get in, in a few weeks time.
~ Have started to thin out my onion and carrot seedlings. I certainly have had much more success this year just getting (or able to determine the difference between carrot seedlings and weeds!) since I did the broadcasting in rows method of sowing rather than sowing individual seeds.
~ I'm fairly certain all 3 chickens have been laying for a week now. Definitely my big one and my little black one.

Oh well...

So much for getting things done without a computer lol. I managed to get my old laptop up and running and only had it cut out on me once so far.

With the rain and warmish weather we've been having this week the garden (and the weeds) are booming! The lettuces look as vibrant as ever, the brassicas that have been in over winter are finally looking close to growing heads (hehe, that sounds funny) and more potatoes have sprung up.

I planted a few tomato plants down in the garden. I'm a little weary of having done it so soon, but they're in a sheltered spot that gets good all day sun. My other seedlings are looking awesome!

Exciting news! One of my little chickens laid her first egg yesterday. I'm not sure which one it was, but whoever the poor wee girl was she must have torn a little as the egg came out as there were blood stains on the shell. I have been assured is very common and normal though.

I went to the Transition Towns movie night last night and saw What a Way To Go. I saw this last year and was quite depressed for a week afterwards, but it didn't have much of an impact on me last night. I guess I'm so far along now that my mindset has been changed, I've grieved, I sprung into action and put as much into place as possible that I feel I've done pretty much all I can within my means and we just have to face what comes whenever that might be (or are we all the frogs slowly boiling right now??).

When I did my fortnightly grocery shop today I also had a huge list of foods to add (or replace!) to the emergency supplies. I added a few more things I hadn't really thought of after reading Sharon Astyk's blog. So I added many packets of popcorn (afterall, the kids and Simon eat a lot of this and I'm sure I could bring myself to if need be).

Taking a break...

Well, actually, the computer's taking a break. Literally.

My USB port got damaged a few days back (which isn't a huge drama really except I can no longer upload photos!) so from tomorrow will be sent away to the insurance assessors and I'll be computer-less for a week or two.

How will I cope? Might have to try and get the old beast fired up...

Or perhaps I'll set myself plenty of Spring Cleaning tasks and knock them off?

The slack blogger

Well, it really has become a bit of a weekly update around here hasn't it?

I find I'm really only thinking and doing "garden" stuff and my mind hasn't been wandering in other directions. So along with keeping ourselves busy, continuing with being mindful of fuel usage, trying to keep my thoughts away from buying-buying-buying (albeit only auction-site things), catching up with friends and just living-life, we're just cruising along quite nicely. It's become such a seamless, mostly relaxed journey, that it all feels so...normal.

A year ago I felt anything but normal, but the more I find groups of people who I can be *me* with, have meaningful connecting conversations and relationships with, the more normal it all seems (even if I perhaps appear to others like the loopy chick who belongs to those fringe groups)! It no longer seems to matter.

I feel content and on the right path. I'm loving the various groups I'm involved in that really do enhance and make life enjoyable (namely family, playcentre, transition towns and our unschooling friends).

So! Back to what I've been up to...

~ Have dug up all the potato bits that I put in the trenches that became waterlogged and planted new seed potatoes.

~ One entire bed of potatoes have now sprouted and another has a few shoots above the surface. No sign of my Maori potatoes yet.

~ Spent a lot of time fluffing around and watching my chickens. They have all settled really well. The little ones start running around all silly when they see me coming now. They still tend to freak out occasionally when out free ranging and end up flying across the yard for odd reasons, but no longer have the desire to fly over the fences to the neighbours!

~ Had a few days of rain during the week which is just what the garden needed to get a good thorough soaking.

~ Decluttered my car - what a tip!

~ Went along to a transition towns working-bee today to spend a few enjoyable hours in someone elses garden.

~ Moved the chicken tractor to clear another vege patch (was amazing how quickly the previous one turned to bare mud with a few days of rain). Sussed out with Simon where they will be located over summer while the garden is full of veges growing.

~ Went for a walk down to a local river mouth with the kids and my parents yesterday and I couldn't help but look at all the weeds lol. My step dad was really helpful in identifying a few things (but then got exasperated when I asked just one too many "what do you think this one is?" and got a "geez, what do you think I am?" lol. And he recommended I bring his mother down to do the id'ing! I come from a step-family of wild foragers and I didn't really even know it! I spotted masses of unidentified wild brassica's, kawa kawa (step dad pointed that one out to me), beach spinach, ice plant, puha and plenty of other things that *looked* like they should have been something edible. I didn't bring any home since I had no plans for using it.

Plans for the week ahead...

~ Reassessing our emergency food supplies again. A few months back we had run out of rice in the pantry. So decided that the rice in the emergency bin needed rotating. After cooking it up, the smell of laundry powder through it was awful, so the entire batch (including dinner) was dumped. Despite things being double bagged, we'll need to come up with a more reliable system.

~ Finish the frog pond - cover with netting, sort out some pond weed/plants, put a few upturned pots around for hiding in and decide what plants to plant around it (I'm leaning towards peas again).

~ Going along to a transition towns movie night to watch "What a Way to Go". I'm sure I've seen this one before, but wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Weekend round up

I've been continuing on with reading my How To Grow More Vegetables book and gleaning a few new bits and pieces out of it. I also found a book on my bookshelf that I had acquired from my nana's bookcase a few months back called The Findhorn Garden which I started to read this morning. It's a weirdly interesting read and I'm not too sure how I feel about the extreme religious/spiritual nature of it just yet lol, but it's definitely an intriguing book that I had trouble putting down.

Since today was Fathers Day and was a beautiful sunny (but chilly) day we decided to go for a bike ride and take a picnic with us. So after making a frittata, we headed off for a local park/reserve area about 10mins away. We heard the miniature trains tooting their horns, so after finishing up eating we headed to the park where the trains are and the kids and Simon had a ride before heading off to the playground where we saw several lots of people we knew and then home again. It was a lovely few hours out.

This afternoon I let the chickens out for a run around and decided to pop some leek, brassica and silverbeet seedlings into the ground to free up one of my seed trays. I then popped the rest of my herb seedlings (even if they weren't big enough or not needed) into the herb garden and will just hope for the best (and think about identifying them later when they're bigger lol - at least I will know out of about a dozen plants which ones they'll be!).

It seemed quite likely they'd be a frost last night, so I prepared for it by popping some straw over the potato plants that had popped through the ground during the week (I have about a dozen through now - still no sign of any sprouting in the previously water-logged bed though). There was a frost, and it looks likely for another tonight so have covered the plants over again. I recall this time last year also needing to frantically cover my corn seedlings and a few other plants that were in the ground too early - but not a problem this year!

I filled my newly emptied seed trays with corn seeds and noticed my beans and capsicums have sprouted.

I've needed to start watering the garden, so last weekend we cleaned and let the bathtub fill with roofwater to give us easy access again.

A bit of wild foraging

I've had a growing interest in foraging for food found around us. From my own backyard (otherwise known as weeds) or while down at the beach or out walking.

Over the past few days I've actually gotten brave enough to use some of my finds.

We had a salad a few days ago and I gathered some chickweed from my garden to chop into it as an additional leavy green.

Yesterday as I was down in my garden I spotted over my neighbour's fence some onion weed. I've heard of this from various people in the past few weeks and hadn't recalled seeing any in *my* backyard so was enviously eyeing it up when I looked down amongst the weeds at my feet and spotted one lone plant overgrown with couch grass. So after clearing up the weeds around it I harvested a few stems. So those made it into our dinner in place onions.

Earlier on in the day, I was out with our homeschooling group down at a local beach and we identified a few plants and a few that looked like they should be edible but couldn't have said for sure. I took this picture and it looks very much like wild turnip or wild mustard - some sort of brassica anyway. So since wild mustard can be toxic if eaten in high levels we left it where it was.

Cheese!

Finally, I managed to find myself some rennet today when we went to a different supermarket. So this afternoon we decided to give it a go.

I was surprised at how super easy and quick this was to do. I used the Mozzarella recipe from the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book.





The result...homemade pizza (not that I'd planned on having make up a pizza base today, but there you are). I didn't salt it, but would definitely do so next time.

Spring!

What a lovely day it was to welcome in Spring.

I spent most of it just pottering around. I'd sit down to read some more of my How to Grow More Vegetable book and come across an idea that just had-to-be-done right there and then, so I'd get up and wander off to do that. The whole day went like that.

Simon took the kids out for a couple of bike rides - I need to find my own bike-love, but garden-love is there right now. Especially since the time is right to get things going in the garden. Although I get quite a bit of time during the week with the kids to pop down to do things in the garden, I try not to spend ALL my time down there since it's not the kids most favourite thing to be doing (although they do love being outside I am mindful of their needs too!). And as the days warm up, we will have plenty of time between 10am-3pm out of the sun to do other stuff, so better try and get in as much work now while I can.

It's amazing how much time can be lost just looking at chickens lol. I love watching them pottering and scratching. Both the little ones had a dust bath today which was neat to watch. Moon decided to come and join them and just plonked herself in the tub of sandy soil with Peach and rolled around with her and on top of her.

I planted out some Maori seed potatoes I'd been given (I forget which variety, but they are purple skinned and yellowy inside) into an empty patch of garden trying out an alternating pattern from the How to Grow book. I popped 5 tomato seedlings into tubs up on my deck. I will move them all around to my front porch where they get more shelter and all day sun though. I then popped 5 tomato seedlings into my front garden amongst my daffodils and sunflowers. They will also get great sun and complete shelter - only issue is they will need constant watering since the soil is still quite sandy despite the heap of compost in there and the rain doesn't drive in on that side.

Tomorrow afternoon after playcentre I intend on dividing some of my herbs up and putting them into spaces within the herb garden as suggested in one of my other gardening books I was reading today. It will keep the herbs going and help keep the weeds at bay by filling in any spare spaces!

I need to get some beans and pumpkins started soon so when I pop the corn seeds directly into the group in October they can all work together to form the Three Sisters.