My herb garden now has a few new additions. A friend bought some plants off Trade Me and I put in a request for these with her order since they weren't ones I had thought of adding until now (I haven't read up on all their properties just yet either)...but the opportunity arose and all that.... Several of them don't look like much since they are dormant at this time of year (all are apparently hardy perennials), but I can see new growth beginning to pop through.

Lady's mantle
Goldenrod
Marshmallow
St Johns Wort
Yarrow

I have finally got my front herb/cottage garden planted to maximum capacity - so these plants were added in the lower garden with the comfrey and nettles. Although,I have been thinking of cutting into more of the grassed area to expand it and just end up with a rambling path going through it...

I also bought a punnet of Calendulas today and popped them all around both gardens too.

Spring cleaning the backyard...

Ooooh, lovin' this spring-like weather.

We spent another whole day outside.

Just shooting the breeze with a hot drink before the work gets started.

Nathan's aeroplane he built...

(with playhouse in place for the new chicken coop - we just moved the coop back onto it, cut a hole on one side and fitted it over the doorway)

Oops! A lesson learned on hammering with your face too close to your work (no, it wasn't from the hammer, but from the piece of wood being hit in the wrong place and making it flick up into his face).

Danielle helping me reerect the new bean tepee since it had to move to make way for the coop.

Newly decked out playhouse. It wasn't well received when dusk came though...so I became chicken councellor, nursery rhyme singer (Simon thinks I'm officially nutty now), giver of pats, cuddles, and soothing talk...and all was then quiet.

I replanted all my nettle seedlings into one patch alongside my comfrey plants (which only disappeared for winter a few weeks back and are already sending out new shoots). I got brave and positioned the nettles by holding the underside of their leaves and managed to not get stung.

Nathan had his winch out (bucket in tree).

Danielle making tea and cake.

I then removed a pile of rubbish from outside the garage. I told Simon, when MY garden shed arrives (a hand-me-down from my parents) that MINE won't be filled with rubbish and will be catalogued and organised...hehe...he called me a geek.

Emptied the compost bins into 3 of the garden beds and got them all going again.

Cleaned out the bathtub/water trough and let it fill with fresh water.

Harvested some silverbeet, kale, spring onions and leeks for tonight's stir-fry.

Ahhhh, another successful day.

PS: The vinegar worked even under pressure - with all that work that went on today, it was a success.

Just puttering around outside...

By mid-morning the kids and I were outside enjoying the sunshine. I've been dreaming up plans for overhauling the chicken coop and incorporating the kids old plastic playhouse that is no longer used. So, I dragged the house down the back of the yard and measured up where we'd put everything. The existing coop will need a few modifications to retrofit it onto the playhouse but will be easy enough to do. I intend on the back window of the house being where I can access the straw lining underneath the roost to change it. One of the windows will be where we open the shutters to access the nesting box to retrieve eggs.

We no longer place the chicken tractor over the garden beds now that they are raised, so felt it would be easier to just pick a permanent spot for it - which also coincides with the coop getting a little decrepit for moving continually.

I then checked my letterbox and had a lovely surprise. My name was drawn in Johanna's natural perfume giveaway and it arrived today. It's just yummy. I enjoyed sniffing it every few minutes to see how the notes emerged. Mmmm...it's been years since I owned perfume, and how neat to get one that has all the fragrances that I am usually attracted to.

After lunch I headed to the herbal garden as I had a few plants that needed planting out. I had acquired some pots of herbs while away on holiday (one of the places we stayed at was a herb nursery business) and I was able to grab from the toss-out-pile whatever I wanted - a shame our car is small and was already packed to the roof, otherwise I would have brought back more!

Then I moved on to looking at all my seed packets and sorted out the ones that could be put up into my propagators now (mostly herbs, flowers, spinach and cauli...from memory).

Watched my washing flapping in the breeze and getting gentle wafts of fragrance from my spring flowers (no it wasn't my perfume I was smelling hehe).

That reminded me of the Hamilton Gardens that we visited on holiday. We walked into one of the gardens and the gorgeous fragrances that hit us was amazing. Upon reading the garden name, it was called the Fragrant Garden.

That then had me thinking of the cool Permaculture Garden they also have set up...complete with a chicken in a tractor. I wish I'd taken more photos of the permaculture garden as they had a really neat set up.

OK, another "what's that" question. What is the reed stuff in the pond likely to be?

Spring is (back) in the hair...

Yeah, yeah, tacky title lol...

As I've previously written, I've been 'no-pooing' for about 3.5yrs now. After the initial adjustment period my hair went through with finding its own natural oil balance, the right amounts of ACV/baking soda to use, number of days between washes etc I have been absolutely sold on keeping my hair clean without the use of shampoo or conditioner.

During the first few years I even heat-straightened my hair every day. I then grew it for 18mths without a cut. All with my hair remaining soft and in good condition (until the last few months where it lost condition and was REALLY overdue for a cut which I recently had).

Anyway, when we were away on holiday last week I only packed shampoo and conditioner (I found that Danielle needed shampoo as it was hard for me to determine what was the best way to do it for her hair at her young age and often being unwilling to have her hair washed etc). It was like I was suddenly thrown back into the days of being a slave to shampooing daily! It was horrible. Within a couple days my hair was back to being greasy in the morning and absolutely needing a wash, lank by midday and just generally unmanageable from excess floppiness due to that "first day of washing hair", yet I never got to make it to the 2nd day where the texture is generally improved. So I started shampooing daily and it was only in hindsight upon returning home and getting  back into the no-poo routine that my hair returned to normal (which happened pretty much straight away after the first BS wash) as I was starting to wonder if the new haircut just meant icky greasy hair due to shorter bits and a fringe. So, no more regular shampooing for me...

And talking of personal hygeine...I continue to use baking soda as an alternative to antiperspirant when I think I need it. As part of my herbal studies, one of the projects was to make a lavender vinegar that was purported to be great as a deoderant, yet not suppressing the glands from perspiring. So I made it up, but just couldn't get my head around using it and feared that I'd then go around for the day smelling of vinegar! Recently I was doing some reading where the author explained that perspiration smell often occurs in an alkaline environment. So putting two and two together and knowing that soap is an alkaline (and we do use soap in this house), it made sense that the skin - even after a shower - was left in an alkaline condition. I then wondered if that was why the vinegar worked since it's an acid (but contradicted why BS works since it's an alkaline!). So I trialled just splashing some ACV under my arms while in the shower and rinsing it off. My theory being that perhaps just changing the surface of the skin from alkaline to acid that perhaps it would work as well? Well, it does. And I don't smell of vinegar. If I feel the need for dryness, then a pat of baking soda takes care of it. And incidentally, BS is meant to work because it aids in rapid drying.

Spring is in the air...

It's peeking its head out more and more. The house is warming up to a lovely temperature during the day where we haven't even felt the need for a fire the last few nights.

We did squeeze in a lovely winter holiday (mixed with very spring weather as well!) last week though.

Now, bring on the longer and warmer days!

The spring growth and flowers have been gradually making themselves known over the past 3-4wks.

Anyone know what these are? They open quite wide and are more of a royal purple than deep blue.