Seeds: I've found that some of my packets of seeds must be no good. Several varieties didn't germinate - only problem is I don't know which packets are the problem (I have several open ones of each). I will need to make sure I keep them aside next time to see which ones are the dodgy ones so I can toss them out. We had gusty winds last night, so I sent Simon outside to strap the little greenhouse to the washing line pole it's up against.
Handy little fire-starters: Our lovely Cabbage Tree drops a large amount of dead leaves. I read a while back about gathering all the leaves together and tying them up into bundles and using them as kindling/tinder to get the fire started. I used one of the bunches last night and it worked great!
Buying power: We switched to Powershop a few months ago after being cold-called on the phone. I usually don't like to receive calls like this, but I'm not particularly loyal to my power company, and I must have been in the mood to listen to their speil. It's kinda fun purchasing the specials for power in advance, and so far have partly-purchased right up to December (eek to the $300 worth of purchases I made though to get the long-term savings). We haven't really been with them long enough at this stage to see if we will be saving much money though. We are low-energy users, which means we use less than 8000kw per year, but they guarantee a savings of around $10 per month from memory. Our power bills year-round only fluctuate between $90-130 per month. Even if I factored in the cost of buying firewood for 7-8mths of use, our average year-round monthly energy bill would be around $150 which is pretty good really when I hear of some $300-$400 winter bills!
Further fire-safety: Danielle's been really bothered by the house-fire story of a few weeks back, so I've been really working on trying to reassure her. We went over the plan again, and I also removed the security latches off the kids windows so they are free opening now. The phone call to the alarm company confirmed my suspicions - the only way to check our mains-wired alarm is to test it with smoke. They suggested buying a can of smoke from a hardware shop, but I realised I'd overheated my oil till smoking point during the week so Simon used that held up under it. Yep, that set it off.
Pumpkins: I didn't intentionally grow any pumpkins over summer, but I had quite a few pop up as per usual. I had one lovely looking pumpkin that I've not seen before (and therefore no seeds in the compost to pop up). I cut it open on Sunday to make a yummy pumpkin soup for lunch. We kept all the seeds from inside so I could a/ grow some this year, and b/ save the seeds for doing an Autumn craft with the kids. I can see this will be a once off craft - even with Nathan helping me, cleaning and washing the seeds took ages lol.
4 comments:
Hi Tricia, seeds that don't germinate are more than a disappointment! They put the whole succession planting sequence out - by the time you finally give up on them it is weeks later. Took me years, but I finally twigged to an easy way to keep track - it's stupidly simple, but amazing how long it takes me sometimes to see the obvious. Here's my system: Sorting the Seeds
Thanks for that Linda! It really is disappointment, and yes, it puts the plan way behind when I miss out by the time I sort the issue. That looks a great system, I will definitely do this next time. Thanks!
What a beautiful looking pumpkin Nikki.
It tasted great too Sandra. Lasted a good 3 meals lol.
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