Gardening stuff – Aprill Allen

Garden Tour

Finally, we have the warmer weather.

Last weekend (after my big night out on Friday with the girls) we went for a trip down to Canberra to see a kids movie and enjoy the outdoors. We had a lovely time with a short stroll through the Old Bus Depot markets and then down by Lake Burley Griffin.
mini yacht races

We watched the mini yacht races and strolled back through the kapok laden breeze.

After that it was back to school for Fraser and back to the daily routine for me.

The spring weather has been here all week so I’ve been out watering every afternoon and nursing my sick camellia and hyrdrangeas. The rest of the garden looks lovely and fit to burst with colour.

I’ve also renovated both vege patches. One has been replanted with summer veg while the other is covered in weed mat to help kill off the overgrown grass.

We’re two steps away form having some lush green lawn—just waiting on drip irrigation to be laid and the turf to arrive. Oh my, how long I’ve waited for this!

Rain, rain, go away

What happened to our spring time weather? We’ve had wintery cold and rainy weather for a couple of weeks now. It rained on Fraser’s last soccer game Saturday before last. We were lucky that he got his Assocation medal and certificate before it started hailing. Then on Sunday we had the football club presentation inside the clubhouse because of the crappy weather.

He was very proud to get a trophy for Most Improved and the other trophy is for participating in the Under 6 team.

If you’re wondering why he’s dressed in cowboy gear, it’s because we were invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates, who’s also a neighbour. I took this photo just before we left. They had an ‘Old West’ party at the wool shed and insisted we all dress up. I put Matt’s akubra on and that’s as far as I was going to go.

Things are quiet around here this week because Matt and Fraser are both in Sydney. Matt’s got some work to do up there and Fraser is staying with my Mum for a few days of the holidays. So it’s just Lincoln, Kami and I. In between the rainy patches this week I managed to weed out the vege beds and plant some potted colour in all my empty pots. Our landscaping is waiting for some irrigation to be laid, and then the turf, so I’m going to dot some flowers around the place to cheer things up for the spring. I just need spring to come back now!

Lunch Date Sundays

How did another Sunday night roll around? I haven’t even spoken of the last weekend, let alone this one. Well they were pretty much the same, anyway. A quiet Saturday followed by a Lunch Date Sunday.

Last Sunday we met up with friends on the way to Kiama and had a little bushwalk down to Carrington Falls. A lovely day with a picnic of free Naidoc week sausage sandwiches and bought fish & chips.

After lunch we went for a walk along the bike path as the kids scootered along in front, and finished with an ice cream. As you do.

Today we drove up to Campbelltown to meet up with (BIL) Shan and his two girls. Would you believe The Black Stump is still around? And we were surprised to find that the kids all ate for free. Woo hoo!

In the intervening days, Fraser had his last soccer game for the term, school finished on Friday, and we received Fraser’s first school report. He did fabulously well, with some lovely comments. We’re really proud, and pleased that he enjoys school so much. Especially after his tearful day at the start of the year.

As much as he loves school, he’s happy to be on holidays. He’s got a few days with Nanny and Poppy. I bought tickets for Mum to take him to the Lazytown stage show so I’m sure he’ll come back with lots to talk about.

Another discovery during the week was my broccoli harvest. Seems I’ve left them so long a couple of heads have started flowering. I harvested what I could and decided to leave these two here for the experimental blossoms. I say ‘experimental’ because I’ve never seen a flowering broccoli before and amazingly, it’s not entirely unattractive!

For some reason I always thought plants that are particularly good for you would be ugly. As though they could only perform one function well. I’m going to keep checking in on the broccoli and take a picture of it in full bloom. That’s a whole yellow wedding bouquet there. No need to pay exorbitant fees for a florist to put a handle on a bunch of flowers!

Scheduled shopping trip

This is two full heads of broccoli that I cut from the garden on Monday. Blanched, bagged and frozen. There’s alot more to come. There will be many broccoli dinners.

Yes, I was supposed to be in Canberra this week but the course booking was never finalised by the venue. I’ve decided to go down on saturday just for the day. Besides, I have my Kikki-k voucher to spend from my birthday.

I need to go shopping for Lincoln’s birthday and I’ve booked in for a tarot reading. I won’t fit a haircut in but my preferred salon is booked out anyway. Another time.

It hasn’t been a thoroughly disappointing start to the week, though. I did get to see Fraser sing with the junior choir at the mall yesterday, and I’m going to the school’s Open Day on Friday for Education Week.

Plan{t}s

I’ve finally got around to experimenting with my Christmas present. Here’s a stack of recycled paper drying made from the ripped up bits of christmas wrapping paper.

This is what happens when you mix green and yellow. There’s lots of potential for this particular crafty activity but I think it will take some practice. The sheets turned out a bit too thick and I need to set up a better system to work with.

The vege patch is coming along well. The broccoli plants are taking off nicely.

And the little seedlings in Fraser’s green house are getting ready for transplanting.

I’ve prepped the bottom half of the kitchen dresser for painting as soon as I get time. I go on a wallpaper hunt this weekend to Porter’s Paints and Signature Prints. Signature Prints is having a sale this week so I’m hoping to pick up some snazzy remnants.

Another project I started this week is pulling all the recordings from digital video to my computer in hopes of editing together some DVDs. They go back to when Fraser was born and there is some seriously bad footage of me post-birth. So completely exhausted and so obviously in shock. Anyway, it’s a long-term project as I don’t really know what I’m doing with these videos yet, except that I want to blend in some digi photos and make a video of each year.

I’m making headway on my to-do list. It’s a good feeling. Once we get the kids’ playing field (i.e. lawn) done, I’d like to get back to fixing up the chooky area.

We did good

I didn’t get around to my second coat of paint. It wasn’t due to an attack of the sloths but I’d run out of turps. Instead, I shovelled one tonne of freshly bought soil into the neglected compost heap vege patch.

I bought a couple of new lavenders and coreopsis which I planted down the middle where I can’t easily reach into the garden bed, and then added some broccoli, red onion, and spring onion seedlings. Fraser’s little greenhouse is germinating silverbeet, brussel sprouts, and strawberries. We’ll transplant those once they’re bigger.

Matt resurrected the trampoline. It blew over in strong wind several months ago and we only just got the replacement part to fix it.

He also got his hands on twenty-five, or so, old railway sleepers that we’ve stockpiled for use as a retaining wall for some turf.

We did good.

Summer times

Last weekend is the first really summery weekend we’ve been home to enjoy the outdoors. On Saturday the landscapers came to measure out the kids playground area and turf that we’d like to complete before Christmas. We were outside for alot of the day. On the swings, wandering around pointing at the cows, playing with reels of string line, kicking and throwing balls, etc. There are stakes in the ground now and the landscaper will email us a design in about a week. Apparently, it will take two weeks to build from the time we say ‘go’. It’s certainly nothing complicated. A bobcat, a dingo, some earth moving, laying irrigation and turf, a sandpit. We’re still deciding whether to go ahead with the idea of building a cubby/fort construction in there somewhere. It’s great that the boys will have a nice soft area to play in the beautiful warm weather.

Lincoln has become quite fascinated with the cows. He’ll point to them and say “bbooooo” and is not afraid to get up close. He loves being outside. The patio has become a great play area which is what I’d hoped would happen.

On Sunday we had some family portraits taken. They were a fundraising exercise and so all taken with the same formulaic, cheesy pose. I’m looking forward to seeing how they look though, as we have very few photos with all four of us. Lincoln kept trying to crawl away but once it was over, he wanted to keep going just so he could see himself on the back of the digital camera. And a Lincoln datapoint to note: he nods ‘yes’ now.

We got the official letter from ‘big school’ giving dates for orientation days. I’ll take the morning off work to take Fraser to his first orientation, and Matt will take him to the second orientation the following week. We’ll be away for the parent information morning so we’re aiming to get all the relevant info on the orientation trips. Fraser will meet his year 5 mentor, see where to put his school bag, and he’ll have his morning tea there before getting picked up.

This week is a busy one for me. Sewing class on Thursday night, dinner out for a friend’s birthday on Friday night, an engagement party Saturday night, and then Matt’s away in Melbourne for a few days.

Under construction

Finally the weather is warmer though the mornings can still be a bit nippy. I love this time of year when my lavender is blooming, the gaura is starting off, and random blossom trees are flowering by the side of the highways and country roads where people have chucked their apple cores and peach seeds.

The construction of our patio has begun. The slab gets poured on Tuesday and I guess the builders will be here the end of next week. Just about every weekend from now to Christmas has some event or other on. Not to mention our ten days in Fiji. The time is going by in a flash and before long, I will be back at work and Lincoln and Fraser will be starting their two days of daycare together.

higchair
There’s alot happening in Lincoln’s little world at the moment. he started rolling on Monday. I can’t put him down without coming back to find him having rolled over. His hands are constantly in his mouth. I bought him a highchair a few weeks ago. He sits in it most mornings when we have breakfast, and sometimes when we have lunch. he’s not quite up to persevering through dinner time though, so we’re still eating that at the coffee table in the loungeroom.
The night time shennanigans have continued but every couple of nights we get a good one so it’s not too hard to cope with the bad ones.

Here’s the herb garden I was speaking of in my last post.
herb
There’s parsley, coriander, oregano, thyme, basil, chives, and along the front I have a dwarf nasturtium. Next garden project will be furnishing the patio with pot-plants and a potted lime tree. After that, I’ll clean up the lavender garden that’s been infested with barley grass and needs to be filled out a bit with some new plants.

I can’t believe that I missed my all-time favourite singer/musician Kristin Hersh on her tour of AU!! She only did a limited number of shows and I only found out a couple of days beforehand. If I’d pulled my finger out and followed up on it I would have found out that the Katoomba show was family friendly and I could have taken Lincoln! Unfortunately, I didn’t find out until after the fact and now I’m kicking myself. It was more than 10 years ago that I last saw her with the Throwing Muses in Sydney. I’m encouraged, however, by the news that her family have applied for NZ residency. Maybe I ill get to see her before another 10 years passes. Here’s hoping.

Outings

We’ve had a couple of little outings lately. Inspired by a quiet weekend at home, we took to the local environs. Here we are at Fitzroy Falls in the Southern Highlands. We did the shortest walk possible as we had the shopping pram with us rather than the all-terrain pram. Quite pleasant, nonetheless, and we finished it with a bakery lunch on the way home.

Lincoln is 4 weeks old today so he had his vaccinations on Thursday.
His weight has levelled out now at just under 7kg. And like clockwork we’re getting nighttime shennanigans – which is quite common at 4 months. The last two nights he has insisted on an 11pm feed and the woken again around 2.30-3am for another feed only to refuse to go back to sleep for about an hour or so. He wants to play, and when he sees that we’re not interested he cries about it. I can remember we went through this scenario with Fraser but I can’t recall how we handled it or how long it lasted. Belinda tells me miss Z did something similar for 2 weeks. Lord. We’ve had such a dream run I just don’t know how to handle it during the night when he mucks around. Sleep deprivation = bad mood until lunch time. Tonight I’m going to bed early!

My projects are going well. My herb garden is finished – must take a piccy of that; I’ve just about wrapped up Lincoln’s x-stitch – just have the lettering to do before I organise some framing; I’ve framed a bunch of my good B&W tafe photos – need to hang them; I’ve cleaned out some shelves in the kitchen linen cupboard and cleared out some boxes from the office from our move 2.5 years ago.

Surprise Harvest

In all the baby madness I forgot to post about this surprise harvest. Well, the parsley is no surprise – there’s 2 massive bushes of it in the vege patch. But while Mum and Dad were down here we discovered some pumpkins that had emerged out of the kitchen scraps that I’d been lazily chucking into the empty garden bed. Dad also found loads of fruiting blackberries out in the paddock. Yum! I haven’t been out there myself yet, (too cold and rainy), and maybe I’ve missed the bulk of the fruit by now but I should get out there one of these days and check it out.