Still hexing.......

...as in crocheting the hexagon blanket. I have the odd burst on it now and again, I must keep at it or I could be dead by the time I've got it finished.


I'm making it for the spare bed...

In the garden - Spring 2010

It was such a nice day yesterday I took my camera with me as I wandered to the mailbox.... this lot saw me and assumed it was time for dinner! Bad luck.......... :-D

Cox's Pippin apple blossom

Peach tree getting leavesYellow flower ?

Forget-me-nots

Bloody gorse! We have loads, free to collector!

Lemon tree

Grapefruit tree

Around the pond

Arum lily

Apple blossom

In the veggie garden - planting seeds

It was so nice on Sunday to potter about and finally start sowing some seeds. It's a bit of a waste of time starting any sooner, October is usually windy and for the last couple of years any seedlings planted out have been flattened. So this year we are starting some seeds off in pots. We have bought a few starter plants which went out but most have already be devoured by slugs and snails or dug up by chickens or cats! Ya can't bloody win. So we've started again and the raised beds with anything left are now covered over.
My garden apprentice and chief digger upper of said veg seedlings is never far away.
Just to get ahead of the game with tomatoes this year we bought a couple already growing. We didn't have a good year last year, summer was just about over before we got any toms then we had a glut, mainly of green tomatoes that were made into chutney!!
This tomato is a Moneymaker supertom, a grafted plant, quite pricey but we've had great success with grafted plants in the past.
This is just a normal seedling and is a cherry tom plant. I love eating these straight off the plant.
Quite a few pots as you can see, the purple ones are mainly tomatoes, all different varieties, we figured if you plant loads then we must get some success. I did read in the NZ gardener magazine the other day that this is supposed to ba a good tomato growing year .... we shall see!
Here's a list of what we planted Sunday:

Tomatoes:
Money maker
Cherry dots
Roma
Tigerella
Mini orange - heritage
Honey yellow - heritage
Black fum tula - heritage

Cucumbers:
Lebanese
Burpless (we shall see!)

Zucchini:
Black beauty
Black Jack

Pumpkins:
Crown
Giant (? not sure of correct name, seeds were commandeered from Hamilton gardens!)

Melon: Saved seeds from shop bought

Beans etc:
Scarlett runner


Corn:
Early Chief

Yesterday I planted a bed full of peas, not sure which variety but all saved from previous year.

Over the last couple of weeks when it hasn't been raining we've been weeding the paths in the vegetable garden, if only the veggies grew as well as the weeds and grass does!

Still need to plant directly, beetroot, rocket, radish, red onions, french beans (green & yellow).

I also tidies up my strawberry tower, it;s had flowers on the plants already. I'll take some photos of the veg garden later.

Friday Funny - What is Generation Y?

- People born before 1946 were called

The Silent generation..

- People born between 1946 and 1959 are called
The Baby Boomers.

- People born between 1960 and 1979 are called
Generation X, .

- And people born between 1980 and 2010 are called
Generation Y ,

Why do we call the last group Generation Y?
I always thought it was because they say.... you know;
Y should I get a job?
Y should I leave home and find my own place?
Y should I get a car when I can borrow yours?
Y should I clean my room?
Y should I wash and iron my own clothes?
Y should I buy any food?
But a cartoonist explained it very eloquently below...

Time to partay!!!

Over the last two days I have transferred twenty litres of apple cider into four demijohns, today I bottled 23 bottles of feijoa wine, we are drinking bottle number 23. It's potent stuff so I'm blogging before the effects kick in.

ETA: That should read as, we are drinking bottle No 23, as in the last bottle out of the bucket! NOT the 23rd bottle in total! lol :D ****Hic!****

In the kitchen today - No bake muesli bars

You will need:
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup rice bubbles
4 crushed weetbix
1 cup coconut
1 cup of mixed fruit things ie: raisins, dried apricots, pumpkin seed, sunflower seeds
3/4 cup of brown sugar
4 tblspns honey(I didn't have any so used golden syrup)
4 tblspns peanut butter
125g butter

Method
Put butter, honey, peanut butter and sugar into a saucepan, heat until melted then simmer until the mixture is thick and caramel in colour. I think I left it a bit long :(
Add to the dry ingredients
and press into a greased tin.
Refrigerate until firm then EAT!!!
Thanks go to 'City' Sue for the recipe. :D

Getting sorted and the war on clutter continues

I didn't blog for a week, I had nothing to report really. We are still in the process of trying to organise the rooms and get those outstanding jobs finished. What I shall do today is show what we've achieved so far..............
Upstairs..
New Craft room: Some of you may remember that I had set a room up downstairs in the smaller bedroom for my craft space. Well I've moved! To the smaller room upstairs, this was the original plan and it's much nicer in here, it has a bit more light....
....and a cupboard with shelves, which aren't perfect but they will be fine for now.
Under the stairs: We've put the bookcase here, it looks rather snug.....
The office: This weekend Joe bought some cheap shelf units and assembled them in the cupboard space, it didn't take me long to fill them. We still need to put doors on here.
The curtain rail is up, I will hang the curtains later......
Bedroom: I like this room, it has high ceilings in here, and I reckon we should make that bed a four poster! Can't imagine why Joe wanders off muttering when I mention this... My crocheted blanket is coming along slowly but surely, still a way to go yet though.
Bedroom: Michaels old room, please note no clothes strewn over the floor! That's because he moved out a few weeks back to live in town, he's nearer to work and the pubs!
Michaels quilt is being kept here, I won't let him take it to the feral boys flat! Note Bunny on the bed.... that is a much loved toy that only has one ear left...awwwww....
TV room: We have a couple of wooden ottomans, one small, to the left of the couch which we've put our dvds in and a larger one to the right whick is full of videos...we like watching movies :D
Downstairs:
Since the new leather suite came it's been a bit of a juggling act with the furniture. I still love our old leather sofas so they are being used downstairs in the family room....

Dining:
I never realised just how much space we had here, we simply turned the table, lost a couple of chairs into other rooms and moved my sideboard/servery/hutch against the wall. It's going to be much better like that as my nice dinner service and placemats are stored in it.
Our bedroom:
Again some more shuffling around here, the set of drawers were moved to the bottom of our bed...
....so that we could put the two seater cane sofa in here. The two armchairs are in one of the bedrooms upstairs
Small bedroom:
This was my old craft room, this is better used as a bedroom as the cupboard is a wardrobe.

Bedroom: This room has been used as a bedroom, the temporary office and will now be used as a hobby room. The armchair from the old leather suite in in here, since I took this photo we've put in half of the table tennis table. We'll use this to do jigsaws etc on. Joe want's to try making some model aeroplanes etc..

Garage:
Lastly the garage doesn't look quite as bad as it did, the van and trailer have been filled with rubbish for the tip. Joe has plans to buy some metal shelving and then he can get organised in here.
The war on clutter, update: I'm not sure if this is going well or not! There is certainly less clutter in our rooms. Even with recycling, giving to the charity shops and throwing away, we still seem to have a lot of stuff that is getting moved from one place to another. When we cleared the loft in readyness for the insulation, I said that no way was all that crap going back in the loft!
I lied! Sigh..............