Edible Garden

There's such great excitement in our household at the moment, because this is the time of year when the garden comes alive. From Alfie's perspective this is good news as it means there's lots of food which is nearly ready to eat!

When we first moved into this house, we thought we'd inherited a very dull backyard....the front garden is full of native plants and is very lovely indeed, the side of the house is packed full of big Camelia trees and rose bushes - but the back garden was just green, green, green.

Green lawn. Green trees.  Green plants. A tiny bit of white here and there (mostly in the form of zillions of daisies all over the lawn, which seem to come up within 30 minutes of mowing it). But not much other colour.

So for quite some time now, my To Do List has included pulling out some of the green stuff and re-planting it with some colour and some natives - but it's quite a long way down the To Do List (coming well after Get A New Roof Because The Existing One Leaks - but that's another story!).

On the plus side, we did inherit a fabulous herb garden full of thyme, rosemary, mint, (dead) basil and sage. I use the mint, the thyme and rosemary all the time - but does anybody know what on earth to do with sage??

A couple of months ago, I planted out some lettuce, spring onions, silverbeet and strawberries in some old car tyres, and we now have a plentiful supply of salad which usually covers our needs for at least half the week. Molly often grabs a piece of lettuce to eat as she walks past and even Alfie understands that lettuce from the garden is precious and is to be eaten and appreciated without complaint!

The strawberries are the biggest source of excitement in the family though. We have two little strawberry patches in the garden, one at the top and one at the bottom (I wasn't sure where would get the most sun so I tested both), and now they're starting to turn red, both kids are bursting with excitement. I am predicting some serious arguments in the not-too-distant future about who gets there first. That's if the birds don't beat them to it (I must buy some netting this weekend).

We've got a huge mound of rhubarb just outside the kitchen, but despite being raised as a child on copious amounts of rhubarb I actually have no idea what to do with it. How do you know when it's ready to pick? What do you actually do with it (apart from crumbles and stewing it with sugar)? If anyone can shed any light on the Mystery of Rhubarb, please feel free to comment below, as I'd hate for it all to go to waste - thanks!

Meanwhile my little lemon tree isn't doing too well! I was about to give up and pull it up, but this week new green leaves and shoots have started to appear so I'm going to hold out for a bit longer, give it a bit of TLC and see what happens...

Finally, the pear tree. This pear tree was the subject of many conversations between us and the previous owners who considered it to be one of the key selling points of the house. Apparently it is going to be raining pears in our garden come the Summer. So far we have two teeny little ones growing, so we're watching and waiting with baited breath...

November....

How on earth we've got to the end of November already I shall never know...!

It's been a funny sort of month. Not only did Alfie break his arm, but Jake caught a really bad gastro bug at the start which totally wiped him out for a week or so, and then he managed to pass it onto both children as well. Nice one Jake!

So as well as his broken arm, Alfie also spent a couple of days with his head in a bucket ....and then just as he recovered, our tiny daughter suffered from the same bug - and as usual with Molly she seemed to have it ten times worse than Alfie. She's all skin and bones at the best of times so after the 10th round of vomiting we did have to call the nurse for advice, and it's taken her a lot longer to recover than the others.

So for at least half of the month most of the family have basically been in bed and/or sleeping things off, which means the month's been a bit of a write-off really!

It's only been over the last few days that things have got back on track, so although everyone has lower-than-usual energy levels, we've been trying to make up for lost time!

We had a brilliant bush dinner after gym practice the other night....Alfie & I cooked while Molly did gym and put the dinner into old takeaway containers and brought it with us when we collected Molly. We had a fabulous dinner in the nearby park, followed by lots of climbing trees and collecting "stuff", and when I looked at my watch and saw it was already 7.15pm (on a school night!) I struggled to get them back home as they were having SO much fun! Unfortunately it's now expected that every gym night we are doing a bush dinner....

Last week I had an old friend from Auckland come and visit for a few days, and we had a really relaxing weekend. Her and I had a Mums Day Out on Saturday and took a fun walk around the waterfront, sat on the beach reading and paddling for a while, and had a glass of wine and bowl of chips at a restaurant deck over the water. We also watched a little blue penguin playing around on the harbour front, and a stingray swimming in the lagoon while we had coffee. Bliss.

Jake and I have also been having a little bit of fun with the Dinovember idea this month. Many nights - and sometimes during the day while the kids are at school too - Alfie's dinosaurs have been getting up to a lot of mischief in the house. They've emptied all the jigsaw puzzles all over the kitchen table, they've dressed up in all Barbie's clothes, they've had a messy tea party and they've done some drawing. I think tonight they may be planning on getting all the toilet rolls out of the bathroom cupboard...;) !

It's been a while...!

For many reasons, I stopped writing this blog earlier in the year.

But after being nagged/hassled/begged by a number of friends and family members it looks like the blog is back in business again, so here we go...!

It would be impossible to catch up on everything that's happened since July, but it's been a fun few months. Here's a bit of a summary.

First off, we've settled in to the new house now, and we love living here! The whole place desperately needs a lick of paint (as the previous owners favoured magnolia and terracotta and other 1970's trends), and we'd like to knock a few walls down and move things around a bit, but for now we are more than contented to live in it for a while, see all the seasons out, and then make our decisions.

In July/August we headed off to the UK for a month - our first visit back in 5 years! And although both kids had been before, they were really too young to remember anything back then, so for them it was their first real, memorable visit. As well as getting the chance to spend some special times with their Great Granny, they also got to see where all their other rellies live, visit some real castles and palaces, travel on the Tube, and see squirrels, deer, traffic jams and other classic English sights (!).

Since we got home again, Molly's spent a very busy few months with all her hobbies and activities. She's had gym competitions (3 golds!), a ballet exam (she passed with Merit!), piano concerts, choir performances and other events taking up a lot of her schedule. Gymnastics continues to be her number one love, but at the moment she's very busy in dance rehearsals, about to perform in the musical "The Lion King". She is a wildebeest (?) but seems to be more than happy with this role as she gets to wear glittery horns and a tutu. And as we all know, the outfit is the most important thing.

Add caption

Alfie continues to be a sports-mad little boy. As well as tennis and swimming, he's just finished his second rugby season...

He's now taken up soccer for the summer and has been doing really really well so far....until he broke his arm last week (falling off the monkey bars at school).

As for the grown ups in the family.....Jake continues to train hard with his running, biking and swimming, and living in Wellington has been fantastic for him as we have the mountains and the ocean on our doorstep. I am still a bit of a Zumba addict and although I don't always get to go as often as I like (life gets in the way!), rarely a week goes past without at least one or two classes. Work is good - for both of us - with lots going on to keep us both busy.

And that just about sums things up. More to come soon...!