Seedlings

Look what’s on the agenda this weekend.

I have just got back from our local nursery where I bought a small tray of the things we found most useful in our vegie garden last year. Tomatoes, basil, zucchini, cucumbers and squash for starters. The little yellow squash were the biggest surprise hit of last Summer. While they aren’t really a vegetable that causes much excitement when we buy them from the greengrocer, fresh from the garden they are melt-in-the-mouth delectable. But today’s great thrill was finding Digger’s Club heirloom tomato seedlings for sale! Hooray! I get their catalogue every season and sometimes splash out on a few packets of exotic sounding seeds but we haven’t had much luck with our tiny little tomato plants that grow from the packet – mostly due to our lack of commitment. Seedlings are very exciting.

This year we are keeping a firm track of our receipts for all that we buy for the vegie patch  – it will be interesting to see if we actually manage to save anything by growing a lot of our own. The expense is always huge at this point – mulch, compost (if only we had some local horses!), seedlings etc., not to mention our longer term plan of getting a rainwater tank installed. Today I spent $55 on seedlings.  Hmm. Mind you, last week I spent $3.50 on a very mangy bunch of basil (non-organic) at the greengrocer (of which half I couldn’t even use) so even just the two punnets of basil I brought home today could theoretically save me $55 or more… I just need to plan to make loads of pesto.

Reading matter

On my bedside table. Isn’t this a beautiful study in similarities and contrasts?

(please ignore the dirty kitchen floor – but extra points if you can spot the red mini pom pom).

Monday morning

We had such a perfect, gentle weekend. It’s always hard waking on a Monday and feeling that wrench as the realisation of the upcoming rush-to-get-out-the door kicks in. This morning we woke late and got to school just before the second bell but we somehow managed to keep things cheerful.

This is the list on the door inside one of the kitchen cupboards which Amelia refers to almost every day when getting ready and packing her bag for school. She kicks around all morning; drawing, playing the piano, constructing elaborate plans for tree houses or performances, gazing into the plastic container where her pill bugs live, slowly getting dressed in unbelievably drawn-out stages while all the time chat chat chatting. Thankfully, when we hit the urgent, last minute race to get away, there is this list for making life easier. As Meg (who is an old friend and author of my new favourite blog) wrote, the world can be divided into those who keep lists, and those who don’t. Amelia has most definitely inherited my keen love of all things list-like.

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Speaking of kids – Mixtape – The Kids Issue is now available for preorder at the Mixtape online shop. I did the cover illustration and if the content is at all like that of the previous issues, it will be a rad read.

Halloween-style weeding

I spent a lot of time in the garden today, whipping it into shape ready for vegetable planting. While the kids scrabbled in the leaf litter looking for pill bugs to put in their newly established pillbugaterium, I filled our green waste wheely bin with armloads of weeds. Once I got into it, I was too enthused to stop, so I kept piling weeds and prunings on to the brick paving. I’m not exactly sure what I am going to do with this mountain of vegetation. Did you read The Nargun and the Stars when you were young? It’s a spooky Australian tale which has stayed with me ever since I read it when I was about 9 or so. Instead of ancient rocks which move around at night, I have a huge weed pile – which I hope stays where it is.

** Just for those who are feeling incredulous, I did add the fireflies and teeth in Photoshop.

Smug Pumpkin

This is our ridiculously over priced Halloween pumpkin. This will be the last year I buy a ridiculously over priced pumpkin. I am going to save the seeds and attempt to grow my own. If that doesn’t work, next year we will carve into a completely affordable pumpkin, which we can also eat the insides of, and be done with it. Those with Canadian blood running in their veins will spend some time tomorrow carving this into something spooky. As in previous years, it will sit on our front verandah in the warmish weather and attract a bazillion little black flies for a truly hideous Halloween display.

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Congratulations to Aleece who was the lucky winner of this past week’s give away. She submitted a link to a delicious looking recipe for Mushroom Barley Bake which I am most definitely going to make the next time we do baked chicken. Thank you for all your comments – what a fabulous stash of good things. Just in case you were wondering, to keep it fair, I deleted any duplicate comments. Stay tuned for another give away next week.