My onions seeds are turning into seedlings! And some garlic shoots are above ground already. Very exciting times. Now I get to watch the onion seed trays like a hawk each day to see how many seeds are germinating each day. As they increase in size I then watch to see if they keep growing up or just toppling over and dieing. Onion seedlings seem to not be very robust at first and they take a long time to get thicker and less fragile looking. However the watching, waiting, watering and general cossetting is all worthwhile when it is successful eventually. Not only do we usually get a good harvest of plump bulbs (often about 50kg) but I often have some spare seedlings and last year one our friends grew their best onion crop ever from them. Because I have had so many failures, I always plant multiple packets of seeds, each of which has hundreds of seeds in it. So when the seeds actually germinate and grow well I sometimes end up with a few spare!

Amazing blue skies days but its getting really cold overnight (7degrees last night). We are putting the microclima fabric over the zucchini bed and the mesclun at night. Weeding the mesclun bed is turning out to be as bad as I thought it would. Actually this is only the first round of weeding but it is fairly high concentration work which takes ages. I am enjoying the luscious greens though, I’m interested to see which components are the most resilient and come back the best after cutting multiple times.

We have the fire roaring at night to help combat the draughts from yet to be covered gaps in our building, and keep the air warm for the sprouting onions. We have a batten and board ceiling to reconstitute and also door jambs and skirting boards to go on. There is a considerable weigh up involved before answering when the patient builder enquires each day as to what we want him to tackle first . There are the aspects that need finishing in order to facilitate the next visits of the electrician and plumber, the things that need doing in order to be able to get them gib-stopped before the gib-stopper absconds to other jobs, and the things that will minimise the draughtiness. Not to mention deciding on paint colours so I can buy the paint and we can apply it. This is the most time consuming task of all. We have lots of test pots for each room but lately have been stuck on the decision between 3 different shades of bluey green for the small bathroom. After getting told off by the gib-stopper for roughly painting test pot samples on the wall we have now gone to moveable sections of painted gib-board. These need to be moved around and inspected against different walls multiple times per day to get a feel for the choice of colour. Today I decided to try a colour not on the shortlist so I painted another section of gib with ‘Peppermint’ and wallah that will do for that room. Finally a decision. It’s hard to make decisions while the brain space is so full of logistical issues like ordering materials and manoeuvring tradesmen’s visits to happen at the right time. Engaging the creative mind needs a bit of space in the mind to exist I find!

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Anika:

Yesterday morning I helped weed the Mesclun bed. It had curly leaf lettuce, an unidentified reddish leaved plant with softly serrated leaves, dark green mibuna and lots more. With the reddish purple of the leaves, and the dark green and light green, it gave a look of a wall covered in patterned wall paper. As the wind swayed the leaves it seemed to come to life, looking sort of like a mini forest of living trees.

Then I heard a shout, “Lunch time!” That must have been Zara, only she yells loud enough to wake elephants on the other side of the world.

Today I did some riding on Bridie she went really well and was doing every thing that I told her to do without thinking about it roughly 50 times before doing it. This afternoon I also took some, I mean lots, of photos. The baby chicks are going through a stage which mum described to me as, ” They’re so ugly they’re cute ” But I don’t think they’re that ugly.

I also took pictures of random flower bushes. One of the flower bushes has flowers that have five petals and is a very bright yellow, making it look almost like the sun is reflecting off them. The other is pink and looks sort of like a mermaid with a very pointy nose lying on its back.

Jamie:

This week I started back at my homeschool group with my four other friends. We were embroidering some pencil cases, doing blanket stitch. I enjoyed seeing my friends. Our favourite game is climbing up one of the Redwood trees and having someone try and throw sticks up to us. I also enjoy practicing my cheeky skills on everyone.

Today I was weeding the path by our newly growing peas. I noticed that the peas like growing on the netting around them better than the structure that we built for them to grow up. I also noticed that the pea leaves have a similar shape to Kawakawa leaves. The weeds on the pathways seem to be keeping the soil underneath them dark and moist (the grass clipping mulch that the weeds are growing in may be helping in that department also).

Then I went and checked our alpine strawberries. They are like mini strawberries except you get them in red and white varieties. My favourite is the white variety. I also notice that the white variety’s fruit seem to get bigger. Our alpine strawberries get up to about 20mm’s long. Our trophy ones are about 30mm but by then the ants have usually found them. The taste is like a normal strawberry with a bit of a pineapple tinge.

I saw that my Graham Thomas rose was in bloom. After I weeded it I went and helped Zara dig holes for some planting. This involved some axing through weedmat. Then I came in for lunch. Anika was making lunch and I knew it would be tasty.

Zara;

Yesterday was on of those busy days when you lose track of what’s going on and who is doing what. The new gas califont was being installed, the gib was taken off the interior walls in the toilet and laundry before having insulation put in then re gibbed. We also got a visit from the electrician. And of course the good old long suffering builder was working away (and the gib-stopper).

Yesterday Dad sent Anika and I down to the bamboo patch just past the horses. We were sent with a hand saw and the instructions that the piece had to be about six meters long to go over the top of the boysenberry patch. The first piece we got down had rotted out half way up and was no use. So we had to cut another one down. But again we picked a difficult one. This time we chose one that was so close to all the other bamboo plants that it made using the saw extremely hard, It only took us half an hour and the help of a passerby (thanks Tracey!). I swear Dad sent us down with the hand saw just because he knew I knew how much easier and quicker it would have been if he just took the electric chainsaw down. We got the timing a bit wrong though, because when we were walking the piece of bamboo up the road the after work traffic started, so we had twice as many cars go past. We got a lot of very strange looks. Today I was back on weeding the frigging hedgerows. I have done so much hedgerow weeding that now whenever the word is even mentioned I make sure I am out of job issuing proximity instantly.

Jamie managed to get a few unflattering shots of my backside while I was weeding, I did manage to delete the worst of them before Mum got hold of them. He did redeem himself and help me plant some stuff in the front hedgerow. It turned into a great muddy mess and I got filthy. Not that that’s any thing new.

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A feeling of progress is finally descending on the household. Just in time for us all to be pried out of this peaceful lockout and begin more typical interaction with the human world around us. The garden is almost all “under control”…. the kids laugh at me every time I say this. It is a living entity, it is never ‘under control’, but occasionally at times like this is does look like most things that need doing have been done. Its a nice look, just not realistic for everyday purposes. When things are really getting done in the garden it deteriorates into a morass of dirt, weeds, tools, wheelbarrows, containers, wire, netting and so on and so on.

On the building front great progress also. The plumbers hooked up the new shower in the kids/guest bathroom and we have started using it (no photos available of this great moment in the history of our household!) The plumbers also connected up our new toilet. We are now a proud two toilet household (no photo’s of the first trying out of this new convenience either you will be pleased to know). It seems a bit wasteful to have two toilets and two bathrooms but in this household it is going to make life a lot easier. The two bathrooms are set up to run on two different hot water systems so that we can make the most of our hot water produced by the wetback and our solar panels, but also use hot water from a gas califont when necessary. It’s all quite ingenious (we reckon) and complicated (the plumber reckons).

We had a morning ride in stunning weather the other day which I thoroughly enjoyed. Except the bit when Bella got quite excited and decided that she was the worlds first racehorse born looking like a Clydesdale. I guess she is, after all, half Thoroughbred. The inside must be the Thoroughbred bit, cause the outside bit does not look like a Thoroughbred at all. We upped her oats the other day to give her a bit more energy and it appeared to have worked on Saturday. I invented a new term for sprightliness in your horse. “Oatified”. She was definitely acting a bit “Oatified”. However the next day she was very quiet after all her boinging around the day before so that was a little bit of a relief (although I did fairly enjoy the boinging around as well but it felt a wee bit hazardous).

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Anika:

On Saturday I went over to Nana’s place and played with my cousins. We had lots of fun as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. On Sunday Zara and I went over and put a harness on our aunties little pony Milo. Zara did most of the work and I just helped, but I also had a go driving him with long reins round Nana’s lawn. I also did some weeding on one of the garden paths. I couldn’t wait for it to be finished cause it was lunch time.

Some mornings we ride up a neighboring farms tracks, and on mornings with beautiful weather its more than worth it. Sun gleams down through the trees and makes patterns on the gravelly paths. Crisp cool air whips past your face. It makes your nose and hands numb, but gives you a peaceful feeling. You canter or trot up the hills, past the calves all mooing for their breakfast and frisking round the gates playing with each other. You go down a hill, turn a corner, and pass a little stream gurgling merrily. You go up a hill, turn another corner and keep going until you feel like turning around. You get back feeling happy. Time to pick up the horse poo.

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Jamie:

On Friday I went and played with my cousins at my nana’s place. We asked our nana for permission to go up into the bush. After we got permission we rushed up to our favorite place with the hollowed tree. We all climbed it, apart from the youngest who couldn’t reach the foot holes. On the way back George found a possum.

That night we played with burning sticks. We liked making patterns in the sky with them, you could also see a trail of sparks.

Yesterday we had a Morepork hanging out on the outside table. We wished we had some food for it. It obviously wasn’t very well as Dad was able to catch it later that night. It looked as though it had a broken beak, but we think it was just discharge from its infected eye.

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Zara:

Despite the fact that we spent most of the weekend with our cousins we still got a lot done around the place. It’s amazing how much faster you work with something to look forward to at the end.

I even got to mow the lawns, one of the more sought after jobs, among other things. While we were out in the garden we realized we had a spectator, a Morepork. It stayed around for a couple of hours before we lost track of it. When Dad managed to catch it later that night while out taking his nightly walk to look for possums, we knew something was definitely wrong. When one can catch a wild bird that easily it’s usually a pretty good indication that something isn’t right. In this case, it had an infection in one eye. We don’t know if it was caused by injury to the eye or not. We had planned on sending it down to the Native Bird Recovery Center, but unfortunately it didn’t make it through the night.

Over the weekend Auntie Kobi brought over Milo’s harness gear. We had great fun putting it on and long reining him around the lawn. He was impeccably behaved and loved all the attention.

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Onion seeds in, and trays inside in the warm to germinate. Garlic nearly all in. We didn’t end up having huge amounts of garlic saved from last year so part of the bed is going to have our multiplying onions in it. Bed 3 is a really big bed so that will work well and leave us room for a whole bed of traditional onions (Pukekohe Long Keepers and California Red varieties) in Bed 1.

It was really warm this afternoon and the light in the garden was beautiful. It felt very restorative to the soul. Lots of progress on the house happening also with gib-stopping, plumbing, drain laying and building going on. Also the last stage of demolition inside. Everything very messy and chaotic but at least it’s all happening. And our local digger whiz made a lovely job of levelling the section of back lawn after back filling all the trenches.

In case any of us had ever wondered, my father really is a master builder. You would think removing one window and putting in a new one (of different dimensions it’s true) would be a fairly simple job. However, in our house, over a hundred years old and still going strong, nothing is level or straight or square. Removal of the internal wall linings (of various types all within the same room of course) revealed fairly insubstantial structural timber. So Dad patiently pretty much reframed the entire wall that the window needs to go in before being able to form the window framing. Then once the window was tacked in place he painstakingly created the timber scribers for the exterior to make it match the look of the existing wooden windows. Then he went back to his place to fossick in his timber for a suitable piece of timber to create the widow sill. This man deserves a medal, possible a whole necklace of them. Pity for everyone else out there wanting to renovate an old house that he is officially retired.

Anika:

I’ve been weeding and mulching a garden bed and today I finally finished it. As I sat down to lunch I noticed our Pin Oak towering over our front lawn. It’s magnificent to look at with all its yellows, greens, reds, and browns all blended together. All the leaves falling off add to the splendor. As the leaves fall down you can see their waxy surfaces shining in the sun. They are fun to try and catch. The trunk must be almost 1 and a half meters around. It feels like a avocado skin and has greeny bluey moss on it. You can not climb it as the only branches you can reach are tattered and dead. Anyway, it’s time to go and catch some leaves.

Jamie:

Jamie hasn’t done any blogging today as he is next door playing with his cousins. He didn’t even stay to watch the digger work!

Zara:

We’ve had a very productive few days, I even got around to cleaning the car. This does not happen very often, if you’ve seen our car you have most likely already figured that out. We also finally got around to planting the garlic after three days trying to. We soak our garlic in a cow poo solution for 24 hours before planting. I must say it’s hard to find something worse smelling than a mixture of cow poo and garlic, even by some one who doesn’t mind garlic. Because it’s so unpleasant smelling it means the job is usually done as fast as possible.

This morning I got up a bit earlier than usual to do some baking for the workers. As we are in level two our builder will now stay for morning tea like before. This means fresh coffee and baking on the table every morning at ten.

One of our neighbours stopped to chat while we were down at the horse grazing. She thanked us for the Mother’s Day baking the other day and said how much she had enjoyed the afghans. She then let slip that it was her birthday today. I kept quiet, but I knew there was a fresh batch of afghans being iced by Anika up at the house as we spoke. After she continued on her walk I deputised the girls to parcel up a new batch of Afghans and also some ginger crunch and take it to her house. It was there before she came back from her walk. I hope it will mystify her how quickly we managed to get a batch of afghans ready (either that or she will think we bake them all the time, which we don’t, as they are a bit fiddly by the time you make the chocolate ganache and shell the walnuts)

We watched a bit of T.V for the first time in about eight weeks yesterday. Now that bubble thing isn’t so strict we went and paid a night visit to our grandparents next door. We also had borrow the showers for a while as we didn’t have a working shower that night. We managed to watch a bit of Lego masters while mum was having a bath. That was one of those times you don’t complain about how long she takes.

Today we had the plumbers here connecting up the new shower. When they turned the water back on Mum and I were out the back of the house doing some measuring (charting where the inspection ports are in the wastewater pipes). The next thing we knew there was water pouring out the side of the house. They obviously hadn’t capped one of the pipes well enough. It was very funny, it’s not often you see water squirting out of the weather boards on a house. To be fair to the plumbers who have been doing a great job, this pipe had been theoretically decommissioned somewhere under the house but magically seemed to have an extra connection to the water supply somewhere. They hadn’t completely forgotten about it, the water systems both internally and on the property are shall we say quite complex?

I’m still feeling burnt out today. The sowing of the onion seeds and planting of the garlic is imminent but getting later by the day. Tomorrow will be the day! We save our best garlic from each harvest to replant the next season. Then when we are about to plant them we soak them in a bucket of water with a bit of cow manure added. It starts the roots growing and gives them a bit of a headstart.

I’m missing having time to get out into the garden. Some days I just don’t have the time. Today was spent inside, and driving round collecting building materials. The autumn colour is still absolutely amazing, there were many beautiful scenes as I drove around.

Anika:

Today was very windy, but not overly cold. The horses had their rugs on this morning, but we took them off shortly after lunch when I went down to put Bella and Bridie back in. I didn’t do anything in the garden today, I did inside jobs instead. I hope the weather is better tomorrow.

Jamie:

Today I watched the progress of one of the new showers being assembled. I asked lots of questions. Ken came to a bit of trouble putting the doors in. He said, ”If all else fails, read the instructions.” I also spent a bit of time testing the new bath out.

In my garden bed I noticed the basil is extremely prolific at the moment. I reckon we could make lots of pesto with it.

Zara:

The trees between the house and the horse grazing have now lost almost all their leaves. This means you can spy on the horses without even leaving the house. It’s great because we can keep checking on them and as soon as they get out we can go and put them away before they gorge themselves silly. We’ve put them away three times so far today. The annoying part is as soon as they see you come round the corner at the top of the road they jump back over the fence and go and wait at the gate with the most innocent expressions on their faces. Bridie then searches you for treats. As if she would get any, but she hasn’t lost hope yet.

I was exhausted today after the whole weekend spent bent over attending to the floor. The floors are looking pretty good with their second coat of sealer on though, I’m happy to report. Today was spent trying to return some semblance of order to the house and garden and catch up on washing. The weather was not very helpful in the drying washing department, but the kids got lots done in the garden while I maneuvered round the house laying down drop sheets only slightly in ahead of the advancing gibstopper. We have the plumber coming tomorrow also, so its all very exciting, but also tiring. Looking forward to the renovations being finished and doing the final shift round of stuff into its new places. Then back to hanging out in the garden in all the free time that might materialize post renovation. I will be crossing fingers for kind winter weather!

The anti pig fencing round the garden has inevitably claimed me as its first and second victim, on my first and second visit to the garden since it was erected no less. Unfortunately my first run in with it was witnessed by the youngest member of the family who laughed his head off. Charming!

Anika

Today I weeded bed 7. There were lettuces, weeds, broccoli, cauliflower, nasturtium, and caterpillars, not to mention stink bugs as well. Hearing the sound of the roots being pulled out of the ground is a very satisfying noise. I had a bit of a blocked nose so I couldn’t smell much, but on previous occasions it smelt bitter and the exact opposite of flowers. Not good….BAD!

Also the gib stopper came back to work. He brought a pair of his stilts for Jamie to play on. Unfortunately (but fortunately for me) his feet were a bit small unless he used my gumboots and he had to use padding. I got the hang of it pretty fast though and was soon playing round like an idiot.

Jamie;

Today I weeded a little bit of bed 7. I also pulled out a lettuce and broccoli plant. Mum was not happy. I was wondering when Anika would squirt me again as she had been ambushing me with a squirty bottle all day. Then I went and dug some compost and found Anika there waiting with a watery welcome. DAMN!!!!!!. I managed to take my mind off how wet I was and appreciate all the bugs and good things in the compost though.

Zara;

The worst job competition has a new winner. Floor sealing. For some reason the floor sealant we got had all these little lumps in it. So the bad part was going along afterwards and trying to get all the lumps off the floor. That of course was my job. When I first signed up for the job I thought we were just doing my room. But to my utter dismay we then moved onto mum and dads room, then the rest of the extension. We didn’t end up finishing until eight o’clock. The horses were not happy about the late dinner.

One of the more enjoyable parts of the day was doing some baking. We delivered little mothers day gifts to some of our neighbours, with a little card that said from your pets (if they had no children). I believe some of them got a good laugh out of it. One of the recipients whom only has fur babies said it was the only mothers day gift she had ever received. It was nice to be able to share something.

Gardening wise I shoveled eighteen wheelbarrows of compost out of the compost bins, and onto the soon to be garlic bed. The bed had been in a cover crop for the last couple of months. The cover crop was a mix of oats, lupins, vetch, crimson clover, and buckwheat. The bed was a blanket of lush greens. Anika and Jamie dug the cover crop in which made it a team effort.

This blog comes to you courtesy of Zara. I was exhausted from all the sanding and filling of floors and had to go to bed early. I am however proof reading it this morning before publishing it. There aren’t too many errors so that’s promising. I think I might leave it to her in future to upload the photos etc.

The local herd of semi wild pigs turned up on our front lawn right by my precious garden which resulted in quite a panic. I was just imagining their very cute, but highly dangerous snouts digging into my soft delicious garden beds and uprooting all the next 6 months vegetables. Not a pleasant thought! Garth got out the gun to try and decrease their numbers, but also largely to try and scare them off. The decrease in numbers was slightly successful but later that night they were back again. The first visit was to the feijoa tree and the second one they had found the persimmon tree on the back lawn.

Garth has now taken to ringing me on the way home from work to tell me when to look at the evening sky for identifying potential colours to paint our bedroom!

Anika:

Last night we had a visit from the local pigs. The neighbour has been feeding them fruit so they have developed a taste for feijoas. Dad shot two of them and I got to help carry one home.

Today our cousins came over for the day. I also spent a lot of time helping Zara fill the gaps in my floor.

Jamie;

Yesterday I hand sanded about two meters of floor. It was a sod of a job, but very rewarding. I also spent a lot of time planning adventures to have with my cousins the next day. Later that day we got a bit of a surprise when we heard a whole lot of pigs in the garden. Dad got two in the end. The best part though was the look on mum’s face.

Today I spent a great day playing with the my cousins. I’m already thinking about next time they come.

Zara;

Yesterday when I arrived at the horse grazing, I was greeted with a whole lot of chaos. They must of had an isolation party or something, because the usually double latched door to the ‘feed room’was wide open. The rubbish bag had been emptied and thoroughly searched for any trace of food. This meant that the contents of the bag were strewn almost everywhere. The other vandalized item was a half full sack of chaff. The only evidence left of it were a few torn pieces of sack. They were however, successful at removing all traces of food from the area. They just need to learn how to remove the rubbish as well, next time. Haha. There is now a padlock to keep the pesky ponies or whatever they call them selves, OUT. The last of their crimes was breaking the same tape fence in two different places. I have no idea how they achieved this, but I sure hope it doesn’t happen again.

In the garden I finally got around to the fiddly weeding I was supposed to do some time ago. I now know why, it only gets harder.

As a bit of a maths project mum entrusted us to find the areas of the walls and ceiling of our rooms, so we knew how much paint we needed. It was lots of fun measuring it all up and working out the areas. I was terrified I was going to stuff it up and get some wacky answer, but I didn’t, thank goodness.

This afternoon it was back to renovation stuff. We were filling the gaps between the floor boards in Anikas room. As usual I got the stuff all over me. It was kind of satisfying trying to peel it off my legs and clothes afterwards though, not sure why. Also if this blog is not up to the usual standard you now know why, I did it this time.

Well 12 years ago today I was in the SCBU unit with a brand new baby Anika. Anika made a dramatic entry into the world and had to be quickly given oxygen. I’ll spare you the details, but anyway she went into an incubator for a couple of hours and had some oxygen (and probably other things as well which I can’t remember). As soon as we could she came out of the incubator and started breastfeeding. I think the nurses were expecting that she would then go back in the incubator, but no that was not going to happen. I sat in that lazy boy chair and held her, and fed her, and held her some more, and fed her some more and so on. We were extremely lucky, and at least partly due to mum’s contacts in the maternity department at Whangarei Hospital, they organised a double room where mum and I could stay and do ‘kangaroo care’ for baby Anika. It was a very long 5 days in the stiflingly hot ward, but eventually Anika was pronounced out of danger and we got to bring her home. In a not very amusing situation there is one thing that I remember being quite amusing. While I was sitting in SCBU surrounded by tiny wee prem babies who were barely able to take milk from a bottle, I was feeding a baby that seemed in comparison to be rosy, pink, large and robust. She was full term and just looked so enormous beside all the wee babies.

So today we celebrate Anika still being robust and full of life. A beautiful day today which was spent largely by Anika lying on the couch with a book, but partly romping on the beach. We have a family tradition that on your birthday you don’t have to do any chores. Schoolwork is not optional though. You also get to choose what you would like for meals (within availability constraints) and get a cake. The traditional birthday parcel from our wonderful relative Rosalie in Australia hasn’t made it on time this year despite her heroic efforts to get it posted early enough. The post always takes ages from Australia and currently the speed is even worse. And the presents we ordered from within NZ haven’t made it either. Anika seems completely unphased by all this and enjoyed a facebook video call and phone calls from lots of her relatives this evening.

It was gorgeous down at Cable Bay this afternoon/evening. Mounds of red seaweed on the beach looked a little bizarre but the evening light was that combination of tranquil and energizing. Would have liked to take more photos of the birthday girl but she hates having her photo taken (except if its a selfy!) and wouldn’t keep still.

Building work progresses well, with myself getting left to apply the sealer to the floors today after Garth’s mammoth sanding effort yesterday.

Floor sanding meant moving nearly all the furniture in the house…. again.

We are also trying to choose the last of our wall colours. Interestingly (and I guess this is quite common), Garth and I both look to colour combinations present in nature as the colours we would like to have in our house. I have had to make many random stops lately to take photos of certain colours reflected in the sea. Tonight Garth beckons me out into the garden to check out the particular shade of bluey, greyish purple present on the sky line at dusk. Just need a few more test pots. They didn’t laugh too hard at me with my first order of 20 test pots at the Resene shop.

What ‘the youngsters’ get up to while I’m trapped with a brush in hand applying floor sealer…

Anika:

Today is my 12th Birthday and up until 11 o’clock I haven’t done practically anything but sit on the couch reading Harry Potter (the 5th and 6th books) for the hundredth time. I’ve taken some photos of some flowers and an orange tree called a Blood Orange. It has reddish tinged flesh and tasted really good. Over winter we always do have a few less knives inside…. you can guess why. Gardening also becomes more fun as the citrus gets ripe.

I also took some photos of our Gordonia tree which is also called the Fried Egg Plant. It’s flowers make you see why it is called that as they look like fried eggs.

Camellia flowers aren’t usually scented but are quite beautiful. They have a use at every stage. Stage 1, the bud is pretty to look at. Stage 2, the open flower can be pollinated. Stage 3, the rotten ones I must admit are good for putting down the back of a siblings shirt.

Jamie:

This morning when I went out to check out my garden I noticed the grass was very sparkly with all the morning dew on it. I also noticed that because the kale has a darker leaf the dew looks like glitter has fallen on the leaves.

When I went to check on my strawberries I noticed that the cows had eaten them when they got out last night (through the open garden gate of course!)

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Zara:

Yesterday Dad was sanding the floors in the extension. For anyone who hasn’t heard a floor sander, they are loud and extremely irritating to listen to! Lucky for me I sleep with my head under the covers and it muffled the worst of it when I got to bed. I definitely wasn’t staying up to midnight to wait for him to finish with it being Anika’s birthday today. I was on cake making duty. Our favourite ingredient for cake decorating was unavailable, so this was the ‘add your own whipped cream later cake’. I did handmake the chocolate decorations though.

Anika got a day off from all her chores. I exercised her pony for her as well. One of the extra things that I didn’t mind doing.

With so much going on at the moment, they have been getting their dinners a bit later than usual. They are not impressed. They all wait by the gate as if they are about to starve. The upside of this though is that you get to see all the stars and the almost full moon.

I don’t even know who took what photos today!

This blog should be called the ‘How to Neglect Your Garden Blog’. Gardening done today…zilch. I did instruct the kids to water the tomatoes as I flew out the door to pick up more building materials in town. The weather is not conducive to feeling like going out in the garden at the moment. Windy and intermittently wet as well. Thankfully the tomato house survived the storm in the weekend. Hopefully the carrot seedlings survived on the edges of the plastic with not too many deluges of water pouring on to them. I must go out tomorrow and check on things. I did manage to plant a few more cauliflower and red cabbage seeds (cause you can’t have just one colour of cabbage in the garden!) and plant a few kale seedlings before it started raining. I also ventured up the scaffolding to do some of the detail painting on the outside of the west wall. It was exhausting being up there with my brain on high alert that I might fall down. I get vertigo and have been known to freeze when attempting to even get to top of ladder height. I was very pleased to be finished that job.

I’ve been inside on the computer designing bathroom vanities which a very clever friend of ours is constructing for us. That took up most of the weekend, and then today we got all excited opening test pots of colour. The maths work afterwards did not seem quite as enthralling. Little do my wee mathematicians realise that by the end of the week they are going to be calculating the areas of all the different walls needing different coloured paint. He he he…..

Anika: Yesterday it was raining a lot. We did all our jobs before the afternoon so we could play then. We played games, cards, and read that afternoon. I also curled Zara’s hair which was fun. I shifted the hen and chicks into a cage as they kept getting out. It was very annoying, you would turn your back and the hen would be out again. Today I did some maths and we tried out a thousand test pots on the walls. I did the bathroom test pots as my walls are going to be wallpapered.

Jamie: Today Ken shifted the saw bench on to the front deck. Now I can just look out the window and watch as he uses it. The architraves are going up so now we can use more expanding foam. I love helping dad put it in holes.

Also we got to paint some colours on my walls.

After we had a digger clean out out dam we planted some Taro roots into the ground in the overflow ditch. We went down every day and bucketed water onto them until it’s roots were big enough to get it’s own water. Now we can take medium sized plants off the sides of our Taro. We could plant Taro different places if we wanted to. The Taro leaves are like a blown up version of Kawakawa which is almost a tear drop shape. I have never tried eating a Taro root but I would give it a try.

Zara:

We spent the first day of the weekend madly rushing around trying to get last minute bits and pieces done before the the rain came. We spent the next day doing pretty much the opposite. Doing all those unproductive things you save for rainy days. I did manage to start and finish a few books. I have bit of a speed reading habit, that, along with being slightly dyslexic means I tend to get a new part of the story every time I read the book. It keeps it amusing.

I also made an extremely delicious baked quark cheesecake, with sultanas of course.

Today I finally got to paint some of the test pots onto my new walls. I’ve decided on a light green, since I was’t allowed bright green or purple. What’s more mum and I agreed on the same colour. That was a big surprise!

I spent a very pleasant evening watering the garden tonight. Great way to see the sunset. I got out of watering mode while we were getting lovely showers of rain every night, and now the ground is drying out again I’m finding it hard to remember to get out there with the hose.

I did a bit of salad green bed appreciation, with camera in hand. I’m quite fascinated with the mesclun growing. We’ve had to resort to a few more bought greens while the mesclun comes away again and the lettuce gets into full production.

Still very busy with building organisation, we were blessed today to be able to pick up our skirting and architraves from the building supplies company. This means ‘The Builder’, as Poppa Ken gets called, can continue work doing the finishing on the inside of the building. The delicate interplay of which contractor we are ready for and is available continues, with the tiler putting in an exploratory appearance today. Scheduling his work is going to be easy. He is booked up for 2 months and needs to go last, after everyone else is finished. Easy. That I can cope with. We talked about the joy of living on a block of land during lockdown with children. Having lots of ‘Great Outdoors’ has been very great indeed over the last month or so.

Today we combined our bubble with my sister’s family bubble. She mainly works from home, but has a backlog of site visits (visits to roading project sites that need engineering input – so very contactless) that she needs to do. So we have agreed to have her kids during those times. The kids had a great time together. I barely saw them all day. It was lovely to have a 6 child household for the day and we are looking forward to some more visits soon. Jamie is missing his Home School group where he has a group of close friends that he usually sees every week. We look forward to getting back to that as soon as possible.

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Photos above show Minutina, growing like a weed. Miserly germination of coriander, luckily for the rest of the family who all hate it with a passion. Good germination of spinach. Kings Seeds ‘Mild Mesclun’ and last (bottom right) my pride and joy, greenery of choice on my plate currently Kings ‘Original Mesclun’.

Anika:

Today our cousins came over and we all had a lot of fun. Towards the end of the morning Evie and I left our 3 brothers and did our own stuff. We made a hut that was quite comfortable and read a book in it.

Today I made a new run for the baby chickens. One of them in particular was feeling brave and managed to get a drink. I had to build them a large run as they had managed to get into Mum’s cover crop bed. She was about to have kittens when she found they had scratched up one of the cover crop beds. I hope the chickens won’t get up to any more mischief in their new location in the citrus orchard.

Jamie:

Today my cousins and I built a stick jetty out over our dam. I was extremely excited to be able to extend our bubble with our cousins. The other highlight of the last couple of days was being asked by Nana to come pick up the dead possums off the road into a sack so she could take them home and bury them in her compost. Dad shot 4 in one night and they fell out of the trees onto the road.

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Zara:

Today I painted 108 metres of skirting boards and architraves. Because I spent most of my day (hahaha part of the afternoon) painting I don’t have a lot to update you all on. I did manage to keep the troops supplied with some snacks throughout the day.

I also had a bit of an amusing incident this morning that involved getting very wet. It started when I noticed that the tank that fills the horses water troughs was almost empty. I decided to start the water pump to pump the water into the tank from the creek. Everything went to plan initially as the pump started well. Then I tried to attach the hose to the pump outlet. For some reason this time I must have done something differently than normal, because I ended up almost completely soaked. I think I put the hose in at a different angle and the water squirted out the side. I will try not to do it that way again, that much you can guarantee, as a cold shower is not something I usually sign up for before 7.30 am. Pity I forgot the soap!

Some of you may have been finding lockdown very quiet and are now enjoying getting out a bit more. For us the time has gone in a flash and we are still catching up on garden and house jobs. This renovating business is SOOOOOO time consuming. Anyway nearly there now, and one day we may be able to have a housewarming party.

In the meantime the garden is getting neglected as I draw up plans for interior features on the computer and we do schoolwork in between trying to bring order to the building debri strewn around the property. There are multiple piles of salvaged boards stacked in the shed waiting to be denailed. There is a pile of reclaimed 4 X 2 on the deck just in case its needed and the one remaining window to be installed. A stack of secondhand doors is piled behind layers of hoarded materials in one bay of the shed waiting to be sanded and rehung. New secondhand furniture still in its protective wrappings perches in amongst new appliances and the sides of the new shower enclosure. Our very large shed is a bit legendary for what is collected inside and the total chaos it is usually in. To be fair, there is a years worth of hay and firewood in there as well, but the extra stuff for this building project is like the icing on a very messy cake. I am so looking forward to all the bits being installed in their designated spots in the house. Having a functional laundry inside will also make life a lot easier. And finished bedrooms and bathrooms….. its hard to believe it may actually happen.

As soon as I have managed to tick off a few more things on the project management list, it will be back into the garden. Just got to line up the remaining materials and paint, the plumber, drainlayer, tiler, and electrician to get here at the right time and in the right order. Easy… NOT.

I have had time to admire some fine pumpkins in the shed. We didn’t have a very good pumpkin harvest this year, but still a few racks full. We find they keep well as long as we can keep the rats away from them and it’s not too cold and damp all the time. Better to eat them sooner rather than later though.

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Anika:

My seedlings have grown a huge amount, but still won’t be able to be eaten for a while yet, especially the cabbages. The lettuces should be ready within the next few weeks though. My other bed has a cover crop in it and looks like a mini forest of green.

The baby chicks are growing and are now spending a lot of time out of their cage.

Jamie:

This morning I woke up early (this is a total fib, it was not early at all!) and went out to start de-nailing some four by two boards (this is true, de-nailing is one of Jamie’s favourite activities and I found him out there before he had even had any breakfast). Some of the nails had been cut off with a sabre saw, so I had to punch them out with a roofing nail. This left perfect holes in the board. I’m a bit lousy at hitting the nails, I usually end up hitting my fingers.

Jamie scaled and baked this very tasty snapper donated from nextdoor by Nana and Poppa Ken. This Gordonia tree Jamie photographed is the kids favourite climbing tree.

Zara:

Yesterday I got to be Dad’s helper at work (all physical distancing measures etc observed, it was safer for Garth to get someone from his own bubble to help him than anyone else). We were tasked with getting blood samples from a couple of hundred yearlings.

The system has changed a lot since last time I helped him with blood sampling. We used to have to find the ear tag on the cow and then try and read it before writing the number on the blood tube. Now you just wave a special wand over the cows head and it reads the number. Then is sends it to a little wee portable printer that prints out a sticker with the number on it. Then all you have to do is put the sticker on the tube and you are done. I had a lot of fun using the wandy thingy.

Last night I was given the dubious honour of being asked to clean the fridge. For some strange reason it’s a job I quite enjoy. Mum thinks it’s so I know where all the good stuff is hidden (I hadn’t thought of this at all, I just like cleaning out the fridge myself so I know what’s in there for meal planning, I do think this now however!). This may be slightly true.

My garden bed with all the seedlings has been neglected a lot lately, this means there are more weeds than anything else. It looks fine from a distance, but on closer inspection there’s a whole lot of fiddly weeding to be done.

The leaves are falling fast, the trees look really bare compared with even last week. I don’t remember the poplars ever looking so golden before. Maybe we’ve all just had more time to admire them this autumn.