Luna created this shelter for her pots of tulip bulbs, in order to keep them dry.  I do most of the gardening activities with the kids, or they are doing their own thing alongside, turns out Luna is an expert at transplanting seedlings.  After an hour or so to herself outside, she came to tell me she had planted out her garden, perfectly uplifting and replanting the bok choi I had put in one of the larger beds.

It is actually a better place than where I started them, more shelter, and she has been watering them regularly.  Quite a nice little lesson (for me) that she has sound gardening skills already.

This is our lantern tree, after the Chinese New Celebrations a couple of months ago, it is still the most favoured place to hang jewels and ribbons.

Luna decided to bring in the washing the other day, brought her chair out and down the back steps, pulled off the pegs, tossed them into her target hoola hoop, and dropped the dry clothes into an empty cardboard box she found in the garage.

Yes, I like this!

We set up this grey water recycling system in December last year, and it’s great.  Easy to use, and the only cost for us was the 220 litre drum.  I’ve used buckets off and on for years, to supplement rain water and the occasional hose, so this is a great step forward!  What has been a little shocking is the amount of water that would be going down the drain – it always bothered me, and seemed so wasteful, so to see that our old top loading washing machine, with non-existent efficiency rating, a full load almost fills the drum, just over the three quarter mark.

Now it all goes into the garden and the kids use the water too.  I use a laundry liquid that is gentle on the environment and low allergenic so it’s all good.  But look how easy it was?  Buy the used drum (or score yourself a free one..) drill a hole, add a tap, or just bucket it out from the top – Rob did all the cutting and drilling, and fitted the old tap he picked up, and built the little stand.  All conveniently located outside the washroom window.  Look at all that!

These babies were planted in November, I bought one punnet which had nine seedlings, so a bit of a bonus – most usually have six.  The punnet was $3.50, and they were organic seedlings, just to keep in mind the economics, it was a little experiment, it works out to about 40 cents per plant, each yielded at least one good cob, we had some fertilization issues with the lower cobs, probably due to close planting.

The plants grew, like, well, sweet corn, very exciting, good instant gratification gardening!

Above was about a month after planting, below, just before harvesting:

And one of the juicy cobs…

A worthwhile crop, sweet corn varies between $1 per cob, to maybe 2 for $1 when they are plentiful, organic more pricey again, picked fresh and eaten straight away, they don’t get much better.  Great for the kids of course too.

Next year, I’ll give them more space, they are fairly low maintenance, just regular water (grey water from our washing machine) and I added some organic fertilizer when I planted out the seedlings, and the occasional worm farm wee was added to buckets of water.

Two locals have befriended us, a couple of wandering Mallard ducks, Alice and Oscar started turning up at our place at 5pm on the dot for some bread crusts and fresh water.  I suspect they’ve been displaced due to the destruction of the football field and waterway access, down the road.  Though being so close to the harbour there is no shortage of water birds in the area.

Austin was pretty keen on these birds at first, but, now they have come to some kind of understanding, though Austin is frequently disgruntiled by the many liberties they are taking in his domain.  Sneaking in for his cat biscuits even!

A close encounter.  Cheeky things.  Quite a treat for the kids, and myself, they are interesting characters, we give them plenty of fresh water and watch them groom themselves fastidiously.  I’m hoping they’ll eat slugs and snails, we do find them fossiking in the rocket bed by the back door.  Otherwise, they mostly just hang out with us in the garden.  Sweet life.

One of Luna’s photos, early early morning out with the camera…

A little experiment we did this week, freezing some flower buds in ice cubes over night, the little ones loved it.  Above are two comfrey flower buds, just appearing in the garden.

Here’s the lot…

Most were wild or weed flowers, plus some herbs and vege flowers.

Straw flowers above, and clover bud below.

There are other things that keep me busy, other than sewing.   And the exciting developments in our vege garden are a constant distraction.  When we moved house we potted up the vege garden, purple sprouting brocoli, rubarb, silverbeet, flowering bulbs and even the garlic – so far most has taken to the new house and garden, bar some of the garlic, a few are not too happy about being transplanted, though there are some nice strong looking stems in there.

Above is a little surprise, I sprinkled some random seeds into a new bed, and this rich crop of red mustard appeared, it’s such a lovely colour, and I have used it in the last batch of kimchi.  Yum!

Can’t wait for these little babies to turn into feijoa’s!

Along with the beans, peas and brocoli plants, I decided to put in a bed of sweet corn, which is fun to watch grow, I’m sure it grows a few centimeters everyday, so good for that instant gratification gardening.  Lentils sprung up in this bed, which will be interesting to watch.

Above is the garden a month ago, some of the brocoli are out now, letting a little more light in.

I garden organically, and as low maintenance as possible, using a worm farm and digging kitchen food waste directly into the garden, as I dig it over, before planting out new seedlings.  It seems to work well, and we generate much too much organic waste for our worms to deal with!  I also use lawn clippings as a mulch, and dig in comfrey leave when I add new organic matter to the bed.  This probably sounds like more work than it is, I’m inspired by permaculture principles, I try and keep things close to the house, and accessible, and I practice companion planting, which is also fun when planning what goes in next.

Here is a look into the strawberry patch, between peas and a sage plant, all good friends apparently.

Iris, all snuggly and warm for winter!

Nancy, looking festive in those Solstice colours…

Nancy and Audrey..

Collette, Nancy and Audrey.

Loving the sunshine!

Iris and Isobel…

Wohoo!

I wondered what it was I could make out in the rainy old couple of days I had at my mums place this week, and it’s the last apple on the tree.

Quite out of reach and so very red!  An unusual colour in midwinter.

We’ve had a house guest for a week or so, and today we finally met them!

The other weekend, Luna picked me a most precious gift, a chrysalis for a monarch caterpillar we had in the garden…  oh she couldn’t help herself, and so we carefully tied it onto a stick and gave it to our David to take of.

This weekend, Luna came to me exclaiming, “The butterfly has hatched!” how exciting, I brought David down and set them on the table while I figured out how best to get the butterfly safely outside!

She started flexing those stunning wings…

Luna was very keen to have her on her hand to take outside, but it was just a bit too tickly… and I helped out.

She spent some time in our peach tree, before leaving.

How about this for a view in the morning?  Beautiful Kawau Bay.

Fun times at nana’s place, Luna and Blake put together this large nest on the back deck, I even got to try  it out myself while Blake snoozed.

Mum’s garden is a bit of a wild one, some veges and herbs self-seeding about the place (cat nip of course).  Some older trees, and plenty of flowers ready to be picked, and nana doesn’t mind a bit…  Quite a lot to explore if you’re small and like flowers and insects and stuff.

Slaters.

Blake loves bugs on him, even reaching out his hand for airplanes to land on.

And skinks!  Are there skinks?  Absolutely everywhere, I managed to catch a few so we could have some close looks, this little one was quite content to look at us as much as we were keen on checking him out.