The Fruits (Or Vegetables) of Our Labour

Gardening wasn't really on the day-planner for today but the sunshine was irresistible. And while pulling a few weeds, I noticed that some things in the Monument to Vegetables (MTV) needed to be harvested. The leeks are sending up flower stems and the slugs are making mincemeat of the celery. The last couple of beetroot weren't very big but the tops were showing signs of bolting. So I came in with a huge armful of greenery that made P's eyes boggle.
Leeks (and two onions to the right. They were just starting to form bulbs but started to flower. I'm not sure if I should have let them go- I'll look it up before harvesting the rest.)

From Inside and Out

Celery blanched for the freezer.

From Inside and Out

Last of the beetroot (they're actually quite small)

From Inside and Out

Alfalfa. A great investment- one packet of seed goes a looooooooong way!

From Inside and Out

Oh, and you may have noticed in my side bar "What's Up" segment that I started up the Craft and Cuppa day again. 4 ladies came and both the boys were home so we made a nice little group around the table. We are motivated to finish off our friendship quilts. One block still needs to be made for J (man) and I have since put together the blocks for N (lady). Here it is with the first border added:

From Friendship Quilts WIP

Cautiously, I will say that I think I'm getting it all together again, adjusting to the new 'routine' with P being home all the time. I'm getting back into the garden, spent a whole day baking the other day, restarted my Craft group and am sewing. Yay!!

Time Flies

Time flies when your having fun, so they say. It also flies when you're just plain busy. Last post October 6? Where have the weeks gone? I guess I haven't really had a lot to say either. I mean, how often do you want to hear (or read!) washed laundry, hung laundry, folded laundry, put laundry away, cleaned bathroom, cleaned kitchen, cleaned bedrooms, drove B to school, picked up B, did work with P, did more work with P; well, you get the picture!

I haven't been sewing (creatively, that is... I've done alterations for a client); I haven't been knitting or cross stitching. I'm not reading anything other than homeschooling how-to at the moment. I haven't been op-shopping. Oh, but I did have one good morning at garage sales a couple of weeks back- covered the back seat of my car with stuff that I 'need'! Books and craft, all educational or useful, of course!

Thankfully the vegetable garden is doing okay on its own for now as I don't even get out there very often. Slowly some gaps are opening up as I harvest the last of the beetroot, broccoli and spinach. I'm waiting impatiently for my compost to compost so that I can dig some in before planting the next lot. I'm harvesting celery now but something has been having little nibbles- do mice eat celery?

From Inside and Out

Left to right, back:
Nastursium, celery, tomatoes (in pots outside the MTV)
Left to right, front:
Broccoli, leeks, green cos and there are a couple of garlic hiding out amongst the leeks.
The nastursium is crazy- I do get out there about every fortnight and hack it back brutally. I didn't realise how vigorously they grow!

Well, thats about it for this post- I'm out of even vaguely interesting 'stuff' to write about. Time now for some much-needed sleep and it begins again tomorrow.

Bye for now,

Joanne.

The Things I Like About Spring.

Spring is well underway. For a long-time hayfever sufferer, spring with its wind and its pollen isn't exactly my favourite season. But I don't have to look far to find things to like.
Wisteria:

From Flowers

More flowers (name unknown to me):

From Flowers

And more flowers:

From Flowers

Outings with friends (Mini-Golf at Wallington):

From Out and About

Also rain in the rain barrels, baby magpies calling from the trees, leeks and beetroot from the garden, planning spring plantings, daylight savings (once over the initial shock!), warm breezes, buds on the rose bushes, tiny green apricots lining the branches, green grass in the paddocks and on the hills, jasmine and poppies in other people's gardens, airing the house without freezing and occasionally eating al fresco.
Yes, there are plenty of things to like about spring!

A Sad Post Today

Today we are grieving the loss of our beautiful family pet and faithful friend Coco.

From Feathered, Furry or Finned

Yesterday evening, she passed away quite suddenly, without illness or warning. We suspect it may be a congenital heart condition SAS, something we weren't even aware of until today.
We are all shattered- she was an amazing dog; so smart, friendly, a real personality in the neighborhood. The boys are heartbroken.
This is the most recent picture of Coco, taken earlier last week when we were camping at Blackwood. She loved the creek and preferred to wade through it rather than keep to the path.

From Blackwood

Coco had only been with us about a week when she first went to Blackwood. She loved being in the bush and that she could be with us constantly, unlike home where she may be ignored in the backyard for a few hours at a time. She would always get excited when we drove within sniffing range of Blackwood! At night she entertained us trying to catch the sparks from the campfire in her mouth- at first I worried she would burn herself but she never did. Later she would climb onto the driver's seat of our four wheel drive and sleep the night through- that was her home-away-from-home. DH had gone back on Saturday to Blackwood to bring our caravan home and Coco died there. She is now buried in her beloved bush.
Coco was just 4 1/2 years old and we are so going to miss her.

Evening By the Campfire

Written by firelight, 20-09-09

Sparks fly up into the dark night sky, in a hopeless attempt to join the paler, distant stars. Less ambitious, smoke from the campfire puffs upwards, rising in a wobbly column with not so much as a breathe of wind to blow it here or there. The campground is almost deserted and those who remain after the weekend are all inside their caravans. I have the glorious, still night to myself.

The sounds I hear play against a background music of frogs. They have forgotten all the verses and sing the chorus over and over again. The soft 'siish' and tiny snaps of the campfire and the muffled voices of my children as they chatter away in the caravan are the sounds close by. A town dog yaps in the distance and a jet flies high overhead, reminding me that somewhere else is a busy world full of commuters, deadlines, tourists and arrival times.

The creatures of the day have all gone home to roost. We heard the cockatoos return to their trees just before dusk; the kookaburras just afterwards. The pair of ducks that were waddling along the fringe of the park have returned to their river bed. We haven't seen any wallabies or kangaroos yet. We know they pass through the campground some time before the sun comes up. Perhaps the sleepy-eyed dogs in their annexes see them in the wee small hours. A ghostly grey bird- it may be an owl or a tawny frogmouth occasionally flies from one tree to another. Its flight is soundless. It is only betrayed by a glint of its wings or the crackling of a twig upon landing.

The dew is heavy here each night. Everything outside the circle of the fire will be soaked with dew by the morning. Damp, earthy smells rise from the river and although it really isn't too cold, breathe forms vapour that hangs in the air. When the sun reaches down into this little valley in the morning, the grass will glitter with a million diamonds.

My children say this life is more 'real' than the city life. They hope one day to live in a place like this. My heart too is restless, knowing we have to return in a day or so. For now, our life is a suburb with neighbors so close that we hear each other through our walls.

We learn that 'time indefinite' is in our hearts- a yearning to live life without end. Surely "Paradise" is also woven in to our ancestral memory. The earth as a garden- a cultivated garden close by and a wild, fascinating garden further afield. Our Paradise is future. Meanwhile, we tend our little suburban garden and whenever we can, escape to a tantalising taste of Paradise.

From Blackwood

A Life Lesson From the Birds

You can learn a lot from nature. Careful observation of the way plants grow, watching animals interact, staring into an indigo sky as the stars begin to dot their way across the night. All of these wonders have lessons to teach us, if we look and listen carefully.

Today I learned a lesson from the birds. The lesson- Its okay to ask for help when you need it!
A bird taught me that? Actually, two birds did!

Our across-the-road neighbors have a huge gum tree in their front yard that is the home for a family of magpies. Last spring and summer, they became quite bold and would come over for food. In the picture below, that's a parent on the right and a young one on the left.

From Feathered, Furry or Finned

At some stage, they stopped visiting. The youngsters (there were three) must have found their own territories and the parents were seen but didn't attempt contact.
For the last few days, the magpies have been visiting our yard again. The pair of them are busy all day, pulling worms out of the lawn and stealing dog biscuits if they can get past Coco. When I went to the letterbox this afternoon, one of them came right down to the fence beside me. I came inside and grabbed the camera and some minced beef that was waiting to become hamburgers! In minutes, the two birds were taking turns grabbing some meat and flying it over to the tree.

From Feathered, Furry or Finned

From Feathered, Furry or Finned

This is how close they were willing to come for it!

From Feathered, Furry or Finned

I only fed them for a few minutes, as I don't want them to become dependent on us. But it got me wondering. The parent birds are there all year round, yet they don't seek us out for most of the year. When it is just the two of them, they are independent. But I could hear the babies in the tree across the road, hungrily demanding more and more food. The parents literally work all day to feed them. It is as if, at this very busy time in their lives, the parent birds come and ask us for help. They push aside their natural fear in the interest of caring for their family. When the time of need is past, they will return to fending for themselves.
Isn't that incredible? It made me think about not being too proud to ask for help when I really need it. It doesn't mean I'll always need someone to prop me up, but in a time of need- take a lesson from the birds.

Bringing you up to speed.

Time is just whizzing by at the moment. One week blurs into the next. Before you know it its September! A lot of things are still going by the wayside here, including blogging. Every couple of days I do something, or take a picture and its in the back of my mind, "I'd like to blog that!" But the moment passes and life hurtles on at breakneck speed.

So here is a bit of a summary of life in the last few weeks, with the help of some photographs. Chronology may be a bit out of order.

A few weeks ago, I thought my potato experiment had been a total failure. In this post I wrote about growing spuds in mulch in cages. I read that the potatoes would flower, and wilt, and it was after that you harvested them. Well, my plants didn't flower. They did wilt, however and started to disappear back into the mulch. I thought they were rotting from all the wet weather so one day I decided to dig them up and reclaim the space. To my delight, there was a small collection of potatoes that had been growing all the time! This is the sum total of the harvest, the largest being about 7cm long:

From Inside and Out

At the moment, I'm picking a beetroot every 4 or 5 days. They're not huge either, but very sweet and tender. And finally, f-i-n-a-l-l-y! I picked the first leek. It was still a bit slender but I needed a leek for a casserole and didn't have a bought one. Leeks take such a long time. I'll try and be patient and wait for the rest to fatten up a bit. We still have cos lettuce, red and green and spinach. The rocket is going to seed but the continental parsley is just going crazy.

Sewing/ knitting/ quilting and all things crafty are just not happening. I've been too busy to notice, but just today I got a strange, familiar feeling of discontent. I realised its the feeling I have when I'm not being creative. This will get stronger and stronger until I HAVE to do something. Otherwise I feel like part of me is missing.

P is going well with his home education. We had our second field trip. He's been quite interested in studying the condition of a local river. We drove to three different parts of the river, took notes and photographs and now he is preparing a report on Power Point. I'm pleased to see him so 'into it'. Some subjects are not going as well. Maths is a bit stressful- he seems to have an emotional block. I'm quietly working around it, not pushing it. Otherwise, all is going good. Here are some pics from our field trip:

From Moorabool River Field Trip

From Moorabool River Field Trip

From Moorabool River Field Trip

From Moorabool River Field Trip

From Moorabool River Field Trip

From Flowers

One more week and I will have my other young man at home for school holidays. We all feel like we need the break. Its been a long winter. Not particularly cold; a little wetter than we are used to but most noticeably dull! If the sun comes out at all, its for a tantalising hour, sometimes less. Even the kids have noticed and they're both waiting for a nice day to soak up some sunshine. Perhaps tomorrow- its supposed to be warm but windy.

Well, its 7pm and we're all looking forward to a relaxing evening. So I should go and do the final round of straightening up. I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Take care.
Jo.

A Quick Hello!

Just to let everyone know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! Super-duper busy is all.
After a long weekend away (well not actually 'away', but leaving early each morning and arriving home after dark), I have a lot of catching up to do at home. The weather isn't great for drying piles of laundry either.
When I do get time for the net, I have been spending a bit of it over at Rockpool Homeschool . They have a very active forum of homeschooling mums, many of them here in Victoria as well as a lot of helpful links and information that I am gradually working my way through. It is just what I needed, to be able to tap into a network of people in a similar situation.
Well, I did say this was to be a quick hello. Back to getting my house in order so that we can all find socks, watches, Vicks inhalers and other important bits and pieces.