The new gardener in charge......

At our home in Bristol one of my joys was to get out into the garden and grow stuff. Over the years we grew heaps of flowers and veggies and some other quite weird stuff!!

Brian did the backbreaking digging, some weeding and kept the compost bin in good working order(!) I got to do all the planting, tending and, in our 7 years there, I built up about 10 raised beds to make it easier for me to keep track of everything and to stop the children walking all over our newly germinating seedlings.

We loved our garden........ we spent hours in it......... we found children sitting under raspberry canes and amongst strawberry bushes guzzling ripe fruit on many occasions..... it was a little piece of heaven.

Since moving to Australia we really haven't done any gardening and, I have to say, we have missed it.

I have attempted some pots this year - tomatoes and capsicums - but haven't had a lot of success....... I feel like I may have lost my gardening mojo.......

However Brian announced to me last week that he was going to 'make a veggie garden'. He felt he needed something to do that wasn't work related, something outdoors, something physical......

Evie was VERY keen to help and so these two have become our new gardening dynamic duo!

After speaking to a lady at work who has just purchased 6 acres of land and intends to be self sufficient in the next couple of years, Brian took a good look at no-dig veggie gardens and decided that this was the way to go.

We have a piece of garden which the owners of this house used as a dog run for their dog so which now lies idle. It gets a good bit of sun each day and seemed the prime spot for Brian and Evie to begin their no-dig gardening adventure.

Well today was start day! Supplies were purchased and the first bed constructed......

Here is Evie elbow deep in mulch......


Layers were added as per the website instructions..... Isaac was a kind of foreman keeping everyone straight about what should come next and how deep the layers should be........


Here they are nearing the completion of the first bed.....



I am very excited to see how this venture goes...... maybe we will have another little slice of heaven.......

Our week.....

This week was a pretty lazy week really.

Although I started school with the children on January 4th, we have had a couple of 'lighter' weeks because of the arrival of auntie Dottie, celebrating Australia Day and then looking after one of Evie's friends for a couple of days this week.

It was so lovely to watch as Evie and her friend spent about 11 hours of their two days together playing with all of Evie's Playmobil! I have never, for one moment, regretted investing in lots of this wonderful stuff over the years...... it continues to be one of my childrens best toys EVER (along with Lego!!)

Evie has copious amounts of the animal themed stuff (woodlands, treehouses, farms, vet surgery, horse ranch etc.) - which is exactly her bag. Then we have Isaac's stuff - castles, battle tower, knights, dragons, vehicles and submarines etc.



Our whole lounge room was taken over and made into a number of different play scenes with a whole host of story lines happening throughout their time together....... I literally couldn't keep up with them all!!!

Fun, fun, fun.......

Plum collecting......

We discovered a plum tree overhanging the end of our garden with beautiful crimson cherry plums all over it.....

So Dot and Evie went out and picked a few......



Yum!

Alternative uses for Jenga blocks......

OK, it's the holidays..... a time when there is lots of ...... well, time!

Isaac is a building fanatic..... lego, k-nex, blocks, stones, sand, pipes, tubes.... you name it and he will have a go at building something with it.

Take for instance the humble Jenga block. It started out as the traditional 'build it high and watch it fall' game, then became a domino toppling rally which stretched round the lounge room and now.... well it's a 'how many blocks can you balance on one Jenga block standing on its smallest side' challenge!

He started with 13 balanced on 1......


Went up to 22 on 1.......


Got up to 27.......


I'll let you know when he stops.......

I just don't get it......

I am a woman of very little brain and some things just mystify me it has to be said!

Take for example when we travelled to Australia, we completely missed out on Friday 19th September..... it just didn't happen...... one minute it was Thursday 18th and the next it was Saturday 20th.

Now I understand the International Date Line has to run somewhere and it's where one day ends and another begins etc but I just seem not to be able to grasp that I lost a day..... just like that ..... I will never see the 19th September...... ever! It almost feels twilight zone-ish.....

Another thing is telephones and satellites..... how can I talk to my sister, who is thousands of miles away, and the sound is being bounced around all over the place - satellites in space may even have something to do with this or pulses of light running through tiny fibre optic 'wires', I don't even know the technology involved - but usually we have a decent quality phonecall with just a touch of delay? Someone explain that to me.................... on second thoughts, don't even try.....

And one more thing..... while my friends 'up north' (and I don't mean Alice Springs or Darwin.... I'm talking WAY up north) are sledging and freezing their little booties off, we are sweltering in 100 degrees.

Again, I get the whole tilt-of-the-earths-axis and rotation-round-the-sun thing but it just seems..... well, odd.

So what's a girl to do when her friends are sitting infront of open fires to defrost their tootsies and drinking hot chocolate?

I say you go to the local lake to cool down.....




Hope you all had a fun Saturday whatever you were doing......

Oh the things they do.......

The latest fashion made entirely from magnitex......

Robots......

As part of the holiday science programme the CSIRO here in Victoria were facilitating a Robotics workshop..... which Isaac IMMEDIATELY decided he would LOVE to go to! Unfortunately the workshop for 7-10 year olds was booked out but we had a phone call to ask if Isaac would be up for joining in with the 11-14 year old workshop....... uh, yeah!!

He was literally bouncing off the walls at the thought of spending a day building a robot from scratch..... doesn't float my boat, but hey, we're all gifted at different things!!

He spent 5 HOURS following technical drawings and beavering away with screwdrivers, pliers, nuts and bolts, gears, motors and a whole lot of other robotic apparatus and ended up with this.........



It's a walkabout ball catcher/thrower thingy that can walk in circles if you want it to and HE LOVES IT!

I was duly impressed by his perseverance and his ability to work out what he had done wrong and fix it. He is keeping his eye on what the next holiday workshops will be.....

Thanks and all that.....

Today I was shoooo-ed out of the house after lunch and told to 'take my time' running the few errands I had to do. You see, my lovelies had it in mind to cook dinner for me and they do like quite a bit of time to prepare.

So, I ran errands, got a rather yummy icy drink at a local coffee shop, had a haircut (and boy did that need doing!!) and finally got home in time for the final (but not frantic I am pleased to say) part of the process.

The children love to pick recipes from Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipe book because the dishes have such........ interesting names!!


So I sat down to Boggis's Chicken from 'Fantastic Mr Fox' - yummy, I love dumplings! The fact that it was 25+ degrees outside didn't matter at all and we will have to have this one again..... maybe in the winter next time though!


And for dessert we had Krokan Ice Cream from 'Boy' but instead of stirring the 'krokan' through the tub of ice cream it was served 'sprinkled on top'! After I had finished the ice cream in my bowl I munched my way through was was left of the krokan - it was truly scrumptious!


Another one of our favourites from this book is Bruce Bogtrotters Chocolate Cake (from 'Mathilda' - oh, my mouth is watering just thinking about that one!) Might have to make that soon!