Courtesy of a tree lopping company that were pruning trees back from the power lines in our street, we now have two huge piles of woodchip to use as mulch on all the gardens. It's also been fun for the kids to ride their bikes over and dig in.

Mr T excitedly came in to me saying he had an awesome idea. He had noticed that when he dug down into the pile that it was really hot, so he wanted to try to cook some potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil like you cook them in the fire.

digging his cooking hole.

Unfortunately they didn't cook but I think that was mainly because he had to dig them up every half hour to check them:)

Rain, hanging out doing a bit of reading up the ladder...

This week it was my mums birthday and we had a lovely family lunch.

Prepare for a ramble

You may have noticed I haven't been posting as often lately. Well there are multiple reasons. Firstly my borrowed computer s so old and slow and the keyboard misses letters so it is so frustrating to type anything. My camera has died...:( but luckily I moved into the 21st century an got a mobile phone so I can still take some pictures...the quality is a bit bad though.

The other reason I'm not around here as much is general busy-ness. We have had WWOOFers to organize and we are getting ready for our Winter Solstice Market Day. I don't know what I was thinking when I stared to organise this... There is advertising, stalls, food, entertainment to arrange...the list is endless. BUT hopefully I'll achieve my aim of generating a space for local People to come together to trade and have fun.

I've been crocheting a new blanket. It's not a very clear photo but you can make out the colours at least!

We made these yummy stuffed chapatis for lunch yesterday. Mr T was enjoying his so much he had to take a picture of it.

His collection of treasures we found on our walk.

Tui has been teaching herself to climb...

And gardening mulching paths with sawdust, picking heaps of squash and purple beans, eggplants (still!) and the broccoli are almost ready...yummy!

It was cool enough today to get out and do some gardening. So Peace (oops, I'm not suppose to call him that anymore! He feels it doen't represent him properly so until I think of a new psuedonym for him I will referr to him as the man formally known as Peace) and I re-mulched one of the gardens. It was sooo over-grown.




We lay down heaps of wet cardboard boxes to help supress the weeds coming back.





Covered the whole lot with sugarcane mulch and planted a couple of new plants. A ground cover I only know as pig weed. It is succulent and has beautiful redish/pink flowers. The other was a Dianella, a native grass with edible blue berries...yum.

I picked some coriander seed for sowing and cooking...

while Tui explored the grass...

feeling all the new sensations with her cute, chubby little hands...

Oh, and I just loved this photo of the cows in the shade down at the river...

Rain and busy bees...

The rain falling last night

I love this rain we're having. It's beautiful, it's soaking into the soil, it's cleansing the Earth, the sky, my soul. The plants are thriving, the dam is overflowing, the tank almost full.

But I do hope it lets up by the weekend. This Saturday we are planning a little working bee.

With the promise of food and booze (lemonade and juice for the non-drinkers) we have lured some of our nearest and dearest to put in a day of hard graft for us. Well probably not so hard...

We are hoping to get some gardens mulched and to finish painting the house after all these months. Peace keeps coming up with more possible jobs for the list but I've reminded him that the working bee only goes for a day not a week!

The list of jobs to do on the property and house is endless. It seems that as soon as we complete one job another five have been added to the bottom of the list. So we decided that what we'd really like for xmas is some help around the place.
So I'll be busy tomorrow and Friday prefaring my post-working bee feast (which will include something made out of Zucchini) and scrubbing the house clean for painting.




And for hippymummy, a Zucchini, albeit a hail damaged one!