February 2012

At the beginning of February, most of the houseplants were still in the breezeway and other clutter had started to appear, most noticeably the covers from the wood piles. This was not good so it was time for a tidy up.

We had already begun to accessorise our new deck with a rolls royce shoe rack and a rather trendy seat.

Then we received a rather lovely artwork from Aunty Diana for xmas which was the perfect colour.

And in a weak moment, Dave agreed to make the planters that had so far been rather a long way down the to-do list. They cleverly matched both the cladding and the decking and were soon filled with the excess houseplants and their own irrigation system.


And talking of irrigation, we had been having trouble getting our computerised timer and water distributor to work. It was meant to allow 6 circuits to run off the one tap. Of course we have 6 beds in the veggie patch, plus the border, strawberry bed and the soft fruit just outside. Either it didnt like working on our slightly intermitttent bore pump, or it didn't like the number of dribblers on each circuit, or it just didn't like! Anyway, after weeks of testing the system and talking to the distributor manufacturer, along with drawing up designs for his own waterwheel, he was finally given a set of 4 taps and timers to complement the distributor which at last seemed to work consistently. So the new device got its own little house and hopefully will be reliable - as long as we remember to check the batteries.

The weather was good most of the time and showed off my amazing new lion's mane sunflower. I had been tempted by the seeds as they claimed that if you planted them as a hedge, it would be completely covered in yellow. Our plants were rather hurriedly planted out in the vege patch before we went away so a hedge of yellow was not possible but my, they were impressive.

The nursery of natives was doing well, although our original 73 baby wharangi had now become about 50. Still, plenty for the job hopefully.

The poly tunnel was amazing! Three melons to date and about 3kg of tomatoes every other day. Added to the strawberry glut, it was all pretty hard work just to keep pace!

We had a little help from the horses in the field next door ...

... which the pumpkin patch ...

... and the kumaras seemed to appreciate.

The comfrey and the self-seeded manuka in the soft fruit patch seemed to be doing much better than the berries themselves, but next year hopefully, we'll get some fruit.

Ah yes, sunflowers, and tomatoes and more tomatoes. And of course tomato sauce and tomato puree and lots and lots of fresh tomatoes.

And 16 pears and 3 melons ...

... and of course the dreaded marrows.

We planted gum trees around the border of our new section when we first bought it almost 3 years ago now. Some of them had grown very well ...

... some of them reasonably well ...

... and some of them almost not at all!

And some of them had attracted rather a lot of rather large gum caterpillars which were stripping the top leaves off the plants.


We also decided to progress the pony paddock. We had been mulling over various possibilities before Dave finally agreed to let me have my long-wanted lambs. For this we needed fencing and fortunately we discovered one of the neighbours had recently got rid of their sheep (as they were a 'waste of space') and had the old fencing ready to go on trade-me. So we bought that from them, plus a bit more.


And then set about the quality of the grass - or rather the gorse and bracken. It looked quite good from a distance ...

... but close up was often more gorse than grass.

And then of course there were the bunny holes!

Anyway, in desperation and against all my principles, I attacked the problem with some very nasty chemicals, which took a day and a half.

But at least the blackberries didn't like it very much.

And then in the middle of all the pondering about the fencing, Dave came across even more wood by the river and collected it.

Of course all our wood stands were full from last month's efforts so he decided to build a new shed from old unwanted pallets. He spotted some waste treated wood piles on the building site across the road which would make good foundations but they are rather intermittent builders so, while we wait for them to return, we have to live with rather a lot of old pallets.

And we had a lovely visit from Alice who managed to fill our freezer with a huge variety of cakes, many of which had marrow in them! There were a few disasters including the caramel cake which she successfully managed not to burn, due to my constant nagging, but then forgot to get out of the tin in time. It required Dave and some heavy tools to remove it.

And then there was the traditional caramel slice that was awesome on the third attempt and left the chooks with gummed together beaks by the time they had worked through the first 2 attempts.