Sticks and Stones

I took the plunge after reading about the Diva Cup over at Crunchy Chicken and ordered a menstrual cup – much to my husbands horror!   I did a tiny bit of research about it and decided that the Lunette was the way to go for me – I ordered it from this site and was amazed at the speed of their response – it took about 4 working days for the package to arrive in Australia – they have great customer service!  Cup works really well although I have to admit I was a bit dubious once I saw it for real….it kind of looked….big…but it folds up and fits in and seems to work really well – no leaks, no waste….verdict…LOVE it!

By the way, I am still using my cloth toilet wipes for number 1’s and it’s going well…

Melinda from Creating Elements in Time tagged me for the Six Random things Meme – like Belinda over at Belinda’s Place I don’t really know 6 people well enough who haven’t already been tagged so if you read this and want to play go ahead – let me know so I can read it!

Six Random Things Meme.

Rules: 1. Link to the person that tagged you. 2. Post the rules on your blog. 3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. 4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs. 5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website. I have never been tagged before and I am not sure it’s my thing – reading other people’s kind of makes me feel a bit…. “boring”! Oh well, what I find dull others may find of interest…

Here goes:

1. When I was very little my Mum used to dress my sister and I in almost identical clothing, the only difference was the colour of the clothes. My sister is younger than me so she always got the “other colours” (mostly blue) and I always got pink. We used to fight over it, she always wanted pink and I always got it. In actual fact I always wanted the “other colours” and was quite jealous of her!

2. I was about 4 1/2 years old when I started my first musical instrument – the cornet. Mum’s best friends daughter played the clarinet and on one family holiday I had a go, the adults were surprised I could make a sound on it and decide I should begin music lessons. I played poorly for many years – on and off – and had the dearest music teacher. When I got a bit older the local band started a Junior Town Band and I joined. I always found the marches through town painfully embarrassing… In my late teens and early 20’s I played in a little group with 3 “old” men, one of whom was my initial music teacher (I was taught by a mean guy who was part of the MSO at some stage for several years in between – he was our band master for years and years). I loved those evenings in the local church with the “old” men and I will always treasure that memory – I wish I had embraced it more at the time!

3. I played tennis until my early 20’s and I sometimes tell people I was really good at it – I know I never really was but I could almost hold my own against a reasonable male player if I was serving well. I once played in a tournament with my tennis coach who had been a world ranked player. In our final match – the final – I served the ball into his butt and he couldn’t walk for the rest of the match….we lost!

4. I love to garden but I have never really been all that successful – I am one of those people who get the spring bug and plant lots of vegies and then never follow through and look after them – I am changing!

5. My dreams are bigger than my actions – which is probably how it should be. I start every year with a list of all my family, Pete’s family and my friends and their kids and write a list of all the things I would like to make/knit for them. I am lucky if I get one done! At least my thoughts are there, I am a true believer in dreaming to achieve and I do achieve in may other ares of my life. I rarely do well with gift giving but I love everyone I think about!

6. Starting a new business has been the bravest, scariest, craziest thing I have ever done financially – it’s even scarier than building a house! Check out www.thefregiesack.com.au and tell me what you think!

I didn’t get time to do my Growing Challenge Post yesterday as we made our final dash to Melbourne for house stuff and the Sydney Road Festival where we had a Fregie Sack stall.

This week I have planted out some lettuce seeds – I am aiming for planting 6 plants a week for the whole year as I think this would satisfy our lettuce requirements – and some parsley and coriander seeds that I collected from my Melbourne garden. I also planted some mint roots and my poor raspberries that I ripped from the Melbourne garden. When we brought the plants back here we were too exhausted to unpack the box trailer so they sat there for a few days and withered away. When I finally remembered them I put them in a bucket of water for 24 hours in hope of reviving them. The mint developed a new shoot and the new canes on the raspberries seemed to inflate so I planted them out in my “row” of garden for the time being. I don’t think they are going to make it but I am still hopeful, the main canes are pretty dead and the new canes haven’t shown their heads yet (it’s only been about 3 days). I found this site on growing raspberries so I still have some hope but I may be looking for a source of canes for next season….and some new mint!

Some knitting at last!  There has been a little bit of knitting over the past few weeks although I find that not a lot gets done between Fregie Sack work, the babies and general living.  By the time they go to bed I am tired – often too tired to concentrate even on stocking or garter stitch – Sam wont go to sleep until about 10pm and gets up for a feed between 4am and 6am and then sleeps depending on the time of feed til about 730-8.  Sophie is going to bed at about 8pm and getting up at around 6-7…..we’re tired!

Anyway, some knitting progress…

The main thing I am working on is Sophie’s Jumper:

This is one of Mum’s old patterns that I picked out from the cover.  When I opened the book up to it I saw Mum’s tiny writing telling me that she made this pattern up for me in 1979 and 1980!  She used Bluebell and I am using Totem from her stash – she probably bought it in the 70’s.  The pictures don’t show the colour all that well, it’s a lovely light apple green and it will look great with all the pink clothes Sophie has been given/lent.

The pattern was to be knitted in front, back, arms and collar but, as I dislike sewing up knitted garments, I have knitted the body in the round.  I am almost up to the raglan shaping of the sleeves so I am hoping this jumper will be off the needles in a couple of weeks…

The second lot of knitting to show is my charity knitting.  I have knitted up a beanie and a pair of booties – these are my December and January projects.  You may remember that I was knitting an Aides jumper with the stash given to me by Trudi – I got this far though:

and ran out of yarn!  So, I frogged it and knitted up these instead.

I have enough left for another beanie so I will use that for my February project and them I will move on to some other yarn from the many boxes now living in the shed.

My third knitting show and tell is a couple of pretty boring but easy dish clothes.  I say boring as they are pretty boring to look at but they are great (and quick) to knit – just 5 plain, 5 pearl in a basket weave pattern.  I have been reading Rhonda Jean’s  blog a lot and have decided that I need more dish clothes….Next one will be the Mid February KAL .

My fourth bit of knitting to show is not something I have worked on recently other than to frog the sleeve I started many moons ago:

It’s the Jo Sharp Ribbed Wrap Jacket.  I have dug this out of a box somewhere after seeing it on Trudi’s blog and feeling inspired.  I am using the yarn and colour used in the pattern but, like Trudi, I still haven’t worked out what contrast colour I will use and I am kind of leaning towards using the same colour…..not sure, I will knit the sleeves and then decide.

So, that is what I have been doing in my spare time between babies, work and gardening!  This blog still has some knitting!

And some pictures of my babies:

 

Not a great deal has been done in the garden past week.  I guess the most interesting thing to note is that when I planted the carrot seed I placed a board over the first 1/2 because that’s what my Dad always did.  I guess it was to keep the moisture level up and prevent a crust on the surface but I am not sure.  The carrots that were under the board have reared there lovely little heads and I am very excited!  The packet said 10 days til germination and they were up in 6 (well at least some  were anyway).  Now, to have done the experiment properly I should have put in 2 packets of the same type of carrots  but anyway I think I’ll use the board again for the next packet.  3 of the baby beet seeds have sprouted and I have only lost 1 lettuce so far so I am feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I have been trying to keep track of how mush water I am using on the vegies and so far I have used about 40 litres including the “juice” from the worm farm.  I’m pretty happy with that but I have to add in the fact that last week we had about 33mm of heavy, ground soaking rainfall.

This week I am going to get some lettuce seed planted, more baby beets and do some seed catalogue reading on these Australian sites:

Diggers  who also have an organic selection here

 Heirloom Seeds

Greenpatch organic seeds 

Eden seeds

New Gippsland Seeds & Bulbs

Green harvest Organic Gardening Supplies 

It’s amazing how growing food can become such an amazing challenge. To reach my goal of growing peanuts or wheat or something similar I am going to have to grow as a person and learn to compromise a little more. I had a certain vision for when we moved here but that vision is not to be so I am going to do things how other people would for a little while until a) I prove myself as a vegie grower or b) we find our dream home/land and move.

I prefer a “no dig” system of gardening for a myriad of reasons including maintenance of soil structure and generally better soil condition. I worked pretty hard at our old house trying to bring the soil “up to scratch” by adding organic matter and loads of mulch constantly and, it was almost at the point where it was half decent – you could scratch the surface and find worms. I also find that “no dig” gardening is less prone to weeds and more easily filled with food and flowers – it’s never dug up so you don’t have to clear it out for the next crop. Anyway, I have come across a different system that I must embrace for the short term and, for the sake of being able to garden, I will. But, mark my words, I am going to prove that I can grow great vegies!

So, the patch that I have taken over looked like this last week:

Then, my father-in-law got his tractor and slashed the area and made my husband rotary hoe the area so that it looked like this:

An amazingly fine powder of rich looking red soil (I grew up in an area of clay so this site is quite amazing). Yesterday I planted it out with the seedlings I bought last Wednesday. I have put in two types of lettuce (and will try to continue to put in a punnet a week – preferably raised from seed by me) – cos and seasonal – two types of cabbage (savoy and earlyball ? can’t remember), carrot seeds (2 packets – All seasons and Baby carrots), parsnip seeds (Hollow crown), basil seeds (self grown) and to finish off the row I transplanted a tomato that had self seeded in my Daphne pot. I am not sure that the tomato will make it, I was probably better off putting it in a pot as the nights are really cooling down now. Anyway, this is kind of what the garden looks like now:

Happy gardening!

Well, we finally have internet! Yay! We still haven’t located the cords for the camera so no photos to show – I think they may be in Melbourne still so we might have them this weekend if a load of stuff gets delivered.

I haven’t done much gardening yet – my in-laws are keeping us well supplied with watermelons, rockmelons, peaches, nectarines, apples, figs, merlot grapes (Sophie and I LOVE to eat them), plums, zucchini and eggplant – but I’ve been doing some dreaming.  We are heading into Autumn here so today I went to the local Mitre10 and bought some seedlings – cos lettuce, some other lettuce and 2 varieties of cabbage – and some carrot and parsnip seeds. I have never really successfully grown either carrots or parsnips so I am declaring them a part of my growing challenge.

This week (ie before next Monday’s post) I am going to hoe up a bit of the vegie patch already in use at “La Bella Casa” and mix in some of the “stuff” from the chook pen floor and plant out the lettuce and cabbage. I am also going to plant out the carrot and parsnip seeds…after a bit of research.

I looked up Jackie French’s site and read her recommendations for planting so I am going to get some seed catalogues and follow a few of them up….I really want to grow my own mustard so that’s a priority…. I read about growing it in one of her books.

I think for me a part of the challenge is to use my money wisely with what I buy. I have decided to include all my vegetable gardening purchases in my grocery money for each week….hopefully over time I’ll have more money left over for growing more vegies as we eat more and more out of the garden!

A small aside – knitting is progressing slowly….show and tell when the camera is functioning again!