busy, busy, busy

December. Oops lost November completely in the rush. Oh well, managed to do lots of other things - visited unwell Mum, hosted several hundred students and teachers in the camp, weeded alot of gardens and became LOOK magazine's new gardening columnist! I'm loving that. They also have rather a good contributor named Abraham Larsen. The December issue might not be on line yet so check back later.

In the kitchen garden I have lots of strawberries (which we occasionally dip in Whittakers darkest chocolate) broccoli,lettuces, potatoes zucchinis and lots of herbs. The passionfruit vine which I have been sloshing with chook manure, sheep manure, cow manure and buckets of soaked teabags, has finally rewarded me with hundreds of flowers which I am hoping will become hundreds of passionfruit. The grape vine that I thought I might have killed by over pruning has lots of adorable little bunches of frogs-eggs lookalikes. The sunflowers are taller than me and starting to develop faces. All is good in the world.We have had lots of amazing flowering shrubs burst out and surprise us - well maybe they are surprised that there is someone here that talks to them and tells them how beautiful they are everyday. This actually works - try it. x to you all

I say poster, you say imposter

It's 2 months since I posted - NO! that can't be right. Next you will be telling me it is only 9 weeks to Christmas. Ha!

It has been so long, I have just had to spend an hour trying to get back into my blog page to update. I must have seemed like an imposter. Ah yes, now that title makes sense...

Anyway here are the latest photos and news headlines. Most days I need to be in 3 places at once. Either at the camp or at the gardens, and on Sundays, at the Kerikeri craft market selling creatures. One year of this is probably all we will survive. Our fingers will be worn down to a nub.

Meanwhile, we have been eating cheramoyas! Very yummy old fashioned fruit which I bet will become the latest fashionable fruit found at all the farmers' markets. Ours come from the very old lichen encrusted tree pictured.

I've been sowing seeds flat out to plant into the huge garden we have dug over (more about this in my next post) and after this month of horrible weather I have had to employ cunning tactics to encourage germination. The difference between the daytime temperature and the night time chilliness has resulted in lots of failures so I now have a wee hothouse made from the packaging that a duvet came wrapped in. It works. The seeds are planted in loo roll holders which encourages good root growth and can then be put straight into the ground. The cardboard rots and becomes compost.

I made cauliflower pickle, which I have made dozens of times before - it looks great and I took this photo before trying it, and consequently discovering that it was too runny and not sweet enough, so I had to boil it up again with more sugar. Ahhhh! Moral is, don't cook 3 things at once to try to save time.

And just for fun, I have included a photo of cherry blossom in the nursery ponds.
May the sun shine upon you

We had a real treat the other day when a Right whale came into a nearby bay with her calf. We had just had several days of rain and she was in really close - an elderly seaman we met said that they come in close for the fresh water which they use to remove barnacles and cure ear infections ...(whales have ears??)

Anyway it as a rare event and we spent an hour or so watching to catch a glimpse of them. They spouted and waved their tails and exposed their humpy backs enough for us to see how HUGE the mother was - about 15 metres long. It was difficult to see very much at all. Just knowing they were there was enough.

And apparently they are called a Right whale because they were considered to be the "right" whale to hunt for whalebone used for things like corsets and riding crops. They also produced more oil than other species, hence they were hunted nearly to extinction. So we were especially lucky to see them. You can't see much in the photo but if you follow my gaze, somewhere out there is a rare whale and her baby!

I was really missing my spinning wheel (couldn't fit it in the bus) and a lovely new friend called Anita lent me hers to help restore my sanity. The cool thing about living in a small community is that as soon as you say something out loud, someone hears and responds. Hence I have been given or lent heaps of cool stuff since we have parked up.

I have been spinning for 37 years (on and off) but have never spun carded wool. I was taught to spin straight from the fleece and back in the day, I used to take my wheel to the woolshed when the shearers were there and spin a warm fleece straight off my knee. Nothing finer. But when Anita delivered the spinning wheel to me, she also brought a bag of carded wool. When I started spinning I couldn't believe how much quicker it is to spin! Then another new friend Helen lent me her carder while she is in Oz so I am learning lots of new stuff. I find the secret to carding is to feed it in really slowly with lots of tin showing on the tray (this will make sense when you are doing it) and turn the handle slowly.

I prefer the uncarded yarn, but in the meantime I'm having a great time spinning for the grandchildren.

yummy winter goodness

Goodness! Can't believe it has been 2 weeks since I blogged - been VERY busy. And goodness! Winter is still producing lots despite my (unintentional) efforts to kill off all my vege beds. Read: I haven't weeded in months. Never mind, obviously all the hard work I put into actually sowing the seeds and planting the plants earlier in the year was enough to keep my little bundles of chlorophyll enthusiastically sprouting until I returned to them, trowel in hand... actually I exaggerate. I have returned, many times, but without trowel in hand - more like a bucket and a knife to harvest whatever I can find amongst the weeds. Thank you for being so resilient little plants. You will have nice new friends to join you soon I promise!

Thought you (readers)might like to see today's harvest. Dinner was homemade sushi NZ style, with crunchy vege salad. You can get healthy just looking at that picture.

And wheat-free apple muffins - yummy winter goodness!

Eggy surprise

Eeek! Just to emphasise the fact that my 5 year old grandson has a better grasp of social media than I have, I managed to give the wrong link to this blog to "Get Growing" who generously published my blog address. Well, with their 22,000 readers each week, I was pretty sure that I would get at least one follower, so I was alerted by that little sentence that says "no followers yet" (sigh)

So I have asked them if they would consider re-publishing it, but I think I'm pushing it to tell you the truth!

And no I haven't come up with a new eggy recipe for you, though I'm sure I could if the garden would just stop calling me. Instead I'm sharing this morning's surprise with you: my one-big-brown-egg-a-day-each chooks suddenly went off the lay and actually I was pleased in a way because I have been telling them to slow down a bit. They aren't looking too flash at the moment and I think a couple of them are laying themselves to death. As if one egg a day is not enough, we get double yolkers. The smaller egg in the photo is actually quite a big one - the bigger one is just plain scary.

Today I followed one of the chickens into the bush because they seldom go off on their own and I was a bit suspicious - sure enough, there was the cutest little nest tucked into the fern with 10 eggs in it. Too dark to photograph them in there - that would have been a great photo. I left 2 eggs in the nest so they don't go off and find a new spot to lay tomorrow, and brought the rest home. Today I've left them locked up until they have laid just to remind them to use the lovely little nesting box with fresh hay that is in their pen.

Omelet for lunch.

Facebook

Oh my goodness! Someone sent me a link to their Facebook photos and to see them I had to create a log-in; that took two minutes and before I knew it I had dozens of people wanting to 'be my friend'. Some who I haven't heard from for 10 years! It was like I flicked a switch that flashed a spotlight onto me. I don't know whether to crawl slowly backwards and pretend it didn't happen, or embrace the social media that I have so diligently avoided (till now)

So please, dear readers, give me a while to get over the shock of landing FACEfirst in the facebook pool and don't take it personally if your 'wall' isn't adorned by my greeting next time you check. It will take me weeks to learn the jargon let alone the process. My photo on Facebook says it all!

Meanwhile, the garden takes priority!