Veggie Patch - Update # 5

The turkey scores have been settled, without injury!  Other than to my wallet.  Lucky this vegie patch was not about saving money, as I am now fairly certain that the return on investment will be negative for the balance of this lifetime!

It was rather funny to come home from work on Monday and see the bush turkey on the boundary fence looking down at our construction efforts and wonder 'how in the hell am I meant to get into there!'.

Score is now even, and the new plants are growing well.

Veggie Patch - Update # 4

After arriving home from work on the Monday, we headed around to the back of the house to water the garden.  My jaw dropped to the ground and the child burst into tears.  Something had certainly had a field day in our garden.  Tracking back over the potential suspects....

 

Upon closer inspection the plants did not appear to be eaten, just scattered all over the place.  The pots on the deck had also been destroyed.

There was digging, and I remembered back when the dog up the road came and visited our first two chickens.  After ruling out the possible suspects, I starting thinking about our resident bush turkey who comes to visit the chicken pen each night looking for left overs.

This weekend was filled with hammering and chicken wire as we build an enclosure around our garden to keep out the suspected bush turkey who is clearly up on the points board for that effort.

 

Veggie Patch - Update # 3

For three solid weekends the pair of us have shovelled, heaved and poured.  I have been really surprised by the dedication of the youngster.  I expected that after the first 100 buckets the shine would have worn off, but to her credit she stayed the distance and it was a nice bonding experience for us both.  Even Meg was tired of the activity and demanded that scratching her was going to be way more fun.

It has been with great pleasure that we moved the last bucket of soil into the new patch.  So this weekend we headed into the city and had breakfast together, before stopping at the nursery on the way home to pick up some plants and straw.

We learnt about strawberries, potatoes, peas, carrots, capsicum, coloured silverbeet, lettuce, bok choi, parsley, coriander and rhubarb.  We learnt that some plants require different amounts of sun, and space to grow and depths to be planted.  All very exciting stuff.  The end product for weekend 3 did look pretty good and we were certainly impressed by our efforts.

 

Veggie Patch - Update # 2

After a gruelling first weekend, I am reminded each day when I pass the balance of the soil and mulch that the activity is far from over!  But the project has been met with great excitement from the little one.  Hard to imagine why when we look at the culinary eating patterns that involve vegetables!  Maybe it is the opportunity to dress for the occasion.

Weekend 2 and we managed to find a whole crop of cherry tomatoes that had either someone survived the old garden patch, or miraculously appeared on their own steam.  We decided they looked good enough to keep, so we staked them up and weeded underneath them.

We also spent some time constructing a sprinkler system for future convenience, and well we had left over bits and bobs that could be used instead of sitting in the shed gathering dust.  Actually most of the project was designed and constructed with left over materials from the many projects around the property.

 

Meg was also very interested in what was happening.  Her winter coat certainly is amazing, she looks about three times as big.

 

 

 

Living by the Beach

A few months ago my sister decided that she had always wanted to live by the beach, so she promptly up and moved to a suburb on the other side of town.  It is not a suburb that I would like to live in, but every time we visit, I insist on going for a walk along the beach, after all that was the reason she moved there!

You know it is a classy area when this is hung by the pool;

The actual beach isn't my kind of beach scene, I do prefer further north such as Caloundra, the landscape is more beautiful, in my humble opinion.

Maddy doesn't really care what the beach is, for her it is always about the hunt for shells.  It has become an activity that we share together, and we always try to find a 'special' shell for our collection at home.  I love to watch her little journey of discovery, and every now and then I get a glimpse of what she will become.

 

Feeling Disconnected

There has been a few bumps in the road of life of late, and I have really tried to maintain my optimistic approach.  Generally I have been successful, but despite all of this, I am having a period of disconnectedness.  Trouble is, I know it is creeping from the point of origin and seeping across my life.  I can feel the titanium casing starting to shift around me, and I may not be able to hold it off this time.

In times of trouble, I generally locate at home, enjoying the solitude of a blissful acre.  As we stood on the deck I looked across at one of the unfinished projects, building another vegie garden.  After a sigh around the thought of the joint project that needed to be finished solo, the youngster and I hooked in to make a start.

Clearly a renovators delight!  The landscape truck has just arrived, so I will post some more shots later, and if we are really lucky we will finish it before those grey clouds unload.
 

Define your Current Role

At a recent training course I was asked to have an artistic moment in time and draw my current role.  I am not the best on the spot person, and really not the best artist.

When asked to describe what I had drawn, I responded with "globally spinning at the pace of a cyclone, and way out of balance".