Garden

So I decided it was finally time to post again and let people know what's going on in our lives. And I looked at the last post and it was...January. Holy moly. There's SIX MONTHS of updates to write about.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

House stuff

Not long after my last post, our old house was demolished. Just an empty block. I drove past there the other day, and it looks like both halves have now been sold (the for sale sign was gone), and there's work happening on one of the new blocks.



The new evaporative air conditioning system we had put in works GREAT. We did have to get the touch screen controller replaced, but that was covered under warranty. We're pretty sure the controller had been dodgy from the start, because it never really worked all that well, and then after the power went out one day, about a third of it was just dead. Fortunately it was at the end of the season when we'd need cooling, so it's not like we were really struggling.

Middle of May, we had our shed delivered in pieces. The company who make them don't install them anymore, so I had to hunt around for someone who was available to put it together for us. That took a while because everyone's busy, and it's winter so it's cold and wet. But finally we got an installation date, and they came and did it, and yay we have a shed!

[caption width="2560"]Shed![/caption]

We had power installed last week, but we're still waiting on the concrete slab to get poured so we can start using it properly. That happens tomorrow.

When the shed is finished, we'll put our chest freezer out there, and get some nice sturdy shelving, and move a bunch of stuff from Chuckie's room onto the shelves. We'll also be able to get a 4x4 set of cube shelves where the chest freezer is now (in the dining room), and use half of it for school stuff, and the other half for board games. (Most of our board games are still in boxes in Chuckie's room). There's a few other boxes of stuff in other rooms that we'll move to the shed as well.

We had a split system air conditioner put in the kitchen/dining area, because it's the biggest room, so really too big for one of those fin heaters to work well (like we've got in every other room in the house). It's pretty awesome.

Life in general

I don't think I mentioned this on the blog at all, but as of the 4th of January, our ridiculous state government decided that all passenger transport workers had to be jabbed to keep their jobs. Darrin was not, and is not, and will not be, so he wasn't able to work, even though the boss didn't care if he was jabbed, and probably most of his passengers wouldn't have cared either. So this persisted until this direction was repealed on April 1. He's been back at work since then.

So my message to you, if you're facing a similar situation: STAND YOUR GROUND. You don't have to succumb if you don't want to. They WILL eventually remove that requirement, because every industry who's mandated it has had it repealed because they don't have enough workers! Don't have savings to get you by? Do whatever you can for income in the meantime - babysit, Uber Eats/DoorDash, deliver pizzas, walk dogs, whatever can get you by. And then, when you get your job back, save up an emergency fund, because something WILL happen again where you need a big chunk of money all of a sudden. Life happens and it's best to be prepared.

And that kind of leads into my next topic, where in the second week of the April school holidays, we all came down with The Virus Which Must Not Be Named. And yeah, yeah, fine, it's the weakest variant that's been out there since the beginning, blah blah blah, but what a wussy virus. We were tired for a couple of days then we were fine.

[caption width="2560"]Two sick boys having a rare afternoon nap[/caption]

And honestly? I'd rather have that again, even every year, than have gastro EVER AGAIN IN MY LIFE.

I had my birthday in January, and Darrin took the kids out for the afternoon so I could be home ALONE. Then the next week Darrin had his 50th birthday, and we stayed home to have chicken & chips. Caleb turned 15 in March. I can't remember what we did for his birthday. Maybe we ordered pizza.

We're still homeschooling, and in fact just had an extension on our government approval, so we're good till the end of June next year.

I had to dig my passport out for something in the middle of May, and I saw the expiration date. YIKES! It was a month away. So in the next 24 hours, I collected all the documentation I needed and sent off a renewal application. I got my new passport a few days after my old one would have expired.

Elijah (3) has moved from our bedroom into a room with his big brother Micah (5). They have the biggest bedroom.

The younger 3 kids and I have started going to a Bible study, which is actually held at our church. We're actually on a break now and starting a new subject in August.

Chickens

We have chickens! It was a bit sooner than I was planning to get them, but we brought home 5 pullets (female chickens under 1 year old) at the end of February. We were meant to get 6, but the lady I got them from (who had to travel up from Mt. Gambier, several hours' drive away) said her partner forgot to load one up. So they brought the last one up about 6 weeks later.



And then...one started laying. The Barnevelder. The smallest one. Which was a surprise, but a welcome one.

[caption width="1920"]The first egg we got from our flock, which I put in my pocket and forgot about until I squished it against something.[/caption]

And then...our black Orpington started to look bigger than the rest. And she was definitely in charge. And her tail feathers looked like...not a pullet.



And then he started crowing. At 5:30 in the morning. In the suburbs.

So I put a call out on one of the local poultry groups on Facebook, and a lady from out in the country came to pick him up. I saw her again last week and she says he's doing well. Yay.

So we had 5 chickens again for a few weeks. And then yesterday, I got a message from the lady I got them from saying they were coming up TODAY for a poultry sale, and she could bring up my replacement black Orpington. So I asked her for a couple more along with her, and now we have 8 chickens.





In addition to the Barnevelder, two of my Orpingtons are laying periodically. We're generally getting 2 eggs a day at the moment, sometimes 3.

Garden

I've got veggie beds! And 7 fruit trees! And blueberry bushes! And a little greenhouse! And...BLACKCAP SEEDS! I'm really excited about that last one. I grew up picking them and eating them when I was a kid, and I've never seen seeds for them here. Then one night, I was Googling stuff on my phone in bed, and I found them. So I ordered some, and got them last week. Just need to work out where I can plant them.

So at the moment, I've got one bed strawberries, one bed peas, one bed broccoli & cauliflower, and the fourth bed is carrots, onions, garlic, lettuce, and parsley.









I've harvested 3 heads of broccoli and 1 head of cauliflower. The lettuce is big enough that I can grab a few leaves when I need them and leave the rest. Same with the parsley. I'm not sure how the carrots will do. I've never really had success with them before.

That's about all I can think of for now.

Yes, we have sweet corn growing in our back yard. And despite the temperatures rising to as high as 44.1, it's doing really well. A couple of the plants are already knee high.

Also have some capsicum plants and one (out of six planted) bean plant. The cucumber plants all died within a couple days of planting. And there's a couple new potato plants coming up as well.

And...somehow a peach seed managed to find fertile enough ground within a metre of my compost heap. So I've got the one I planted last autumn, and now another much smaller one. Go figure.

1. Just noticed my potatoes are coming up! There'll be a big garden update in a bit.
2. Our phone line was dead for 50 hours. Rant on this coming later.

So Darrin's mostly finished up at SEHS. He's done two Saturdays there and may do a little more as needed. He's liking the new job - the only downside is leaving the house at 7:45 every morning and not getting home till just after 6 most nights. But it's working out well for the most part.

I have a zillion sewing projects I want to get finished before this baby arrives, including some maternity clothes. Really should get those going, shouldn't I? And my chiropractor has ordered five nappies from me, and she's due 4 days before me. But two are already finished, so I really only need to do three more. I got some fabric to make Caleb another pair of pajamas, and I'm also doing a set of curtains/drapes for a friend (as soon as I have the measurements).

Caleb...just gets better every day. He just put one of his bears on the potty to do a poo. And he's very talkative. He'll try any word except his name. It's amazing how much he picks up without us even trying (i.e. he's saying 'no thanks' and 'thank you' now of his own accord, even though we've never prompted him to do so - he's just picked it up from us saying it to him).

Baby's still in there. I was getting a little worried at one point that I hadn't felt any movement for a while, but Lisa came over & checked with her doppler and worked out that baby just decided to hide behind the placenta for a bit. He/she has shifted again in the last week and I'm feeling a lot more kicks, hiccups, etc. again. Oh, and I'm at the point where I wouldn't mind my very own live-in chiropractor and/or massage therapist. I've been visiting the chiro every two weeks, but I'm thinking I might have to increase it to every week soon. Now that my regular one has gone on maternity leave, I'm seeing one of her colleagues - who incidentally sounds like an American. Haven't yet asked her where she's from (I've only seen her once so far and it didn't really seem like the right time).

Garden stuff now. I've got cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, and celery in the veggie patch. I also had two pea plants, but I didn't water them when I transplanted them, so they died. This week (assuming my body cooperates, and the nursery gets them in) I'm planning to plant some seed potatoes. And last week, I bought a peach sapling and two small blueberry bushes and planted them. So I'm working on the orchard now as well. I have so many plans (including a chicken shed), but I don't think most of them are going to happen till a few months after this baby comes. I was really hoping to get a lot of it done before, but it wasn't to be.

And I actually turned the heater on this morning for the first time this year. It was a whopping 16C (62F) in the lounge when we woke up.

And now...away to the post office!

Ooh, two posts in as many days. I'm really prolific this week.

Point one: Patty has arrived! Her flight was only an hour late leaving Melbourne and 40 minutes late arriving in Adelaide, but she's here. None of us got to bed till midnight last night. Caleb's having a ball showing off & being cute. He's very good at it.

Point two: we have a new photo gallery here. Some of the photos aren't cooperating with getting added, but we're slowly getting there. All recent Caleb pictures are in though, so those of you who need a cute kid fix can get it.

Point three: Yesterday was Darrin's official last day at SEHS. And there was much rejoicing (yay). Since he's kinda made himself indispensable there over the last 11 years, he'll still be going back occasionally to work on things that need attention, but for that we'll be billing them through his consulting business.

Point four: still pregnant. Three-ish months to go, give or take. Have baby clothes already set up in a drawer ready to go. Second babies are a lot easier to prepare for - just grab all the stuff you used for the first one and you're ready to go. The only thing we're buying new is another car seat.

Point five: I'm trying to get my garden ready for winter with some winter veggies. But I doubt I'll be getting much done with it for the next couple weeks. The only things left in there are two watermelon vines (pruned down to the bare minimum in the hopes that the biggest two melons actually ripen before it gets too cold) and my capsicum plant, which has ripened its one and only capsicum already, even though it's only the size of a ping pong ball, if that. I'm wondering if it's a mini variety, but I couldn't find anything about it through Google. Also, I've got plans to buy some more fruit trees and plant them around. My list: 2 apple trees of different varieties (because all but MacIntosh need another tree nearby to pollinate), another orange tree that fruits in the summer (so we can have oranges year round, yay!), a new peach tree (because ours died), some blueberry bushes (because Caleb LOVES them), an avocado tree (I don't use them THAT much, but I'd probably use them more if we had a tree, plus I know plenty of people who'd be in for some free avocados), and an almond tree. Maybe another apricot tree as well, since ours tends to have a branch die off every few months and I'm not entirely sure it's going to be here next summer. I was also thinking about a banana tree, but what I've read of them, they take a LOT of maintenance. So not now. Maybe sometime in the future, once I'm comfortable with the rest of my orchard.

My last garden blog was the end of November. Yeesh. So here we go again.

First a little ramble, as usual. All my pumpkins died during the heat wave. As did my strawberry plant. And a little helper yanked out most of my cucumber plants, so I only had one left in the hanging basket. I thought that one died in the heat too, but it's come good again. And when we got new tyres on the back of our car, I kept the old ones and made a zucchini pot. Filled it up with compost, then potting soil, and it looks great. And then the day after our birthday barbecue, Darrin's brother brought over two bales of straw for us. A few days ago I pulled one apart and spread only about half of it on the garden. I've still got the other bale & a half sitting next to the fence waiting to get used for who knows what. I'm planning to eventually get some raised beds built, so it'll be useful then as filler. And I also had to rip out three of my four cauliflowers because it looked like they had something called black rot. The fourth was smaller & looked okay except for some of the leaves, so I just ripped off those leaves & it's still looking pretty good.

We're still baking. But there's an end in sight now. The BOM is forecasting 30 for Saturday, and it's slowly getting cooler (well, less hot) over the week up till then. We were supposed to be having a birthday BBQ today, but because of the weather, we decided to postpone it a week. So next Sunday hopefully it'll be a lot cooler and we can hang around outside. Highest temperature this week: 45.6C (114.1F).

We've had another poo and a wee on the potty in the last couple days. Slowly getting there.

My pumpkins are all dead. My strawberry plant isn't looking good either. And the cucumber plant is partially wilted & dried out. Everything else is still looking okay though, probably because it's all (except the capsicum) planted in the ground. If the strawberry plant dies, I think I'll be transplanting the capsicum into its spot. Oh, and it has one tiny capsicum growing on it! Yay.

Oh, and this is the THIRD keyboard I've used this week. The first one that I'd been using for months with no issues decided the other day that it didn't want me to have working number keys, including a couple keys I had in my password, so Darrin found a spare in his piles of computer stuff. This was actually one I'd had a couple years ago and always worked well for me. And then yesterday that one started working funny with all the directional keys - arrows, page up/down, home/end, etc. And a couple hours later the space bar and two adjoining keys stopped working as well. I suspect this had something to do with a naked toddler standing on my chair, playing with my keyboard, and a mysterious puddle under my chair.... So once again, I couldn't type my password. I had to get Darrin to kill my screen saver remotely so I could get back into my machine, and then turn off screen locking. So this morning as soon as the shops opened, I went to Big W and bought a brand spanking new USB keyboard, and it works beautifully. But do you think I can remember any of the stuff I wanted to post on message boards now that I have a properly working keyboard again? Of course not.

Baby's movements are getting a lot stronger, and I think I can almost feel them from the outside. He/she was awake & pretty active this morning after I went to the toilet at 6 am. Should be soon anyway and I'll be able to put Caleb's hand on my belly and tell him "that's the baby kicking." No bladder dancing yet though, for which I'm thankful. But it'll happen eventually.

Okay, we've all had our lunch, now it's time to get the ice cream out of the freezer. Mmmmmm....

It feels good to be able to keep on top of the housework again, AND do some stuff I enjoy doing. Still having the occasional nauseous day, but they're getting fewer & further between.

I made a purple t-shirt for Caleb out of one of my old shirts. He loves purple, and the holes in the armpits weren't worth fixing anymore. He loves it.

Thanks to my little garden helper, I now only have one cucumber plant left - the one in the hanging basket. I have five broccoli plants still making broccoli. This morning I ripped out a couple of the ones I'd cut down too far, so they weren't getting the side shoots they're supposed to get after the main head is cut off.

We're getting new tyres put on the back of our car tomorrow. I'm planning to keep the old ones and use them for my zucchini.

One of the dead branches on our apricot tree fell off this afternoon - right onto Caleb's sandpit. Lucky he wasn't playing in it at the time.

And...uh...I think that's everything. Now I need to go have a shower so I don't have to do it in the morning.

And the 42 degree day claimed the lives of 2 pumpkin vines, one zucchini plant, and one cucumber plant. Everything else is looking okay. The cucumber plant in the hanging basket, however, is looking MORE than okay. It's the only one to have flowers, and it looks like it's trying to climb up onto the roof.

So yeah, part of the reason I haven't been posting much lately is because I've been too tired/nauseous to do so. And because Caleb comes and tries to drag me off if I've been sitting at the computer longer than two seconds. The nausea is starting to fade though, so I'm hoping to feel more like posting, and playing with Caleb, and whatever else that I've been neglecting the last couple months.

Veggie garden is going strong. I've harvested five broccoli heads and have two more (plus one with side shoots) still growing. And I now have heads on all four cauliflower plants, but they're looking yellow. I guess they're not kidding about tying the leaves over the head once it forms.... I also have some strawberry flowers, and I moved all my potted plants over next to the main garden so I don't have to go more than one place to water everything. And on Christmas eve, I went to a nursery and bought some seedlings & plants - 1 capsicum, 2 zucchini, 4 cucumbers. I put one of the cucumbers in a hanging basket and the other three in small pots. The zucchini & capsicum are also in pots, because my little patch is filled up. No idea what's up with my pumpkins & watermelons - they've been flowering for a month or so but there's no fruit that I can see. I've read something about rubbing the male flowers on the female flowers to fertilise them, but I can't tell which is which.

Caleb has another new molar. Well, half of it anyway. This just leaves the last two on top. Would be great if they both appeared before his sibling is born, but we'll see. My last ones came through when I was 2 and a few months, which is about what he'll be then, and he's been teething at about the same rate I did.

Due to interest rates dropping THREE times since our last quarterly mortgage statement, we are now making progress on our loan. As in, our payments are finally more than our interest. Yay. Our statement now says 16 years remaining instead of the 21 it said a year ago.

Tomorrow is going to be the first stinking hot day of the summer. Over the next week, the coolest day is supposed to be 27 (80F) on Thursday, and tomorrow? 41 in the city, 42 (108F) in our area. So yeah, I'll just be staying home with the air conditioner on full blast, thanks. That or camping out in the shower.

Pretty sure that's everything I was thinking to post about.