We did some harvesting yesterday! It's so cool when you can head into the garden and get food out of it.
No photos, sorry, cos we left our camera cable at Merl's parents' house, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
It all started because the chickens were in dire need of a change of location. They had been in the same place for the 2 weeks we were away, and then a further week while they waited for us to get around to shifting them. The dome was starting to smell and needed some fresh ground.
But, of course, before they could go onto the next veggie bed, the potatoes needed to be dug. Merl did a valiant job of digging up the two rows of potatoes I'd planted at the back of the bed. From an initial 'investment' of about a dozen or so smallish potatoes, we got a bucket and a half of good-sized tatties - most of a paper sack full. So that was awesome.
While we were lifting up the droopy tops of the potato plants I discovered a row or two of onions that I had completely forgotten I'd planted. Most were on the small side and some had started to go slimy cos I'd not harvested them soon enough, but I'm pretty darned excited. I have never grown onions before, and now I've got about half a dozen lovely onions to braid up into one of those old-fashioned onion strings. Of my own onions!
Having seen that I'd left the onions a bit too long, I went and pulled up my elephant garlic. This was a little disappointing. Next year I'll plant them somewhere sunnier and just generally better. Only three of the cloves I planted grew to produce a flowerhead, and each of the three bulbs when I pulled them were underwhelming in terms of clove size and number. But the bed that they were in is in shade for most of the day and alternates between being terribly dry and extremely wet. Not ideal. So I hope for better for next year.
While I was prowling around the garden I noticed that the parsley I had left to seed was indeed seeding, so I harvested an envelope of seed from that too.
So there we have it - potatoes, onions, garlic, parsley (from the other, younger plants) and the continuing supply of eggs from our cooperative chooks.
Sounds like an Irish Omelet to me!
Now all we need is a milk cow so we can make our own cheese... (Well, okay, that might be a step beyond what our suburban section can handle - but what good is an omelet without cheese?)
Read more...
Mar 29, 2009
Mar 23, 2009
Daddy, do you have tentacles?
So said miss5 as I was driving along.
Me: No, I don't have tentacles like an Octapus.
Miss5: I mean like when a dog licks itself, like on grandad's cup. Do you have them?
Oh. Testicles.
Please don't
I told you not to :~) Read more...
Me: No, I don't have tentacles like an Octapus.
Miss5: I mean like when a dog licks itself, like on grandad's cup. Do you have them?
Oh. Testicles.
Please don't
I told you not to :~) Read more...
Mar 14, 2009
Albatrosses
Forgive us our absence! We are currently on holiday in the North Island of our beautiful country, but will be home before we know it. Merl is up here for work, so this time we all decided to tag along and catch up with friends and family living in the capital.
But this post is not about Wellington - that will wait for another time! This is all about our trip to the Albatross Colony that is just out of our home town. This was another of those brilliant home-educating 'school trips', organised by one of the other home edding parents in town - like our trip last year to the Aquarium.
The kids started off in the 'education room' had a wonderful introduction to the birds who live/visit/nest on the headland (from left, the Yellow Eyed Penguin, the Spotted Shag, the Stewart Island Shag, the Little Blue Penguin, the Red-billed Gull and the Northern Royal Albatross). We discussed which were endangered, which were declining but not currently at risk and which were doing just fine at the moment. The Albatross and the Yellow Eyed Penguins are the endangered ones, and are hence the ones which everyone wants to see the most.
After this intro, the kids were split into two groups, as the observation room for the Albatross has a limited capacity. We were in the first group so proceeded to huff and puff our way up a fairly steep hill to the observation room. Miss2 made a valiant effort to walk all by herself, but at one point was making two steps forward and one back, so I carried her most of the way.
It was worth it.
Here is a parent and their chick - the only one of my Albatross photos to turn out okay. Three nesting sites are visible from the observation room, and we were fortunate enough to see two parents feeding chicks while we were there, and super-lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see one of them take off to fly out in search of more food. The parents share the feeding of their chick - often leaving it alone for a day or more while they go looking for food. The chicks are huge, but as a species they are not well adapted to deal with ground-dwelling predators like dogs - explaining why this site is the only mainland nesting site of Albatross in the world. All other nesting sites are on remote islands.
After returning to the education room, and spending some time looking at the information around the place
-about plastic pollution and how Albatross often mistake it for food - feeding it to their young and sometimes poisoning and starving them to death as a consequence,
- playing with a set of scales and a model real-weight chick to see how the rangers weigh them to check on their progress
- looking at a world map to show the different Albatross species and their distribution around the globe
- etc
we were joined by the other half of our group and took a walk down the hill to Pilots Beach. Again, Miss2 needed to be carried quite a lot of the way, which in my increasingly ungainly pregnant state was getting to be quite a mission. Thankfully one of the other Mums, whose kids are older, offered to carry her back up the hill! 2 year olds are a substantial weight (especially our two year olds), but the push chair would not have been suitable for the terrain so we were left with few options...
Still, again it was worth it!
This is a fur seal, sunning itself on the beach. If we were insane we could have gone right up to it and touched it. As with all wild animals, however, seals need a good deal of respect. They may look like awkward lumps while on the land - but they can still move fast, and they are heavy. They're not usually agressive - just playful - but humans generally don't like to play the games that adolescent male seals play with each other! So we gave this one a good 3 to 5 metres space and made sure not to get in the way of its escape route to sea. It responded by serenely ignoring more than 40 curious human intruders to its beach. Very civilised.
Human access is only allowed to about 1/2 the beach so that the seals and sea lions (which have only just started to visit again, after an absence of some years) have some space to lie about unmolested.
No sea lions were there that day - but I remember them from when I was a kid. Sea lions are huge. And not to be trifled with. (like the Dread Pirate Roberts...)
Along this same beach there are heaps of Little Blue Penguin burrows, which the penguins return to at dusk. We didn't see any penguins this trip, but I have seen them in the past, and they are very very cute. Again, though, it's important not to get in their way - not because they'll jump you, but because they'll just stay in the water and wait for you to go away, leaving their chicks going hungry in the burrows, while the parents get colder and tireder in the water.
After slogging it back up the hill to the Albatross Centre (with Miss2, thankfully, being perfectly content to be carried by this other, wonderful Mum), we met for a brief re-cap in the 'education room' and then sat and nattered over lunch. The nattering was good, as I got to meet some new people (or rather, I, being the new person, got to meet some of the old hands), and got to know better some I had only met once or twice.
Just to top off a wonderful day, I saw one of the Albatross flying around over the car-park when I went out to get our lunch from the car. Brilliant. In all the times I've been out to the colony over the years (but, admittedly have always been too cheap to pay the fee to see the nesting sites) I have never seen one flying. And that day I got to see it twice.
Magnificent.
Read more...
But this post is not about Wellington - that will wait for another time! This is all about our trip to the Albatross Colony that is just out of our home town. This was another of those brilliant home-educating 'school trips', organised by one of the other home edding parents in town - like our trip last year to the Aquarium.
The kids started off in the 'education room' had a wonderful introduction to the birds who live/visit/nest on the headland (from left, the Yellow Eyed Penguin, the Spotted Shag, the Stewart Island Shag, the Little Blue Penguin, the Red-billed Gull and the Northern Royal Albatross). We discussed which were endangered, which were declining but not currently at risk and which were doing just fine at the moment. The Albatross and the Yellow Eyed Penguins are the endangered ones, and are hence the ones which everyone wants to see the most.After this intro, the kids were split into two groups, as the observation room for the Albatross has a limited capacity. We were in the first group so proceeded to huff and puff our way up a fairly steep hill to the observation room. Miss2 made a valiant effort to walk all by herself, but at one point was making two steps forward and one back, so I carried her most of the way.
It was worth it.
Here is a parent and their chick - the only one of my Albatross photos to turn out okay. Three nesting sites are visible from the observation room, and we were fortunate enough to see two parents feeding chicks while we were there, and super-lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see one of them take off to fly out in search of more food. The parents share the feeding of their chick - often leaving it alone for a day or more while they go looking for food. The chicks are huge, but as a species they are not well adapted to deal with ground-dwelling predators like dogs - explaining why this site is the only mainland nesting site of Albatross in the world. All other nesting sites are on remote islands.
After returning to the education room, and spending some time looking at the information around the place
-about plastic pollution and how Albatross often mistake it for food - feeding it to their young and sometimes poisoning and starving them to death as a consequence,
- playing with a set of scales and a model real-weight chick to see how the rangers weigh them to check on their progress
- looking at a world map to show the different Albatross species and their distribution around the globe
- etc
we were joined by the other half of our group and took a walk down the hill to Pilots Beach. Again, Miss2 needed to be carried quite a lot of the way, which in my increasingly ungainly pregnant state was getting to be quite a mission. Thankfully one of the other Mums, whose kids are older, offered to carry her back up the hill! 2 year olds are a substantial weight (especially our two year olds), but the push chair would not have been suitable for the terrain so we were left with few options...
Still, again it was worth it!
This is a fur seal, sunning itself on the beach. If we were insane we could have gone right up to it and touched it. As with all wild animals, however, seals need a good deal of respect. They may look like awkward lumps while on the land - but they can still move fast, and they are heavy. They're not usually agressive - just playful - but humans generally don't like to play the games that adolescent male seals play with each other! So we gave this one a good 3 to 5 metres space and made sure not to get in the way of its escape route to sea. It responded by serenely ignoring more than 40 curious human intruders to its beach. Very civilised.
Human access is only allowed to about 1/2 the beach so that the seals and sea lions (which have only just started to visit again, after an absence of some years) have some space to lie about unmolested.
No sea lions were there that day - but I remember them from when I was a kid. Sea lions are huge. And not to be trifled with. (like the Dread Pirate Roberts...)
Along this same beach there are heaps of Little Blue Penguin burrows, which the penguins return to at dusk. We didn't see any penguins this trip, but I have seen them in the past, and they are very very cute. Again, though, it's important not to get in their way - not because they'll jump you, but because they'll just stay in the water and wait for you to go away, leaving their chicks going hungry in the burrows, while the parents get colder and tireder in the water.
After slogging it back up the hill to the Albatross Centre (with Miss2, thankfully, being perfectly content to be carried by this other, wonderful Mum), we met for a brief re-cap in the 'education room' and then sat and nattered over lunch. The nattering was good, as I got to meet some new people (or rather, I, being the new person, got to meet some of the old hands), and got to know better some I had only met once or twice.
Just to top off a wonderful day, I saw one of the Albatross flying around over the car-park when I went out to get our lunch from the car. Brilliant. In all the times I've been out to the colony over the years (but, admittedly have always been too cheap to pay the fee to see the nesting sites) I have never seen one flying. And that day I got to see it twice.
Magnificent.
Read more...
Mar 1, 2009
Photo catchup
It has been ages since we emptied our camera's memory card, with the result that mid-way through Miss5's last day at Kindy, we received the "Memory Full" notice and had to hurriedly scan back and delete some useless ones so we could be sure to catch the all important cake and candles shots.
We consequently have a large back-log of photos that we haven't shared with the world, so do join us on a trip through the last couple of months!
This is the rabbit hutch that I'm midway through converting into a little chicken coop for our two hens to spend their nights in. Yes, it's little, but it's much more spacious than the beer-crate they are currently using, and as you can see - two little human chickadees feel quite at home there.
And here's the view from the top. The kids are having their afternoon tea, having chosen a box instead of all the other, more comfortable and (to my mind) exciting places like the tree house.
Miss2's birthday party - the cake
Yay! She blew the candles out!
Miss2 feeding her baby. She initiated this game all by herself.
Oops! Dropped some of the food!
Miss5's last day at kindy. She made the hat all by herself and had a wonderful day
Here's a close-up of the cake. This was a wonderful gift. I mentioned on Facebook that I'd be buying Miss5's cake this year, and a friend offered, out of the blue, to bake and decorate one for us! Very much appreciated!!
And these final two photos are an eloquent example of Dad-physics. These batteries are the ones I took out of the smoke-detectors, so they've been running down their charge for a year, but even so, this is not a Mum-physics lesson. Merl decided it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls about touching batteries onto your tongue.
Yes indeed.
The second photo is taken in the split-second after Miss5 had done so.
However, the batteries must have been worn out enough for the zing to not be too bad, because Miss2 spent the next 2 or 3 days wandering around touching her tongue to the batteries just to get the kick out of it.
I've since done the responsible Mummy thing and explained to Miss5 that you must only ever do it with worn-out batteries, and I've hidden them away from Miss2. Merl insists the batteries will come in handy for electronics experiments, so I'll have to put them somewhere safe and label them as used batteries. Then we can throw them out in a year or so when we find them again and they've gone all melty and yuck...
Read more...
We consequently have a large back-log of photos that we haven't shared with the world, so do join us on a trip through the last couple of months!
This is the rabbit hutch that I'm midway through converting into a little chicken coop for our two hens to spend their nights in. Yes, it's little, but it's much more spacious than the beer-crate they are currently using, and as you can see - two little human chickadees feel quite at home there.
And here's the view from the top. The kids are having their afternoon tea, having chosen a box instead of all the other, more comfortable and (to my mind) exciting places like the tree house.
Miss2's birthday party - the cake
Yay! She blew the candles out!
Miss2 feeding her baby. She initiated this game all by herself.
Oops! Dropped some of the food!
Miss5's last day at kindy. She made the hat all by herself and had a wonderful day
Here's a close-up of the cake. This was a wonderful gift. I mentioned on Facebook that I'd be buying Miss5's cake this year, and a friend offered, out of the blue, to bake and decorate one for us! Very much appreciated!!
And these final two photos are an eloquent example of Dad-physics. These batteries are the ones I took out of the smoke-detectors, so they've been running down their charge for a year, but even so, this is not a Mum-physics lesson. Merl decided it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls about touching batteries onto your tongue.Yes indeed.
The second photo is taken in the split-second after Miss5 had done so.
However, the batteries must have been worn out enough for the zing to not be too bad, because Miss2 spent the next 2 or 3 days wandering around touching her tongue to the batteries just to get the kick out of it.
I've since done the responsible Mummy thing and explained to Miss5 that you must only ever do it with worn-out batteries, and I've hidden them away from Miss2. Merl insists the batteries will come in handy for electronics experiments, so I'll have to put them somewhere safe and label them as used batteries. Then we can throw them out in a year or so when we find them again and they've gone all melty and yuck...
Read more...
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