ELVeS Haunt

Week 2 - midweek

2012-01-10T22:17:00.000-08:00

Not writing as much as I would like - this exercise/diet thing takes up too much time. BUT for my first weigh in (Friday -> Friday) I apprently lost 2.6kg according to my scales. Weight Watchers recorded my first week loss as 1.8kg (Tuesday -> Tuesday), and it's quite conceivable that I lost .8 between the first Friday and Tuesday. My second week ends on Friday - I'll be happy to have lost 3kg over the first 2 weeks (crossing fingers and working my butt off to achieve this!)

I've generally been walking around the park (around a 2.7km walk) which takes me around about 30mins. Been doing this 3 time a week, and doing hydrotherapy twice a week. However the plantar fasciitis is playing up badly, which is causing issues throughout, and my back has decided it needs some sympathy lol. Physio gave it some not so Tender Care today... it's feeling better at least. I also had the physio attack my shoulder as it's been feeling tight and sore for a while now and I've been ignoring it. Apparently it's another of my wonderful "yes your muscles have tightened up too much" scenario's which require deep massage. I've got some rotator cuff exercises to do (along with the stretches for my back, knees and calf muscles). My stretching exercises are going to take longer than my actual exercise does soon!

This week is the first birthday since I accepted this challenge. Planning on remaining strong. No alcohol for me! Tired now - I'll update on Friday...

Week 1 - midweek, marron escapee and a bit of shopping

2012-01-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

So far so good, I've stuck to Weight Watchers, and I'm upping my exercise. This morning was hydrotherapy, so I did about 50mins of various exercises under guidance of my physio, and then was let loose to see how many laps I could swim in the last 10 mins. Only about 300m of freestyle apparently. Will need to improve that as I spend about half my time recovering my breath at the end of each lap (well the first 75m are easy, but after that I need to rest after each 25m).

I'm feeling positive :)

V shared an article with me this week - yet another reason to lose this weight!

http://lifehacker.com/5872377/a-half+hour-walk-can-make-a-big-difference-even-if-its-your-only-activity

As for everything else, life is busy, girls are at swimming lessons this week and next, the poor kids had tag team carers this morning (I left around 6:45 for hydro leaving them with their dad, nanny rocked up at 7:30 so dad could go to work, then I got back around 8:15 so that Nanny could head off to volunteer work with the silver chain). Bring on the time when I think the kids will be old enough to cope with no adults in the house for an half an hour or so....

On the amusing note - I had my first ever Marron escapee - I umm filled the fish tank a bit full apparently the other day, and made the mistake of leaving the hose in the tank as well. Poor mum was minding the kids the next day when she discovered a marron practically knocking on the back glass door. Thankfully she was found before the hot weather hit that day. She wasn't all that happy with me lol.

Had a lovely time at Spotlight yesterday (the shopping I was doing while mum babysat - well spotlight, petrol for the car, and desperate grocery supplies), so I have some lovely wool to make some more scarves. Oh yeh - the scarves, these went down a treat with the teachers and I've even been asked if I have my own shop and if I sell them. Had to laugh over that! Glad they were appreciated :)

A bit of a challenge...

2012-01-01T01:55:00.000-08:00

So, the last couple of weeks has been somewhat stressful with pre Christmas preparations and perhaps a tad too much drinking lol. I also had major excitement the week before Christmas when I won a $10,000 holiday to China! Unfortunately it was a golfing holiday and there is just no way I can see me using the golfing part. So that became V's Xmas and birthday gift - he's going golfing with a friend for a week :)

We also managed to escape to Rendezvous in Scarborough for a night (not a Xmas present - it was a gift to us from V for us doing the mulching at his mum's place previously). It was also a chance for us both to distress. With many thanks to his mum we left the kids and headed off for a night of relaxation. And it was wonderful!

Not so wonderful was that within half an hour of our return I had a phone call that increased my stress levels again. Sigh. I was poured my first glass of wine. Sometime later in the day, after my sister had turned up, I was somewhat drunkedly sitting in the living room when we got onto how she could motivate me towards losing some weight. So she offered to pay for me to join Weight Watchers. And each month I lost 4kg's she would pay the membership for me. As an added bonus she offered me a sum of money if I succeed in losing 24kg's over the next 6 months (June 30th). My partner then chimed in with a "he'll double it" (this is a nice supportive way of "I want you healthier and able to do things like a golf holiday" not an "God your fat and ugly" - which he has never said or implied). Drunkedly I agreed. So the challenge has been accepted. I worked it out, I have to average 0.93kg's a week in losses..... aha, this is going to be REALLY hard work.

Day 1 was yesterday, I joined Weight Watchers online, set up the app on my phone and commenced tracking my eating habits. I even managed a 15min short workout - and no alcohol despite it being NYE. 1 day down, 182 to go.

Goldfish breed fast!

2011-12-07T23:54:00.001-08:00

With and without flash - never seen fish on green felt before...

Hmm... wonder what I'll create next...

Gnome/mushroom completed

2011-12-06T23:46:00.001-08:00

So the gnome is all done - and he now has a mushroom to keep him company now (as requested by Shannon)

It's not an exciting mushroom - but it at least gives the gnome a reference point for his size....

I also made a black goldfish :) I think he worked out pretty well all things considered. The girls have asked that I make an actual GOLD goldfish. Erin's current teacher has made a point of having goldfish in the classroom this year, and she thinks it would be cool to give her teacher a couple of goldfish that umm, wont die ;) Not a great picture, but I think he/she looks fairly cool. It has a real goldfish type body, with extra fins at the base on both sides

Done!

2011-12-06T02:40:00.001-08:00

So last night I finished the embroidery side of mum's presents - apparently yesterday was a french knot day - that is I managed to do them (all 32 of them!). I really would love to know why some days I can, and other days I just fail at french knots

And here he is all sown up!

Base was just sewn on using blanket stitch from the underneath with a small seam. Worked out pretty well from the front :(

Of course this is also where I realised I should possibly have paid more attention to where I placed his belt (oops!). Oh well gives it that authentic home sewn look....

The kids now want me to make him a mushroom as well - so that might be tonights project.

Meanwhile my tadpoles are getting legs - this guy has front and back legs, the others only have little stubby back legs :) Kids are excited!

A couple of other projects

2011-12-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

My mum is a wonderful lady that provides me with so much support and help (way beyond what genetics demands... although I can blame the bad genetics of the fact my knee is killing me at the momen!) I'm not sure I/we would have survived the early years with the girls and coming to terms with the autism side of things without her.

Anyway, she HATES gnomes. Many, Many, Many moons ago she told her 3 not so lovely daughters that she would disown any child of her's that gave her a gnome (think this threat was also used for whichever of us gifted her with the first grandchild...) One Christmas probably back around 1991, she was given 2 boxes for Christmas, they had to be opened in order. In the first box was a hammer, and around it's neck was a little note saying "This hammer can only be used within the next 5 minutes". The second box contained a gnome - he was a work of love created by either myself or my middle sister (sorry can't actually remember who actually created him - just that it was an evil plan that we BOTH fully participated in). She chose not to wield the hammer on the gnome, and ever since there has been a steady increase of gnome related presents.

Of course some are as umm tasteful as the tombstone with "here lies the unnamed gnome" written on it (that came after the year where we gave her an ornament of a fairy crushed by a golf ball - I really wanted the cracked mirror with the splattered fairy in the centre, but the shop that sold these closed down by the time I was actually able afford to buy one). Generally we try to make things a bit MORE tasteful such as the book "Gnomes". This book is gorgeous! (Highly recommend looking for it at your local library)

So this year, I'm attempting to make her a stuffed tree gnome or NOM in this case... sounds bad doesn't it lol!

This is actually a purchase pattern from Aimee Ray at her etsy shop littledear. So I've put the felt together now to embroider! This is one possibility of how it will look - assuming I'm as talented as Aimee... so, no doubt mine will look very very different lol.

Talking about embroidery - I finally did the SEMCO tea towels that I picked up last year from Spotlight after Christmas! There were two of these and I thought they were really cute :) Unfortunately I was failing at doing french knots that day (some days I can do them perfectly, other days I just fail miserably). I think these will remain undone as it's so close to Christmas.

Found - cross stitch pictures!

2011-12-05T01:19:00.000-08:00

For my mother in law's 70th I completed a couple of cross stitch pictures by Michael Powell. I love his drawings.

So here's the completed and framed Mini Greek Islands 1

And Mini Venice Bridge

My mother in law had returned from a 104day world cruise the year before, so I thought it would be fitting to complete cross stitches of things that she had really enjoyed on the cruise. I think however that they will end up like most of my cross stitches that I have given as presents, stuck at the back of a cupboard and never looked at again! OK My sister does have her wedding sampler on display, but I don't think I've ever seen a single other gift to others on display :) I should get the hint....

Which reminds me - finally finished the Xmas present for my daughters speech therapist this week.

It was made into a wall hanging. As the centre works mostly with young children with Autism I hope that it will at least have a place. (Thanks to mum for doing the quilting side of things for me!)

Bluey gains a friend

2011-11-30T19:47:00.000-08:00

This fat little Robin flew in last night....

He and Bluey decided they might check out the aquaponics system ;) I think they might have been hunting for fresh strawberries!

Homemade Christmas gifts from the kitchen

2011-11-30T19:00:00.000-08:00

Well it started by looking like off coloured frogspawn.... what it is, is the juice and seeds of about 12 panama red passionfruit sitting in 750ml of vodka!

But it turned out all right in the end (still have to do the taste test!) I strained this through a metal strainer - so it removed the seeds, but most of the fibre from the juice is still there.

Both the passioncello & Limoncello are supposed to be served near freezing - in small amounts!

Home made labels - love my Sizzix Big Shot & my spellbinders dies :) Art work was done using Inkscape (I use this for creating svg files for my ecraft machine) A very useful piece of free software.

I also bottled up the Redskin Vodka (take a bottle of vodka, put into a bigger container, take a packet of redskin lollies, break them up and add to the vodka, leave till dissolved, then use a coffee filter to remove the worst of the sediment) MUCH higher alcohol content than the other ones on this page as there is no sugar syrup added. This is supposed to be served with lemonade.

This one is based on lemon's and is what got me started on this. This recipe comes from Mimi on Simple Savings

Limoncello
Ingredients:
1 litre vodka...cheap is fine
12 organic or home grown lemons (spray free)

For the sugar syrup used later:
4 cups sugar
6 cups water

Equipment:

Large open mouthed jar with airtight lid. A spaghetti storage jar with a swing top lid is ideal.

Sharp vegetable peeler
Saucepan for making sugar syrup

Method:
Peel the yellow peel from the lemons, being careful not to get any of the white pith as it will make the limoncello bitter. Pile these into the jar, and add the vodka. Leave in a cool, dark place for 14 days, giving the mix a swirl every couple of days. The liquid will gradually turn yellow and the peel will fade.

After 14 days, strain the mixture through a clean, damp Chux or some muslin, into a large bowl or jug.

Make the sugar syrup by bringing the 6 cups of water to a simmer and adding the 4 cups of sugar. Stir until dissolved and allow to cool.

Add the cooled sugar syrup to the lemon vodka, and mix well.

Rebottle as desired. You can put in a little extra vodka at this point if you like. This will increase your yield, but I would only do it to top up bottles, not to dilute it or you will lose the flavour.

I get to meet an author - Philippa Tate Gilder

2011-11-27T20:36:00.000-08:00

On Saturday our local bookshop had a book signing event. (I'll put a plug in here for the shop - it has the BEST paranormal collection in Perth, great staff and they are fantastic at supporting the local Primary School Book Express). So I wandered down on Saturday and met the new author.

Anyway this is a first publishing, and I got the book dedicated to my youngest daughter (who is well known for her attempts for fly)

I was going to put a page up to show you the lovely illustrations - but decided I'd much rather you walked into a book shop and looked at it. Must say that a pile of farting panda's flying in the sky is amusing :)

Hope you get the chance to read this one at some stage! I've made a promise to the kids that I will read it out to them this evening, even the 10year old (who is currently reading young adult level books is excited)

Just because...

2011-11-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

I noticed this box in our bedroom the other day - it seems very sad... then my partner went and put his hat on top of it - he didn't actually see this aspect of the box until I pointed it out to him (how could you NOT see the unhappy face!!!) So the hat placement was purely co-incidental.

Passionfruit and Crafting

2011-11-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

Harvesting the last of the Panama Red passionfruit (actually there are still a few left in a bag I think). Anyhoo, decided to do something different this time, so I put the pulp from about 10 of these into a jar, and added a bottle of vodka. I'm going to let this sit for a week or so, then I'll strain out the seeds, add some sugar syrup and hopefully I'll end up with a passioncello (to go with the limoncello I made the other week). At the moment it looks more like a funny coloured frog spawn....

I also finished making my first bluebird - cute little guy isn't he :) He will soon be joined by a little black and red robin (I hope).

My kids want to know if you tap him with a finger will he turn into 3 little birdies (OK, yes maybe I HAVE let the play angry birds once too often). He is cute though! I got the pattern for him from the new CraftSeller magazine which I've taken out a subscription for. I've been working on him on weekend mornings while my partner had a sleep in - I tend to wake up earlier than most of the household these days and usually can't get back to sleep. So small hand sewing projects do well for those early hours.

He's a Laura Clempson design from Little Birds - her blog is here
http://www.cupcakesforclara.com/

She has some really cute stuff - check it out!

Problem with my crafting is I myself am not original - I can copy pretty much anything. I do embroidery, cross stitch, crocheting, knitting, sewing, fabric painting, wood working, picture framing, sculpting, resin work etc etc. I can draw - kinda (enough to copy something, but again - can't do original). I am excellent at looking at a projects, working out how to do it, achieving OK'ness and then I'm kind of over that craft and I move onto the next one. Which means I have a room full of different craft projects, and different supplies. One of the few things I keep going back to is my cross stitch. One of these days I hope to come up with my own original project that I can actually earn some money from. But it wont be this week :(

Fruit...

2011-11-26T02:23:00.000-08:00

Today we had the first Raspberry grown in our own yard (so much for Raspberries don't grow in Perth). We have about 25 green ones, and new flowers are opening still. Not a bad number given these are supposed to be autumn bearing canes!

I also harvested a batch of peaches from the tree out the front (these ones had been covered in flyscreen bags that I had made - so no fruit fly) the ones I hadn't covered got infested over the last week. Last weekend's were fine. These are sooo sweet and juicy!

Not fruit - but my yellow clivia is flowering for the first time as well...

A quiet day

2011-11-06T22:11:00.000-08:00

Today is a quiet day - I offloaded some more bits and pieces to the school (decluttering kids rooms and craft room). Worked for a while, and then sat down with mum to try and work out the Xmas lists as we will be celebrating early this year as my sister and her family will be away in England. Nearly sorted.

We already have the other side of the family kind of under control, but my side has taken a bit more effort this year. My plan is to have my house decluttered and xmas presents all brought and organised by the end of November. It appears that the new house will be finished and handed over early December. So that will spark a large amount of running around trying to organise paints/tiles/gardens etc (not to mention us DOING the tiling and painting). Then you get to add into that 2 birthday parties and a couple of Xmas functions and December is going to be chaotic at best. So this month - sort/declutter and basically get as much as possible under control.

As it is I'm chasing tradesmen - the paving bricks are getting delivered this Wednesday and I had hoped to add into this the order for the driveway bricks. I can't really see that happening at this late stage as the foreman still hasn't given the plans to the paving guy to actually tell me what I need to order and pay for. Argh. You would have thought I'd be used to hassle of tradesmen as we have gone through the subdivision on this property. But it still irks me. Meanwhile trying really really hard to get on top of the older part of the subdivision which has leaking gutters, a fence that needs to be put back up, needs a new front door, and some time in the very very near future I need to organise for the bathroom to get retiled. My life is seldom quiet and uneventful :)

Fabric book jackets/Notebooks

2011-11-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

This week our family has been trying hard to de-clutter, and finish projects.

One of my unstarted projects was to make some fabric covered notebooks for presents. I have a large stash of curtaining material samples - so this seemed like a good use for at least some of these.

These are the 8 I made this morning. They aren't difficult, and don't take all that long to do (probably about 15mins each - but most of that is the ironing and handsewing. The latter could easily be avoided.

Step 1 - cut a piece of material to size. I make it about 1 inch wider than the height of the book, and I add another inch at the botoom - but you can do what you are comfortable with. Length wise you want it enough to fold around the book and to provide a pocket for the book to slip into - about half the width of the cover and back cover added on is about right.

Step 2 - overlock or oversew the edges to stop fraying

Step 3 : Fold the material so that it's just slighter longer than the book - you want about a 2mm overhand at the bottom and top. You need to iron this down so it sits nicely. Don't forget to make sure you fold to the unwanted side of the material. (In this case the darker side is the side that you won't see, the lighter side in the side you will see)

Step 4 : sew using straight stitch across the top and bottom of the book cover. This make sure it will sit nicely (especially over the spine of the book) As you can see I do about a 0.5cm wide seam.

Step 5 - place the book in the middle so that the fabric at the top and bottom overhangs just slightly.

Then fold the excess inside the cover and backcover of the book

Step 6 - I use a type of herringbone stitch to sew the inside flap to the outside of the cover. Generally I would sew the top and bottom of the front cover, adjust the fit to make sure it's all nice and smooth THEN sew the top and bottom of the back cover. I've put a photo here of another one that I made that shows this a bit more clearly

All Done! Here's how this one looks completed.

Inside front cover

Now if I hadn't been using curtaining material which is quite thick. I probably would have turned the overlocked seem you can see here. I don't hate the look, but a nice neat turned edge would have looked nicer. But the three layers of material would have been too thick. So it stays like this.

Aquaponics/Winnings

2011-11-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

Thought I should do an update - my 10 perch that I picked up (and 6 marron) all appear to be thriving and all managed to survive my well mismanagement. I still have a trace of ammonia, and the nitrites are still a bit high. I've also planted another 4 tomato plants into the bed as the nitrates are creeping up. Nitrates are no where near as toxic as the nitrites and ammonia, but still have to be watched.

And on another note - while I've been typing this I've just had a phone call from the community newspaper and apparently I've won a CHOGM stamp pack. Woohoo - off to go pick that up now :)

SS Easiyo Sweet Vanilla Yoghurt

2011-11-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

When it comes to yoghurt my family is fussy. They like Brownes Dessert Style Vanilla yoghurt and that's about it. They don't like BITS. They wont drink kefir - and they don't like natural yoghurt. ONLY dessert style vanilla. They have however, decided that the SS Easiyo Sweet Vanilla yoghurt isn't all that bad (especially when strawberry syrup is added over the top).

Now the general price of an easiyo satchet is around the $4 mark these days (ouch) it's really not that much cheaper to make than it is to buy yoghurt already made. However as many of my SS friends know - most of the sachet is milk powder. So here's the variation we use in our household - and it makes the easiyo satchet last for a LONG time (off the top of my head - probably around 10 batches)

Recipe :

SS Easi-yo Sweet Vanilla

1/2 cup boiling water
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup cold water
1-2 TBS vanilla (extract with no alcohol is best)
1 1/3 cup powdered milk (dry)
2 TBS starter (dry powder: recommended: natural - but I use vanilla)

1) Dissolve sugar in small amount of boiling water..
2) add another cup of cold water...allow to cool a little if needed (should not be too hot)
3) Add vanilla, starter and milk powder, shake or stir to mix well.
4) Top up to 1 litre with water, seal and process in easi-yo flask.

So here it goes - sugar first

Add boiling hot water to dissolve it

Dilute to about 2 cups (I use plain filtered water for this from my brita water filter). You can see here a picture of the vanilla essence which is alcohol free. I use 1 tablespoon

Add your milk powder and starter from the easiyo satchet (note - you can use cheap cheap milk powder, I used sunshine milk in this lot as it had been given to me by a friend). The kids also like their's full cream, so that's what we use.

All mixed together and topped up to line at the top of the easiyo jar (I leave around a 1cm gap at the top)

Now this is the nifty part - my sister gave me her 2 wine bottle insulated bag - and guess what, it's the perfect size to put the easiyo cannister into.

Fits perfectly! In it pops, close the lid, and leave it alone. I normally make this up around 6pm, and it's ready when I get up in the morning. So around 12-14hours of sitting there. To check open the carry bag, take the lid of the white canister, lift out the yoghurt container and tip slightly. If the yoghurt moves it's not set. Put it back in the cannister and lock it up for another hour or two. If it doesn't move, into the fridge it goes :)

Yum! Easiyo says their products will last 14days in the fridge. My last lot lasted 2 before it was all gone...

Retic

2011-11-02T05:17:00.001-07:00

So today was 32 degree's - not really hot, but it's getting there. I've avoided turning on the retic till now 1) because the garden was coping (if not thriving) and 2) I was hoping that my new waterwise retic would be installed soon. Today I gave up waiting.

One of the things we do each year before turning on the retic is to go around and test every station and make sure that all sprinklers and sprayers are doing what they ought. I didn't have high hopes as people had been parking on the front lawn without regard to the sprinklers (I WAS expecting new MP Rotator sprinklers to have been installed). Much to my surprise apart from two blocked sprayers and a couple of sprinklers that the grass had grown over - all was good. A job that I had been avoiding for over a month was finally done. The retic is once again turned on :)

Kefir

2011-10-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

Kefir is something I've been making on and off for a couple of years. Every now and then it sits in the back of the fridge in large bottle of milk and I ignore it for a while. But then I'm reminded of all the good things about it...

Kefir is a fermented probiotic drink that is made by having a culture placed in milk. This culture kind of resembles cauliflower :) Anyway, you put the grains/cauliflower bits (which are actually a symbiotic combination of bacteria and yeasts) into milk - the healthier the milk the better. I tend to use A2 milk or organic milk. This is then covered with a piece of fabric to keep out the dust, and let the drink breathe.

OK so here's a batch that I did overnight - this lot of "grain" had been in the fridge for a while so I only wanted to put it in a small jar to start with to see how effective they were.

No problem's here - as you can see from the picture below the milk has formed "curds and whey". This isn't a problem, just means my grains are still nice and active. The downside (if you want to consider it that) is that this batch will be quite effervescent on the tongue, and a little bit sour. But as I don't mind that, I'll end up drinking it once it has been in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Moving on - so I have a nice fresh batch made, so the next thing I need to do is drain it. Generally it's best to avoid metal when working with kefir. So I have this nice plastic strainer which is the perfect size to fit over the container underneath it.

To make the next stage easier you would normally stir the kefir before emptying it out of the container, but I decided this time just to pour it in as is.

Most of the whey has drained straight out into the bowl underneath. You can see this is actually quite thick. So to clear out the kefir drink I just tap the strainer against the glass bowl beneath it. Each time you knock it a bit more of the liquid goes through until you are left with the grain.

As you can see - pretty much like shiny cauliflowers :) So while the last bit is draining head over to the sink with the old glass jar and give it a quick scrub and use some hot water just to clean it up. I don't use detergent - and I've never had an issue. If you do want to use detergent then make sure you rinse really well and get it all out before refilling with fresh milk. So fill to the level you require, use a plastic spoon and scoop the grains back up and add them to the milk. Cover with the fabric and stick a lackey band over the top and stick it on the shelf till tomorrow. Meanwhile put the kefir liquid into the fridge and once it's cold either drink it straight, or add some nice berries or similar (basically you just treat it like a natural yoghurt drink - add what you would add to yoghurt).

Alternatively you can look at making a soft cheese out of this - more on that another time...

I've actually put these grains into a bigger container with more milk this time. The grains do grow and you will find you need to split the grains fairly often otherwise the grains will turn the milk to kefir in a shorter and shorter amount of time. So share them with your friends. Or your pets - great probiotic supplement for the chickens :)

Scarves (open mesh design)

2011-10-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

So since my first creation, I've been having some fun playing with different wools in the evening. And here are the results

Firstly the one my eldest daughter chose for herself (blue of course lol) Think this one was Moda Vera "tracey".

This is the original one I made - and the one where I fell in love with the combination of colours

A black one with sequins - made it interesting to crochet!

Plum/Purple/Pink tones

White Gold tones

Classy - Black and white (not sure about the tan colour... but it does break it up)

This is orange tones

And finally two of different sort of thread - I thought these looked a bit christmasy, but I don't really like the feel of the scarf that they create, it's a bit too plasticy.

Any way that gives me a nice start on presents for Christmas. I'll be selecting a different ones for various teachers and family. I still have a few balls of wool left in the stash so I'll try to make a few more, but I think in general they will be double ups so I wont show the results of those.

This week is looking brighter

2011-10-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

Apparently I managed to win a competition - and I've won a Bosch Dishwasher. Woo hoo! Maybe I can get clean dishes again one of these days.... Our currently dishwasher leaves a fatty white film over the plastic on the top rack.

I assume I'm not allowed to complain about the fact that it's going to be stainless steel finish (model SMU50E25AU) and not white like everything else in our kitchen :(

A week best forgotten

2011-10-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well as we all know - good plans often get waylaid. BBQ did occur as planned - however V got sick around lunch time, and headed off to bed for a few hours. In the meantime the family rocked up, and then we worked out that V was actually really not well - a good dose of gastro by the looks of it.

The BBQ continued with my sister cooking. Nanna and the kids had a lovely freezing cold swim (I wasn't game) and an early night was had by all... which is good, as around 12:30 I was woken forcibly from my sleep by a child being sick in her doorway, on the carpet, and it wasn't her first bout. Oh joy, so after cleaning up little one (and putting her to bed with V - he was sick already he could cope lol), I got little sleep.

Of course the next couple of days were basically keeping an eye on child, working and getting through the school week. Then on Thursday I got struck down as well. Sigh. It's taken till today for me to actually be moving around and to actually have some energy.

However on the good note - it's been 3 or 4 days since I had diet coke. So I might be through withdrawals on that one :)

Aquaponics system is going through some water changes - only because the when I added the limestone dust I lost all visability - and I don't like not being able to see the bottom and check for dieing fish. However as the last feeding also led to a spike in ammonia and now nitrites it's not such a bad thing. Fish are currently going hungry again while I wait for the nitrites to drop. Hopefully it wont take long!

Think we've cycled (again)

2011-10-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

Levels are remaining low even with the increase in feeding. So I'm about to start a second evening feed. They eat around 20 pellets in the morning, might just throw half of that in this evening to see if they are interested.

Expecting family today - it's supposed to be 35 here in Perth today so everyone's heading over for a swim and BBQ. First one for the season... sure there will be many more. So this morning I've been cooking yummy potato and rice salads, preparing satay, honey soy and BBQ chicken kebabs. Locating some organic sausages in the freezer and a small butterflied lamb (souvlaki flavoured). Just have to put together the caesar salad and the spinach/feta/cherry tomato and roasted pine nut salad (aged balsamic vinegar as a dressing on this one - yum!) Entree looks like being chorizo and haloumi done on the BBQ. And of course some fresh baked bread rolls. Dessert - fresh fruit and chocolate dipping sauce, and maybe some of the Margaret River cheeses we have in the fridge from when we went down south. Wine is chilling, house is relatively clean. There's lemon cordial made and in the fridge. It's all good :)

Hmm must go see how ripe the blueberries are... enjoy the day.

I think I had a visitor :(

2011-10-13T22:09:00.000-07:00

Do you think it was the postie ?

Marron escaping... why you should cover the fish tank

2011-10-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

I was warned!

Marron like to go walk about apparently... mine especially like climbing the seam of the fish tank, and climbing the bendable pipe stuff (which has convenient foot/claw steps) that sends the water to the grow bed.

So kind of glad at the moment that the fish tried to escape the first day as it meant I got the bird netting on ASAP. So I don't think I've lost any marron yet. I do have a peg at top of the seam just in case they get pushy :)

So far the fish seem to have survived. Ammonia is now barely a trace and the nitrites have fallen below 0.25. Nitrates remain a healthy colour without being over the top - the plants are really small at the moment so it might take a while for that level to go down. Water temp is around 17deg and salinity still at 3ppt. The fish today ate 20 floating pieces of food (we gave them about 15 yesterday). I'm trying to work out how much to feed them without spiking the levels. So far all good. Will take me a little while to gain confidence in the system I'm sure. We actually added 22 today, but 2 remain uneaten after 5 minutes so we removed them.

Having goldfish in with the silver perch is kind of cool at feeding time - the goldfish always seem to find the food first, start nosing it around and then the silver perch swoop up and eat it. Kids think it's hilarious.

Pool is officially opened for swimming

2011-10-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, in an attempt to distract me I'm sure. The girls decided it was time to try out the pool for this season. We spent a day last weekend cleaning up most of the weeds - so apart from needing to clean up the nasty pointy/spiky palms behind the pool the pool area is the cleanest and neatest part of my garden lol.

This morning thought I'd better retest the system to see how the influx of 10 large fish had affected things.
Looking pretty much identical to yesterday morning pre-fish. pH is back at 8 - will check that again this afternoon, that momentary 8.4 spike must have been due to the fresh limestone.

Today I'm heading into UWA. My eldest is helping out the clinpsych department and taking part in a couple of research studies (think this one is on autism and short term memory, she helped out last year on one focused on autism and facial recognition). It's good for them to have the female side of autism represented. Eventually we hope our youngest will also take part in these studies. This year Erin also participated in the PMH train future doctors day (cardiology side). It's not much but we do want to thank the world in general for the amount of assistance we've had over the years.

HSM

2011-10-11T00:15:00.000-07:00

First the good news - grow bed successfully replanted.

And the tank is clear

However...today was officially my first heart pounding Holy S.... Moment.

We went out to Gidjigannup to visit Carey, and picked up 10 silver perch - all around the 20-25cm mark (so edible size now :) ) They went into a 70L container with two airlines running in the top (used my aquapro DC-300 that came with my aquaponics system - it has a 10hour battery life, so excellent for this purpose). Also picked up 6 little marron (apparently these are gourmet entree sized...)

Drive home was uneventful, as was the next stage where I topped up the water in the container with my pond water. Marron meanwhile were added into the fish tank (must make a few more hides for them...)

Caught them (with a great deal of splashing) and transferred the Silver Perch into the fish tank. OK that was successfully negotiated. Carey had given me ground limestone to add to my system. Did that, the water went milky coloured and ALL the fish immediately started circling the top the of the tank. Time to swear.

OK - retest all the water parameters, pH is back to 8.4 (grr) but nitrites and ammonia are down, nitrates up. Water's OK. Turned the pump on and the fish started to surf the lip of the tank. They were surfacing up beside the water return, leaping/jumping about half out of the water then with their tails flapping madly they proceeded to travel around the lip of the tank for about half a metre. They were trying to ESCAPE. Oh God. With visions of the last lot of deaths I sat there, scared. Hoping against hope that these fish were not going to meet the untimely fate of their former colleagues.

With a sudden burst of insight I got Erin's help and we secured bird netting over the top of the tank (do you like the judicious use of pegs...)- at least this way they were not actually going to manage to escape. OK at least that was secured. Run inside and started a mad trawl for information. One site suggested that sudden changes in temperature could cause this reaction, another comment suggested this was partly normal behaviour from silvers - they liked to jump upstream and to keep air stones away from the side of the tank. Jeez. OK turn the pump to just running constantly, and moved the airstones to the middle. Better, but not great. OK leave them alone for 30mins and just cross my fingers and HOPE that they will be OK.

Now sitting here an hour late, and the fish have stopped trying to escape. It may be that they are all dead and lieing on the bottom of the tank - marron food. But I am hoping against hope that tomorrow the water will clear enough that I can see what is going on, and that the fish will still be alive. But there isn't anything else I can think of to do :(

A Lesson in aquaponics and silver perch

2011-10-10T02:26:00.000-07:00

So I rang Carey Nagle today - he's been breeding and keeping silver perch for over 25 years now. Anyway we had a good natter (well I nattered he was more focused lol). I'm heading out tomorrow to pick up some bigger fish...

He gave me some suggestions for the aquaponics system
1) Salt to 3ppt if you keep silver perch (and I had just gotten the level down lower grr - adding more salt again!)
2) Add 1kg of crushed limestone per 1000L to buffer the water (all systems)
3) If you are having troubles with cycling or need a general probiotic for your system he highly recommends the use of Aquamagic.

Sigh. I'm such a newbie at this, I don't have the 20+ years of experience so it feels like everything is going wrong. I know it's going to get better but I just wish it would happen now!

Nitrites Down, Nitrates Up Yeh!

2011-10-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

Ok - so over the last couple of days there has been some definite movement for the better.


8/10/2011

Nitrites above were verging on the scary side... and there is really no nitrates there.


9/10/2011 Aquaponics test

So starting to get nitrates, and nitrites have dropped maybe a smidge...(technical term that lol)

10/10/2011 pH Test

OK - pH is still higher than I would like... but with all the water changes I've been doing (taking out 200L adding in 200L of water that has been sitting for a day or so) I'm happy enough. Nearly time to start thinking about feeding the poor little starved fishies again!

10/10/2011 Test Results

Definite colour in the nitrates, and the nitrites have dropped down to below 1. Ammonia has gone down as well... all excellent! Still have further water changes to do, during this time we've dropped from 3.2ppt to 1.6ppt. Hopefully today's water change will see us below the 1.5ppt. Wanting to drop it down to 1 by end of the week.

Meanwhile... back at the ranch, I'm STILL waiting for my ibc's and while I was at the shop's yesterday I saw these stackable pots....

I'm going to see if I can create a vertical strawberry tower... should give me something a bit more creative to do over the school holidays :)

So plans for the day
- go to bunnings to buy some supplies (going to need some pipe some stoppers and some silicone as a minimum).
- Big W (need to replace the incorrect printer ink I purchased yesterday [grr] so I can do a new activity with the kiddies - more on that later)
- Replant the grow bed as most of the plants suffered from the high salt levels.
- Do some weeding :(

Today's Plans

2011-10-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Aquaponics salinity
My main plans for the day, having done a mass slaughter of snails (the girls and I found 80 this morning in the front garden) is to start getting the salinity down in the aquaponics system. Currently the salinity is testing around 3.2ppt. So yesterday I put aside 200L of water in a barrel, and I have already drained out about 200L. This afternoon after the tap water has been sitting for 24 hours I'll add in the hopefully dechlorinated water to the fish tank. The system is still cycling at the moment and I really don't want to kill what bacteria we have with chlorine. So this it's going to take me a few days to get the level back to 1ppt.

Part 2 : A Favour
Today I'm doing a bit of a favour for my friends at RDA Capricorn. One of the lovely features about having the kids ride there is the multitude of animals that roam at will. Julie the co-ordinator there has a healthy flock of chickens, in particular she was keen to expand the line of the Old English Game.

Anyway I offered to chase down either a new rooster or some eggs. I put an ad up on Chooknet a couple of weeks ago, and I've had contact with someone that has some eggs he was willing to GIVE them. Seems there are still generous people out there. Anyway, last night I had a phone call from Joe, and not only does he have some eggs, he also has a rooster and hen that he could give them!

So today Joe is bring the eggs and the chooks up to Perth for me, and I'm going to go for a run down to South Perth to pick them up, then back up to Pinjar to drop them at their new home. Expecting them to look something like this :

http://www.cacklehatchery.com/oegbantams.htm#silver

They will join the menagerie - as you can see there are chicks already about

And a gorgeous peacock

And his peahen

There's also a bunch of other chickens as they seem to get other people rejected chooks... they seem to adjust well to being free range and avoiding the horses in the paddocks.

Photo's today were provided by my mother in law... I've been a bit slack on taking photo's out at riding :)

Aquaponics - still cycling (again)

2011-10-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

pH is looking better and better - used to be the pH looked the colour of the nitrites! Looks around 8 at the moment :)

Ammonia is looking OK - still under 1, and the nitrites are about 1 according to this scale, not sure if I have any nitrates yet though :( I think it's a trace of colour, but not 100% sure. Water is still salted to 3ppt. However I put aside 200L of water into a drum to overnight and off gas the chlorine so that tomorrow I can add it into the water and dilute it somewhat (by my calcs it should drop it to 2.7ppt). I do need to start getting back to 1ppt as the plants really don't cope well with the 3ppt salinity. I'll keep doing the 200L a day until I get the salinity back to about the right level. It will mean doing some partial water dumps, but as long as I take it slowly I think I should be OK - I might even check the pH and add some acid this evening before I add it in, see if I can get the level down a bit on the new water...

Contacted Carey Nagle about sourcing some more silver perch for next week - he's being very helpful. He apparently has silver perch currently available :

100mm at $4.00

150mm are $6.00

200mm are $8.00.

So I've put an order in for 10x200mm ones, and 10 of the 100mm ones. As both batches will grow at different rates I should end up with sizes in a larger range. This should see me through for the next year, and then next year I should just be able to restock with more small ones again. Or so I hope.... Now I just have to hope that the faint trace of colour in the nitrates is actually nitrates... if it is I should have no problems with this being close to cycled by the end of next week.

On a good note - the fish tank is NEARLY clear. I can see the bottom!!!!! Another day or two and I think I'll have the algae back under control and I can take off the covering. Really looking forward to that as it's hard to appreciate the fish when they are hidden away.

Aquaponics - more updates

2011-10-02T23:09:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a couple of days without deaths (yeh). Even can vaguely see the two big SP and the two goldfish swimming around. But the water still isn't clear, so it remains covered.

The influx of tap water the other weekend really hit the bacteria hard, and it's taking a while for the system to deal with the ammonia that was released by the bigger fish that I found dead. So it's kind of doing a quick cycle at the moment..

Aquaponics test 28th Sept 2011

As you can see above the ammonia rose to about 0.5.

pH remains fairly high at 8.0 - but not as bad as it HAS been (i.e. 8.4+). Could be better though... might have to add some more acid soon.


Aquaponics test 3 Oct 2011

So the ammonia is still above 0.25, but the nitrites are starting to rise again, so I expect in the next day or so to see an increase in nitrates. Then it will be back to cycled (again). Sigh. Wish I had somewhere I could store a couple of hundred litres of water for a day or two so that I didn't have this issue with chlorine if I need to do another larger water change. Here's hoping I don't.... Water is still at 3ppt for salt, and I'll probably keep it there till after this has finished cycling. Then I'll need to up the water level and decrease the salt levels back to 1ppt again.

Another holiday... another camp

2011-10-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

Apparently all three girls REALLY enjoyed Erin's birthday party last month - so when the chance came for them to attend the latest camp at RDA Capricorn, all three of them jumped at it.

The arrivals were a bit staggered today. So even by the time girls had managed to catch their ponies, not everyone had arrived. So the girls got to do a bit of grooming. Personally I think this was the horses reward for the work they would have to do that day, as most of them looked like they were "blissing out".

Erin normally gets to ride Jock at her lessons, so they are quite used to each other (although Jock does occasionally still try to take a nibble at her)


Erin and Jock

Tara and Sijo

Jess and Brandy

Still getting through this

2011-09-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

So found another 2 little bodies (one yesterday and one today). Think I'm down to 3 of the original 10 now, the 2 goldfish, and 4 of the larger fish (20cm odd)

Testing today shows ammonia is up slightly - probably another dead couple of fish in there that I have yet to discover :( (Yep after investigation, make that possibly 3 little SP, 2 big SP and 2 gold fish are possibly left - no wonder ammonia was going up with 2 big 20cm dead at the bottom of the tank, hope things improve soon, I'm getting really really annoyed with all these deaths)

Everything else looks OK. Salinity is testing at 3.1ppt, temp around 16.5deg C. System is still covered, algae is still present and I can't see the bottom. Will take the cover off this evening (so no light gets in to encourage the algae) and stir it up a bit and see if any more bodies come to the surface.... Didn't test the pH here as I broke the test tube the other day, but a separate test showed that around the 8.0 mark, so hopefully the HCl is having an affect.

Waiting is not one of my strengths...

General Update

2011-09-24T20:10:00.001-07:00

Forrestfield house now has a roof

First batch of goat's milk soap seems to have vaguely worked...

Dutch iri's are flowering (why are these late compared to others when everything else in my garden flowers early ?)

The ruby chard has started reshooting madly

Peaches are abundant and quite large already

Calendula's look beautiful (these are about to be plucked and dried)

My variegated eureka lemon is fruiting again

And apparently the jonquils have decided it IS officially spring (about the only plant that I have that flowers at the right time of the year!)

Love the red of the poppies

And - for the first time every, my self fertile almond, actually HAS almond's (3 years old)

I'm actually really really happy about this!!!

Avoiding posting... (aquaponics)

2011-09-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

So I've been avoiding posting, more dead fish :( But I think I've worked out it was the algal activity going on - I changed over half the water last night, and the fish that yesterday looked like they were close to carking it have survived another day.

So today I have changed out a bit more water to bring the salt levels back to 3ppt, and covered the tank with an old quilt cover. Now I just avoid feeding the fish, look for bodies every so often, and hope that the lack of light will kill the algae off in the next week or two.

It does however look kind of strange at the moment

Testing is still fine

Going to have to deal with that pH sooner or later (sigh) might start doing some HCl additions once a day (just 20ml or so) and see if I can get it to drop. Another lesson for the newbie here, watch the level of algae, and if you can't see the bottom of the tank then you have problems...

Aquaponics - more deaths

2011-09-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

Found another two dead silver perch yesterday. REALLY REALLY NOT HAPPY.

However I'm 99.9% certain this was due to the cycling activity on the weekend, so yesterday I went and got some new SP's from down at the local fish farm. These ones are about 20cm long. So far they are showing no signs of hanging around near the surface.

Today I'm also going to start trying to drop the pH a bit. So I've taken out a bucket of water, added 10ml of HCl, and I'm going to use a piece of 6mm hose to run this back into the grow bed the next time it floods. I'll do this again later today.

I expect this will do a small bounce in pH that will rebound back to the current levels. It may take a bit of time before I can exhaust the built up calcium in the water. But I do have to try as the levels are still really high.

Photo's of new fish to be added once I've downloaded them...

Aquaponics - update

2011-09-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

Actually managed to test the water today, and as you can see the pH is starting to drop (yeh!!). This is apparently a side effect of the nitrification cycle. Everything else is reading a big fat 0... going to keep feeding the fish and see if everything stays balanced.

I had a through that maybe the fish food I had had gone toxic, so going to go buy some more this afternoon. The fish are still circling near the top, but still no further deaths.

I did have to top up the salt levels again this morning as all the rain had diluted the system back to 2.8ppt, so I used another two handfuls dissolved in a bucket of pond water, and it's back at 3.06 now. Hoping that the fish will recover in the next week or so and then I can start letting the salt levels drop.

Keeping fingers crossed.

No more dead fish....(or zombie fish)

2011-09-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

So far so good - and there have been no further deaths. I added more salt after the death on Friday, and water is again at salted to 3ppt. The goldfish have faded out colourwise, but they seem to be alive and swimming. No dead floaters (although there might have been a sinker or two that we haven't spotted)

The dead fish has not revived - so much to our disgust, there are no zombie fish in the household (OK you probably had to be at the somewhat wine induced conversation yesterday to find this funny)

I'll test the water again this afternoon as I've been slack this weekend - gardening and brother in laws birthday party took precendent.

Note to self, Deep woods makes a rather nice red. Best avoid it in the future...

Mothers day present

2011-09-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

My mother in law this year decided that she would like for her present, her garden to be mulched. She's been away on holiday for a few weeks so we finally got ourselves organised and yesterday was the day to tackle the mulching.

Ordered mulch last week from mulchnet and we had that delivered on Friday (we had been on the list for free mulch but ran out of time, so this was a paid delivery)

So here's the pile of mulch - taken from the wrong angle so doesn't look like 5 cubic metres - but it is, trust me.

Then we actually stopped and looked at the garden, apparently just mulching was NOT going to cut it... can you see the problem ?

And as an added bonus, the wheelbarrow tyre was flat, completely and utterly flat... Glad I was on the weeding side of things and not the mulching.

So, 8.5 hours later, we finally get well, most of it done... we've left a couple of patches to show how BAD the this was.... Needless to say our bodies are giving us every indication that they are not used to this level of activity. OUCH!

Anyway, photo's of the "completed" garden - realistically it would take us another day and another 5 cubic metres of mulch to finish off the rest of the garden's. But no more from us. We've done our share :)

This bed was full of grass runners as well - cleared out a lot of them, but realistically the weed's will need to be sprayed with weed killer as they reappear. Not much we can do about that...

Can you see the line at the back of the above photo of weed's we didn't clear...

The photo under shows the side at the bottom we did clear out - the side behind me is still nearly to my head in weeds... and there is a pile of mulch to go over that area once it has been seen...

And here's a few of the 20 or so bags of weeds we pulled out...

Oh no - dead fish!

2011-09-16T03:39:00.000-07:00

Went to check the fish tank again today - the levels are all fine (pH is still way to high, but the rest is great)

Unfortunately there was one poor guy floating - and the other's seem to be hanging around near the top :(

There goes the thought that I managed to get through cycling without killing any fish.... Sigh. Anyway, I've added another 1kg of pool salt to bring my level up to 3ppt. I'm thinking that the nitrite may possibly have gone too high and maybe the fish had gills damaged. There's nothing obviously wrong with them. No fungus, no wounds etc. So it is probably something toxic. NOT HAPPY. Hopefully the salt will help protect the fish. Tomorrow I'll start adding some hydrochloric acid to the water (20ml into a bucket of fish tank water) a day, and see if I can bring the pH down a bit. The high pH makes any levels fairly toxic. *High pH water in Perth area due to dissolved limestone in the water*.

Anyway here's photo's of the poor fish :(

A walk around the garden

2011-09-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd go for a wander around and see some of what is in flower, and what is growing well - this is by no means complete, but it's a nice bit of a snapshot

Apricot Blossoms

Bluebells (I think)

Baby ruby chard

Alyssum

Osteom's and nasturtiums

Peaches - must net these soon!

Established Ruby Chard

Freesia's

Self Fertile almonds

Borage

Blueberry

Frog Pond

And it's future inhabitants (at the moment it has pygmy perch to keep the mosquito's down - these should be tadpole friendly)

Tadpoles

OMG - I think we've cycled!

2011-09-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

It looks like we might finally have cycled - nitrites and nitrates have both gone back to 0..... YEH!!!!!

The airstones and pump arrived today to be installed as well - how cool is that, cycled and everything in place on the same day. I'm stoked!

Aquaponics test - 11 Sept 2011

Aquaponics test 13 Sept 2011

Argh - Green Pool! So NOT a cost saving

2011-09-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Has anybody else listened to those people that tell you should let your pool just go green over winter. Stop the electricity and then clean it up come Spring time....

Can I just say NOT a cheaper idea.

Cost to run pool pump for 2 hours a day over winter (90 days) at 17.5c per kW is around $31.50. Even if I ran it in the middle of the day (so using up my excess electricity from the solar panels - so costing me effectively 47c per kW) it would be a cost of around
$85.

So here it is Spring - and we uncover the pool from underneath it's blanket. Now we didn't MEAN to let this go green - it's just our new cholorinator decided to turn itself from auto to OFF after a storm last month and we didn't notice for a couple of weeks.

Pretty green isn't it - nearly emerald it's so pretty. Unfortunately it's not all that functional. So down to the pool shop
20L of chlorine, 1L of pool floc, 1L of winterizer (basically copper solution) = $70.

Chuck all that in, and spent 30mins scrubbing the walls with brooms, now wait a day....

Clearing slightly...So this is a picture from last night, green colour is gone but there is a LOT of sediment.

Stage 2 - $176. When we had soakwell's put in for backwashing the pool, they didn't put a 3 way valve in place. Backwashing our pool can only be done in 20-30sec backwash bursts (followed by about a 20sec rinse). This was going to take at least a month and possibly explode our system as there was sooo much floating sediment. So we bit the bullet and hired the pool shop to come out, fit a valve, and do a vacuum (they were there anyway and it wasn't going to cost too much extra)

Next time the pool shop will just loan us a long hose so we can divert it ourselves so we wont be up for this stage's costs.

So here it is after stage 2 - first vacuum done, and it's starting to look more like a pool and less like an add on to my aquaponics system (you have no idea how tempting that would have been!)

So - it costs less to run the pool over winter and keep it healthy, even if I had used some pool acid over that time it would still have been significantly cheaper. Oh yeh - a cost I didn't know about. Apparently council's can FINE you up to $5000 for a green pool. It's a health hazard apparently. Not sure of the chances of that happening, but another cost we really don't need...

Hmm - now to tackle the weeds around there!

E's actual 10th Birthday

2011-09-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my eldest's 10th birthday. This year we wanted to do something a little different. Both the girls attending Riding for the Disabled at the Capricorn centre just North of here - they love it. So this year we decided that Erin could invite a couple of friends and we would let them share the experience.

The kids seem to have a great time - this is Cadbury the miniature pony that came for a bit of a look see.

An exhausted male lizard (we know he was male due to former activities... the girl ran off, apparently this guy was so exhausted he didn't move even when we walked within about 30cm of him!)

One of the old English Game hens had chickens that had hatched the day before (there are actually 6 of them - but they are mostly in hiding)

We started the late afternoon/evening off with a cheesecake and many many profiteroles piled on top with dripped chocolate to hold it all together. We shared this with the volunteers and the kids in the girls riding class as well as the two party guests.
As for the riding - well the girls each had their own horse/pony for the evening. They did about an hour and a quarter of riding, a bit of trotting, a few turn arounds on the back of the horses, various races and

as final treat they got to go out on the quad bike and it's trailer and hand out food to the horses in the paddocks

After that the girls piled into the car back to our place for a quick clothes change and then to sizzler for a pig out. Home by 9, and then they settled down to watch My Friend Flicka. Last I checked at midnight at least one or two of them was still awake.

This morning they were all up and going before 6am!!!! Sigh. So now I'm making a batch of belgian penguin waffles while the kids watch Labyrinth (picture of the first 4 - there was over 20 by the time I had finished making these). Only another 3 hours of party to go lol...

Cross Stitch collection

2011-09-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

So apparently I've got a few stashed away...

This one my daughter requested - she got to pick out the design.

DMC - Floral Cat

This one is what I did for her birthday LAST year (still not framed... bad mummy)

And these I did after the girls were diagnosed with autism. It's a bit of a UFO as I was going to make them into beanie throws so they could throw their emotions around. Now it might become a wall hanging and be given to the speech therapist for a Christmas present.

Country Threads - Teal Squeal, Pink ?, Mean Green, Glum Plum, True Blue, Mellow Yellow

And this one I spent a year or so doing for my sister in law. This was actually pretty scary to do as it was over 76cm tall by the time it was finished!

Marjolein Bastine - Birdhouse

I LOVE Marjolein Bastine designs - somewhere around I have another completed one that I keep meaning to frame... it's a lot smaller (I think it was called Robin)

Quilt done - with a day to spare

2011-09-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

Had to post - the quilt is finished! Next time I choose a lot less little things to hand sew on! Although you might need to zoom in to see all the little cats and hearts. Did I mention I LOVE my ecraft :)

Fathers Day Gifts

2011-09-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of weeks I've been volunteering extra time at school to help the year 4 class with their father's day gifts. A Footy Nut. Basically you need a small piece of wood, two large gumnuts, and wool in your dad's team colours (in this case I believe the kids decided their dad went for West Perth), and some googly eyes.

The scarf and hat are simply plaited (30cm for one - 9 strands of wool and 35cm for the other - 12 strands of wool). I can't remember which is the hat at this stage - I think the shorter one was....

Anyway, glue the rounded end of one gumnut to the wood (hot glue gun works well - loads of fun with nearly 10 year olds), then glue the second gum nut on top on it's side so you form a nose/snout. Glue the scarf to the back of his neck to make sure he doesn't lose it (dad's are careless like that..). Then apply glue to the back of the top gumnut and arrange the second plait so it looks like a hat. Select eye's and use more hot glue to place (some of these looked more like yoshi the eye's were so big!) Stick on the sign to say "I'm a footy nut" and your done. Doesn't that sounds easy... now try that with 28 kids, some of which are scared to use a hot glue gun, and about 1/4 of which had never plaited before. Thankfully there was another couple of parents helping as it was it took us about 4 hours to get through the whole class. Just hope the dad's are appreciative of the burnt fingers ;)

Aquaponics testing

2011-09-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

So still not much has changed. pH is still up, ammonia is still low, Nitrites around 0.5, and Nitrates I think may have increased a bit more. I can't see the bottom of the fish tank due to algae, but assuming by the lack of ammonia that the fish are still alive and swimming. Waiting, waiting, waiting....

We have got a couple of days of warm weather over here, so maybe, hopefully, fingers crossed the bacteria will get going and this will have cycled completely... thankfully silver perch don't mind high pH - can't say the plants are looking great with it though :(


Aquaponics test 8 Sept 11

Open Mesh Crochet

2011-09-07T00:37:00.000-07:00

I was down at Spotlight on Tuesday (nothing unusual there) when I noticed a gorgeous ball of "wool" on special. It was a blue version of Moda Vera Millegoglie. Wasn't until I got it home that I realised it's actually a couple of different types of wool, tied together. Now there went my original idea for a knitted scarf, as this would have given me a blocked scarf. Not what I was looking for, so I trawled the web for ideas and saw this one on Madeit. Which I liked - but my colours were different.

So then I went searching for at least some semblence of a pattern and came across this blog article on Crocheted Mesh scarf. Which is defintely more what I had in mind.

So here it is

Photo's don't do a great job of showing up the metallic elements on this - but I think it turned out well enough (I'm not exactly a crochet-er) that I brought a couple more balls in different colours today. One ball cost me around $5, so they should make relatively cheap presents for teachers at the end of the year... that's if I decide they are actually nice enough to give away!

Aquaponics - still cycling & knitted dishcloths

2011-09-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

So it looks like Nitrites are still rising, and not much change to Nitrates. Ammonia doesn't look like an issue at this stage. I haven't tested pH today cause it's such a bright purple it scares me (it's actually around 8.4 so not THAT scary).

Still not feeding the fish - but there is enough algae there at the moment that they probably will eat get fat without any input from me.

Aquaponics test - 5 Sept 11

I've been trying to get my hands working again - so I've been doing knitted dishcloths. Basically I wait until Spotlight has cotton or cotton/bamboo thread on sale for the 50c a ball (rather than the usual $5 a ball) and stockpile. A ball makes about 1.5 dishcloths. A couple of the ones in the picture are actually recycled cotton - which unfortunately is a bit harsher on the hands while knitting. But they do make good dish cleaners :) The pink one I'm working on at the moment is nearly silky in comparison. Each one takes me about an evening to knit - I'm not a super fast knitter. If you've never used one of these you wont know how good they are. They are worth the effort!

Knitted diamond dishcloth

My version of Grandmothers Favourite
Instructions
1. Cast on 4 stitches.
2. Knit two, yarn over (which creates the hole/lace effect - and increases the row by 1), knit till end of row
3. Repeat 2 until you have 45 stitches on your needle
4. Knit one, knit 2 together (make 2 stitches into one), yarn over, knit two together, knit till end of row
5. Repeat step 4 until you have 4 stitches left on your needle.
6. I then do knit together twice (different from the original pattern here) leaving you two stitches

7. Knit two together again - then I use a crochet hook to crochet the length of the loop I want, and knot it back onto the top of the diamond.

A bit of a ramble

2011-08-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like we are definitely starting to cycle - there are Nitrites and the nitrates are starting to tinge orange (not as yellow as it was a week ago) But still a while to go. pH is currently purple - as in so high it's not funny. But I think that's due to the algae that is currently growing. Fish don't seem to be minding it as ammonia is currently below 0.25ppm. Might add some lemon juice this afternoon and see if it has any affect...

Working on my daughters quilt still - all the cats and hearts are ironed on, but I'm now handsewing them all as well (might take me another evening or two)

Soaps - well I promised an update, the first batch (the more yellow ones you can see at the top) didn't really set properly. I worked out it was because the caustic soda I was using had been exposed to humidity at some stage and had congealed. So I tried a second batch (with lighter coloured olive oil) and new caustic soda. Much much better results. And the pale colour is gorgeous. I will be more than happy to give these ones away at Xmas time!

Apart from that I've done a bit more work lately than intended. I'm also trying to put some effort into getting myself healthy. So I'm attempting to do more exercise and to eat healthier. And that really is about that. I missed the second bookweek activity last week as our school librarian had to take the day off so I got called in for some relief work. Poor S was not happy with me :(

Chris Nixon and Book Week

2011-08-22T22:31:00.000-07:00

Something different this time around...

This week is Children's Book Week, and as part of this the Primary School had organised with the local library for classes to head over and do various bits and pieces.

Today was the year 4 class and they got to meet Chris Nixon illustrator of the Jake Series. The event lasted for an hour and the kids seemed to enjoy pretty much every second of it.

Chris read an exert from the not yet released "Jake's Great Game" (complete with the class yelling out the "POW!"'s and "YEAH RIGHT!"'s). Chris then showed the kids how he drew Jake and his friends. He seemed to be having great fun as he started to create a few monster on the whiteboard. Kids were then given pencils and paper and challenged to create their own monsters. Lastly they had to turn the page and show how that monster might have made a mess (story book kind of style).

Definitely a great learning experience for the kids (although it wasn't exactly fair that the teachers and parent helpers had to do the art work and show theirs as well!) anyway here's my really unimaginative picture (don't think I should quit my day job quite yet)

2011-08-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not a photographer by a long shot - but there are images around my garden that occasionally spark my interest.

This one is of a strawberry plant in the aquaponics system after a morning of heavy due. Loved the beading of the water around the leaves.

Calendula's always get me with their bright colours

And this is my arch nemesis Ginger. Ginger (formerly Roger Ramjet from the Cat Haven) is the loudest, most annoying cat in the history of cat kind. For some reason the kids like him.... he does have cute long whiskers but he also has sharp teeth that he likes to dig into me after he's come for a cuddle. Ginger has taken an even bigger dislike to me since I attached a second bell at the back of his collar. His hunting poweress has suffered :)

Family holiday

2011-08-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Our family got away for our first real family holiday in July, so here's a couple of shots :) [i.e. not much happening today as we are doing off doing family things, so thought I'd play catch up on the photos]

Abby enjoying the view from the verandah at Siesta Park

And checking out the birds at the Berry Farm

Yallingup beach is beautiful no matter what the weather is like

Did I mention it rained...

The beach at Siesta Park was unfortunately covered in seaweed - but if you look carefully you'll see hints of a rainbow at least

E's 10th birthday - ecraft to the rescue

2011-08-20T00:58:00.000-07:00

The day is getting closer. I'm not sure quite how I feel about it. It's hard to believe she will be 10 soon :(

For this birthday she has requested that we get rid of the fairies and mermaids from her room. She's always loved cat's so of course wants a more grown up cat bedroom. Not fluffy kittens, something a bit more "teen-ish". Of course there are no quilts at any of the shops that suit this theme. So I decided to do the creative thing.

First I found a quilt at spotlight which has lots of circles of different colours and sizes ($14 on special). I then picked up some black polycotton and some applique iron-on stuff. I applied that to the fabric, and then cut the fabric into 12" x 12" pieces. Attached these to a piece of cardstock. Now I could create iron on motif's.

I had previously found a font with lots of cat silhouettes (aj-cat.ttf). I used this to create a font about 2" tall on my ecraft. And then I started it cutting the fabric... I cut out about 25 cat's. Then I cut some love hearts out of the left over fabric. The cats and hearts were placed around the quilt. These will be ironed down and sewn for extra security.
For the pillowcase I decided that she could have two larger cat silhouettes that would face each other and just some simple love hearts around it.

Not sure how I feel about cat's in bubbles, but I think it kind of works, and I hope she'll like it! I'm going to order a black cat silhouette set of wall stickers from ebay as well - some of them are gorgeous. And they would match in beautifully. But I might have to let her choose this one ;)

Soap Making - 24 hours

2011-08-19T01:42:00.000-07:00

Well apparently it takes longer than 24 hours for this recipe to set. I'll try again tomorrow....

Today has been a "shopping" day with trips down to the Campbell's Cash and Carry (wicked vanilla milkshake syrup and bulk nestle malt of all things) and the Peters Brownes factory outlet (still the only place I know that sells the onion rings that the kids love).

Apart from that it's been a non productive day really, a few other trips which are not in the least craft/garden or household related, but at least I kept dear old mum company. The kids are out the back cleaning out the cubby house with the help of the eldest one's best friend (who apparently isn't scared of spiders).

I have taught the kids a new craft today, Anybody else remember making these as kids ? (This one was done by my 7 year old)

I seem to recall they had various names : Dream catchers, Eye of God or even Eye of David. Very simple to do, but one of those things that most kids these days have never done.

Next on the list is the old fashioned way of doing pom pom balls ;)

On a final note for the day - I'm hoping to get back to cross stitch tonight. I've been working on "The Water Goddess" by Joan Elliott, I'm onto the third sheet (the bottom half is done). Progress is slow but it's happening. Lots of beautiful metalics in this, a pearly moon, and shiny water ripples, and gold thread through the skirt . Adding the beads at the end will be interesting!

Soap Making - First attempt

2011-08-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to try this, but never quite had enough guts to get around to doing it. However the other day I saw a blog entry from Rhonda over at Down-to-earth on a simple 4 ingredient cold processed soap. So I decided to try it out today.

Ingredients were easy - copha ($2.50), olive oil ($5 for a Litre on special), lye (in laundry cupboard from years ago) and water. Picked up some safety glasses and some chemical proof gloves this morning, found some older silicon moulds around the place. And got going.

First point - ventilation, you need ventilation when mixing the lye and water - you probably don't need the stove vent going, the evaporative air conditioner on 6, and every window open in the house. Especially not when it's still cold outside..... the heat from the lye and water was welcome!

Second point - hand mixing, don't go there! In this day and age we have tools that can help you reach trace in a fraction of the time. I did try this by mixing by hand, and after 30mins I was still mixing... I gave in and got the stick blender out, 3 minutes later we reached trace. Next time I'm trying the mixmaster!

Anyway a good hour and bit after I made a start this is how things look
I'll take another photo tomorrow when they come out of the moulds....

And just for fun - "one of these things is not like the other"... I've been swapping around the chicken feed's lately, and going back onto plain old run of the mill store brought (not organic or biodynamic) has left the chickens a bit confused... The only chook we have that SHOULD be laying that small an egg is an old english game hen, and she lays white eggs. So this must have been the hyline. The larger white eggs are from a white australorp.

Black Soldier Fly harvester - part 1

2011-08-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

This one's for Rob...

So I found this container at "B" the other day - it's only 22L, but it has a 45 degree "ramp" on it. It isn't as big as I would like (and I'll need to either paint it or cover it in something to make it dark inside), but hopefully I'll be able to do a proof of concept at least with this.

First thing was to find the filter for inside. Went down to fish and lily farm and got a rectangular filter pad that when cut in half was the exact width of the plastic container. Hmm - then something to sandwich it together : cable ties and plastic mesh from a left over cross stitch project. I had to cut the filter at 45degrees at the ends so it matches the ramp slope.
Next step is to put a tap or an outlet in the rear. After that - velcro about an inch from the top, with some holes above that for the adults to fly in. Possibly some guide rails as well - or I could just let them fall out the entire width of the ramp....

The top is hinged, so I'm still umming and arghing about what I should do about this. It definitely has possibilities...

I'll post another photo when I finally work on finishing this! (not like they'll be flying around in this weather anyway :( )

I am assured that there ARE BSF in Perth, and in my area (despite what the local aquarium shop thinks) and that come middle of summer I should have a thriving population of maggots to feed the chickens and the silver perch.

Panama Red Passionfruit

2011-08-16T01:09:00.001-07:00

Having harvested a grocery bag of Panama Red's on the weekend I had to do something with them. Not too difficult in this house!

Step 1. As the kids don't really like the seeds (sensory issues). First empty all the passionfruit into a large colander. Squish with the back of a spoon, stir lots, squish some more. Get out all the juice you can....
Step 2. Put one cup of passionfruit juice aside to make Passionfruit curd.
Step 3. Make passionfruit cordial with the remainder (in our case there was about 2 cups of juice left after doing step 2 so I made a double batch of Jackie's recipe).

I boil the mostly de-juiced seeds with the sugar and water, add that to a clean bottle, and then add the juice. We also tend to use citric acid rather than tartaric, and leave out the lemon juice but that's up to cook :)

Anyway, here are the base recipe's we use

Passionfruit Cordial (Jackie French)

2 cups white sugar

1 -2 cups passionfruit pulp (can be frozen)

1 cup water

juice of two large lemons

2 level teaspoons tartaric acid

Bung the white sugar and water in a saucepan. Boil five minutes. Add the passioinfruit pulp and lemon juice. Boil 2 minutes. Strain- you'll really need to stir the residue round and round to force the pulp through leaving the seeds behind. Throw the see ds to the chooks. Add the tartaric acid. Stir well and bottle. Throw out if it bubbles or grows mould.

Passionfruit Curd (Taste)

125g chilled butter, chopped
155g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
180ml (3/4 cup) fresh passionfruit pulp
4 egg yolks

Combine the butter, sugar, passionfruit and egg yolks in a medium saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, for 10-15 minutes or until the mixture thickens. Transfer to a sterilised jar and place in fridge for 1 hour to chill.

As you can see from the photo, winter panama red do not colour up as well as the summer fruit, some of them barely show the red on the outside at all, however they are somewhat more squishy than unripe fruit, and they always show the lovely red colour underneath the skin when you cut them.

The passionfruit cordial is very sweet and rich and will need diluting quite a bit before it will be palatable. And it's definitely not for diabetics. However the kids love it (as do the adults), and it's a firm favourite now we have so many passionfruit. Think I'll try a syrup with the next batch.

Winter plant behaviour.... don't they know it's not spring ?

2011-08-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

The peach's are setting fruit
The Plum's are flowering madly
My variegated eureka lemon needs a haircut (and a fruit thinning)
And the black mulberry is just plain confused.
I didn't post a picture of the mandarin, but it defied all logic and has started with the fruit at the bottom of the tree (the one's in shade) going orange first. But they were still quite yummy!

Yesterday we harvested around 50 panama red passionfruit's - there are heaps and heaps still green, however they may not make it before pruning is due to commence. Apparently if you prune in August, they bare summer fruit. And if you prune in December (or not at all) they tend to winter fruiting. Last year I apparently pruned very very lightly in August as we got some summer fruit. But not many. This year I'm going to attempt pruning half of this back in August, the other half in December so we will hopefully get half of the vine fruiting in summer and the other half in winter.

This is a 180deg photo of the main vine as it currently is
And this is the other side of the fence... It has the potential to take over the world...This is our second panama red - only planted about 18 months ago (on another part of the pool fence) - with a brief glimpse of the chicken coop and the kids swings...
Inside the pool fence there are 3 different dwarf apples that should fruit in Jan/Feb/Mar (when they get going). I'm hoping this will give the kids ready made snacks for when they are swimming. At the moment there is a LOT of weeds, and some tomato bushes that also refuse to admit it's winter. We're getting a couple of tomatoes a week from it at the moment. We have tomatoes springing up all over the place!

Solar Panels

2011-08-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

As a lovely Xmas present last year - V let me splurge on some solar panels for the house. We ended up getting 12 x 250W panels (so 3kW system) with a 5kW inverter from Allied Energy. The hope was that we would expand the system when prices came down. However with synergy axing most of the incentives for people to put up solar panels I'm not sure if it will happen.

A 3kW system was always the minimum I wanted as I knew our household was a high energy user (although we have cut back from 32units a day to 24, and some bills were as low as 18units). But we were never ever going to get away with a 1.5kW system.

The kids weren't too happy as we told them they weren't getting any presents as we were giving them electricity to run their existing toys (that didn't go down well). It went down even worse when we found an old bug of potatoes and tried to give them some rotten potatoes...

Anyway last week I finally got around to taking some photo's of the system (I'm actually impressed with how the photo's turned out)

If the system covered our entire costs for the year, then I would expect this to be repaid in about 3.5years with savings on electricity. As we didn't get this installed until February we missed out on a lot of the excess daylight that would have buffered our bills a bit. So we have ended up paying around $130 for electricity this year (all in the last bill). Hopefully next year the summer excess will cover our winter use. Or at least, that's the plan.

Shade Sail

2011-08-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

Today's main task was to create a shade sail for over the aquaponics area. Unfortunately it's an odd sized area - 5m one side, 4.6 the other, 2.4m at one end, 3.2m at the other. I did however want this under 50% shade cloth for over summer, without spending a fortune.

So today was the day to tackle it - we had nice sunshine (at least for the morning) and not much wind. So shopping at the "B" - 3 x 2.4m star pickets, and 5m of 50% shade cloth.

The star pickets were placed along the existing fence line. I got out my trusty old sewing machine (it's still in shock from this!) and created a nice neat edge along the raw edge. Tied it roughly in place (well at least to the star pickets), then got V to help me stretch and mark out where the other corners would be.

I decided to run rope through the long edge (between the posts of the carport), and along the front edge. This actually works surprisingly well.

I'm sure some adjustments will be required to get the tension right, but in the mean time we have shade! (and a bit of a messy area... note to self, probably time to tidy up out there lol)

First harvest

2011-08-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight we enjoyed the first harvest from the aquaponics system - beetroot leaves, english spinach and some cos lettuce leaves. The kids were having chicken roll up's - final vote - cos lettuce was the nicest.

Yesterday I set up the first of the floating baskets - basically mesh pots inserted into styrofoam broccoli box lids/bases (free from the local Woolies). I planted out old fashioned mint, cress, english cress and lebanese cress. All of these plants are likely to take over the grow bed, however I'm hoping that keeping them to a smaller basket will leave me some control on their growth.
I traded some quail eggs for one of the mesh baskets and some of the plants from the local fish/lily farm. The added bonus of this is that the plants came out of their massive bio filter - so with a bit of luck they will have some of the bacteria I need to get this system cycled. Cycling in winter is a lesson in patience, something I was never good at. It's been 5 weeks, hurry up!!!!

Aquaponic's - a month in

2011-08-10T20:03:00.001-07:00

So a month in and this is how things look - as you can see the lettuce and English spinach are growing well. I added a FEW things... mizuna, a couple of broccolini, some baby carrots, and some leeks.
So far the system still hasn't cycled. We went away down south for a week and didn't have the fish or yabbies fed while we were gone. Came back and one of the Silver Perch had a white fungus, so had to salt the water to 3ppt (which required 4.5kg of pool salt). The poor little guy didn't make it, but the rest are doing well.

As a result of the salting, the 6 strawberries I did have in the growbed were removed to a wicking pot (they really don't like salt)

We have also added 2 gold fish as the silver perch are proving shy and the kids like to see the fish occasionally.

At the moment pH for the system has dropped from 8.2 to just under 8. Ammonia has been kept in check and is between 0.5 and 1. I stop feeding the fish whenever it even get's close to 1. This seems to be working well so far. Still no sign of nitrites or nitrates. Although I have hope that they will rise now that the weather is getting warmer (if only briefly).

Aquaponic's - initial planting

2011-08-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

So as we were getting all excited about this - the kids and I headed off to the great green tin shed and picked up some little seedlings... Some mixed lettuce and english spinach to start off with (planted 4th July).
We added a yabby tank (14th July) - with 10 yabbies (17th July) and some pygmy perch to try and control mosquitos. The main fish tank also had 10 silver perch take up residence.I was also given a lovely firepit for my birthday and it's getting well used (thanks Nicole and Co!). Garlic bread was very very yummy!

Aquaponics

2011-08-09T21:12:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately this year I hit a milestone birthday (bah humbug). In celebration Vaughan chose to help me move further along the road to sustainability for our family.

So we turned this area
Into something more useful - i.e. this
FYI - the system was purchased from Mike. Mike also sells us our organic chicken feed.

Cross Stitch

2010-08-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've been getting back into lately is my cross stitch.... so I thought I'd gather photos of some of the designs I've done over the years.

So here goes
These first two are ones that I did before giving up due to my arthritis in my hands getting really bad, the Lily one was done last year (2009) my hands have improved, and I'm finding the cross stitch is helping now to keep them flexible.

The first one is the "Apache Wedding Blessing" which is a from Janlynn (designed for Kooler Design Studio's by Sandy Orton). This was the blessing my sister chose for her marriage. So it seemed very apt.

The Beatrix Potter design was simply called "Storybook sampler 1".

"Lily" was created from the designs in the book Cross Stitch Fairies , this design was done by Claire Crompton. I did switch the french knots for seed beads to add some dimension.

New Plants

2008-11-14T22:05:00.000-08:00

I love spring. I'm FINALLY managing to get some of the more hard to find herbs (remember we are in WA). Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I've managed to find Marshmallow, French Tarragon and Liquorice ( this picture I believe is Anise Hyssop, and the two liquroice plants, and in the front some Self Heal)

I'll let you know how they all go.

We got our new chickens - this time 3 hy-lines purchased from the Swan Valley Egg Farm (22 week old)

In this photo is Sun and Moonlight(the darker one)

And here is Star. Not that E had a theme going at all...

The girls have settled in happily and are cheerifully producing lovely brown eggs (even one double yoker)

Poor Banty has again assumed position as the lowest in the pecking order, but she seems happy enough.

Seedlings are all progressing well. We planted out 6 corn's last week, a pile of tomatoes and dwarf beans, and the pigeon pea trees. Not to mention Rochmelon, and pumpkin plants.

All good really.

Spring Part 2

2008-10-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

Whats happening in the garden this week...

My pomegranate "Wonderful" has its first flowers. You can just see them forming at the top of the left hand branch. This tree is just calling out to be espaliered - perfect formation of branches.

My "Elite" looks like its about to come into flower as well. It's a much bigger tree, but didn't fruit last year, so I'm crossing my fingers!

The two dwarf pomegranates are growing well - no sign of flowers as yet. But they did flower last year, so I have high hopes.

These are the purple congo potatoes - sprouting madly.

I've got a few pots like these, mostly kipflers as I like them a lot. Just wish I had more room to grow potatoes!

We did pick up another 4 styrofoam boxes at the markets this morning (along with a bag of lettuce leaves for the chickens) and some fresh tumeric root (lovely orange colour) that will be planted as well.

My piece of horseradish that I brought from the market is growing well ($60 a kilo - but the piece this is growing from cost me a whopping $1.50)

Seedling that have graduated from the heat mat - but aren't big enough yet to go out and be hardened off. The yellow container at the back has some Curry Tree's that I liberated from a friends garden (heading for the bin as her tree has millions of babies). And some yellow pear tomatoes in the orange container.

The front pots vary, there are loofah's, pumpkins, tomatoes, kale, Rockmelon, Watermelon, zuchini, and well all sorts of things in these ones.

And there are more still on the heated propagating mat.

The two little pots with plastic wrap have alpine strawberry seeds, these have been stratified and I'm trialling them to check germination (which is usually only about 50%). They need light and high humidity to grow. I have some yellow alpine strawberries that I want to get started, but not quite game as yet.

4 pots in this lot (ones without labels) actually have some seeds from a pink lady apple we ate this morning. The seeds had sprouted within the actual apple. So we've potted them up to see if they will continue to grow.

Lets see, about 4 types of lettuce, dwarf beans, more strawberries, Rosella, NZ Spinach, Tree Lucerne, Peanuts, Eggplant... probably a few others as well.

I've taken the pigeon pea trees outside now (all of the seedlings are kept in my laundry until they are deemed suitable for hardening off). Then they move outside into the shade, and eventually are planted. The pigeon peas are maybe 20cm high now, and they were planted only a couple of weeks ago. Photos of those later.

Bread Making - Trial 1

2008-10-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

OK - I've been meaning to try breadmaking for a while. So today I finally got up the nerve. Must admit I cheated on the mixing - I used the breadmaker to make the dough. My oven also has the ability to go as low as 30deg - so I did the rise in there for 30mins, then had the bread above it while it heated up to the 200deg.

Quite happy with how it turned out - nice and light. Although I need to work out how to slash the top so it looks a little neater...

Anyway, recipe today was that of a fellow Simple Saver http://samis-kitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/bread.html . Now I need to find a nice easy fruit loaf recipe....

Spring 2008 - part 1

2008-10-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Things are flowering!

This is a really shady part of the garden - you can seen the golden cane palms in the back.

Along the front you can see a pale orange, a red, and a yellow clivia. And a hippeastrum that has FINALLY flowered (the snails have eaten the flowers every other year).

The bottom right corner shows one of my globe artichokes, and the plant behind the shadecloth on the left is my Sharwill Avocado.

As you can see the borage self seeded this year, and has sprung up around the baby almond tree I have (it's the all-in-one self fertile almond). I didn't notice last year, but every now and then the borage has a single pink flower amongst all the purple ones.

The kids and the bees seem to love these!

Out the front my fairy wing poppies are in full bloom.

And the baby gladioli - I think these are gorgeous when in full flower and are extremely easy to look after.

Low Chill Fruit Trees for Perth

2008-05-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

Having planted out most of the garden, I wanted to list fruit trees that I know are available around Perth, and that can be grown and will fruit successfully in Perth. There are a lot available that wont fruit.... Interesting to note that most of Perth only gets about 330 chill hours.... so unless you know for certain that a fruit is "Low Chill" DON'T BUY IT! You might get a couple of flowers, but not much fruit. If you are uncertain check with Wandilla Nursery - I've found them to be exceptionally helpful.

Plums

Gulf Ruby
Sunrise Gulf
Laroda
Wilson's Early
Santa Rosa

Nectarines

White Satin (White)
Sun Snow (White)
Sunwright (Yellow)
Sunlight (Yellow)

Peaches

Flordagold
Tropic Beauty
Tropic Snow

Apricots

Trevatt
Newcastle

Flowering today

2008-05-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post some images of things that were flowering around the garden today. Firstly the basil

My bleeding heart vine - not edible, but I've always loved the flowers on these. Poor things got transplanted last spring, and I throught it was a goner. Thankfully it survived and is now starting to regain its glory.

My first ever pumpkin flower. A bit late in the season, but it and about 5 others were out this morning.

Not flowering -but I love my variegated lemon (eureka I believe) Not sure if you can see or not, but the new growth comes through as a dark pink/red colour and slowly fades out. When I got it, it was looking pretty hard done by, but with lots of compost, kind words and a reasonable amount of water, its now starting to look like it likes its new home.

New Trees

2008-05-01T03:30:00.000-07:00

I discovered the Wandilla Nursery on Welshpool Rd on Tuesday, and came out slightly lighter in the pocket.... a sharwill avocado (B type to go with my Hass which is an A type), a Strawberry Guava, a Natal Plum and a Wild Finger Lime. I've been looking for a Sharwill for a while, so was happy to finally get one. The nursery is very well stocked, and has a wide range of products. Cost isn't the cheapest, but then they have a range, so I suppose you are paying for that as well as a lot of things probably don't move all that fast.

I also found today, a Wonderful Pomegranate. So for $23 I am now its proud owner. As the fruits are currently $5 each, it shouldn't take too long for it to pay for itself!

Apart from that, the garden is looking good from the compost that we spread around. The grass is green pretty much all over for the first time in years (the top dressing did it wonders).

I'll attempt to get everything into the ground in the next week or so, so it can get established over winter.

Vegetable Gardening for WA (booklets)

2008-04-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

At the Great Gardens talk they mentioned a booklet that was produced specifically for growing vegetables in WA conditions (something that apparently should be a bible for any one in wa) - thanks to my friend Bec (and her hubby Cam) as they managed to find these online :

http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/veg/cp/bull4629_part1.pdf
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/veg/cp/bull4629_part2.pdf
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/veg/cp/bull4629_part3.pdf
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/veg/cp/bull4629_part4.pdf
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/veg/cp/bull4629_part5.pdf

A walk around my garden Pt4

2008-04-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

OK - this looked healthier before we chopped down 2/3rds of the tree! On the right of the tree is a double planted plums, and a pomegranate. Again the middle tree will be chopped down completely once the others come up to size

On the left is my double planted... umm, nectarines I think. The whole bed has lots of daylilies and spider lilies planted throughout.

Did I mention we had palms... lots of palms! Bed directly in front of you now has the double planted apricots (I think), and the little plant nearest the light pole in the furtherest bed is my Kalamatta Olive tree. In between are a lot of plants I want to get rid of!

This gives a better view of the front of the house. The small bed at the top of the drive, near the front door, has a huge pony tail plant, double planted apricots (now) and a large umm..... lost the name for it... I'll hav to edit this later! The palms in the back corner (there are two of them sticking up behind everything else) actually have the white and black sapotes planted near by. Still babies... I'll take a close up later so you can see what I mean.

A walk around my garden Pt3

2008-04-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Out beside the carport/garage - well its a mess! But you can see the shadehouse structure (a green house picked up on clearance for $20 - used to have plastic covering, but Perth is just too hot so I switched it to shade cloth.

An arch with grapes on one side and a choko on the other. This is basically my nursery area as it doesn't get full sun, but it does get warm.
Behind the bins there is my Ballerina Waltz (3 apples this year - 2 got knocked off by the strong wind two weeks ago) and a jasmine growing over the fence.

I think at the moment there is a grafted Hass avocado, a Tahitian lime rescued from a clearance section, a dwarf lemon, a sunrise lime, a new fig tree that hasn't found a home as yet, all in that little area, probably more as its basically a holding ground till I get the ground prepared and the temperature I want to plant things out.

My baby pomegranates that I've grown from seed - most are doing really well at this stage.

From the left we have my small bay tree (purchased) two black sapotes grown from seed, and a baby hass avocado - also grown from seed.

A walk around my garden Pt2

2008-04-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

Opposite the styrofoam pots ( other side of the washing line) you can see the start of my raised beds- in the left corner is the double planted mandarins (emperor and imperial) and down the other end of the bed in the variagated eureka lemon. In between is currently beans, asparagus, pumpkins and basil.... maybe some left over tomatoes from summer.

You can probably just see the edge of lemon on the right, water feature in the centre planted around with mainly herbs (tansy, sage, lemon balm, rosemary), the moving across to the right there is stevia, garlic, the passionfruit at the back, and the double planted Navel Oranges at the end. The styrofoam boxes currently have various onions in them.

A close up of the chickens at this stage. The brown welsummer is Jess, and the lavender auracana is Bluey II, the one hiding at the back is Bluebell - but we suspect Bluebell should be be BlueBoy :(

Banty the Old English Game Bantam is hiding in the coop at this point in time.

A walk around my garden

2008-04-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Looking out from the back door you see my lemonade fruit tree, with scarlet runner beans (7 year beans) growing around the trellis. A Pinkerbelle apple is in the big pot, with yarrow growing around it. In front is a healthy bed of comfrey and native violets. There's a rhubarb plant in there somewhere.....

This one is newly established. I have two dwarf pomegranates, soapwort, a red passionfruit and some Xanadu's here at the moment. I'd like to put something in the middle pot - just not sure what, so it remains empty while I think about it. Strawberries were trialled in the pots last year, and some went well., some didn't.

As I walk towards the back you can see the pool off to left, and the chicken pen down the back (it has a black mulberry tree planted in the orange pot in the middle of the chicken run). Along the side of the house is pretty much Xanadu... this used to be a very tropical garden.... Alongside the pool I've put some banana's - but you can't really see them in this photo.

Around the back corner you can see the kids cubby house and hte huge shed in the back corner of the block. The little garden bed in front has a couple of palms, two huge pony tale plants, and I've planted an almond between to hopefully grow larger - then I think I might get rid of the pony tales at least!

Hidden in the back corner of the house is the styrofoam garden bed - basically lettuce at the moment, and capsicum. Some cabbages in the one at the front. The big tree is the Ficus that my Nan gave me many years ago. We just had to chop it basically in half and move it from its previous position as it had got into the ground. Seems to have recovered well though, lots of new growth.

Planting madly

2008-04-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

This week featured the planting of the stone fruit. All my stone fruit have been double planted, so two to a hole. WHY ? Because I'd like to have successive ripenings of fruit, but without taking up huge amounts of space. See : http://www.flemings.com.au/documents/plant_a_duo_guide.pdf
and http://www.davewilson.com:8080/homegrown/BOC_explained.html.

So two nectarines, two apricots, and two peaches. I also managed to find a grafted Kalamatta Olive at Lansdale for $22 (minus 10% discount). As all the others in the same batch were marked with $39 I assume this was probably priced incorrectly, but they honoured it, and it now has pride of place in the front garden. They had grafted citrus for $7.95 - but nothing I wanted.

So I now have the majority of my plantings done. On my wish list is a couple more varieties of apples and a valencia orange (I have two navel oranges but would like year round oranges if possible). I also have one pot that I'm undecided about... I haven't found a fruit I would be happy planting there, so I keep looking. Oh yes - sultana grapes as well! I was going for an early and late seedless grape of both reds and greens, as I have one child that will only eat red, and one that will only eat green! So one more to buy - probably in spring now as its getting colder and colder.

I wish I had a huge backyard - I keep eyeing off the nut trees, but most of them grow way too big for my backyard. So I've been forced to admit that I probably wont have a macadamia or chestnut tree, and pistachio's wont grow this close to the ocean :( Part of me would love to move to the hills, but then I think of the amount of time I've already put into this garden, I LOVE our house - its perfect for this stage of our lives. Maybe in 10 or 15 years once the kids have left home, I'll find a place in the country with a ready made orchard, chicken pen, and maybe some dairy cows and/or goats and I can move onto being more self sufficient. For the moment I am content with what we have. And I can refine techniques and growing skills without taking up every waking moment.

Great Gardens Seminar

2008-04-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I attended the first of the great gardens information evenings FREE (see http://www.greatgardens.info ) and found out some valuable things about growing things in our sandy soils. So I've started putting things into practice.

Step 1 : Sand Remedy (this is apparently either zeolite, bentonite or spongelite)
We did this and using a 3 prong hoe thing, turned the soil over just enough to mix it through the top of the soil.

Step 2 : Compost
3 cubic metres were delivered yesterday from http://www.gardenersdirect.com.au lovely compost it was too, still warm (even hot) in the middle of the pile, and smelling, well as nice as compost can smell.

Mum and I attacked the garden beds and lawn, gardens beds generally got about 5cm of compost, and we top dressed the lawn. I had added Scotts lawn builder with soil wetter to this on the weekend to increase the water absorption of the soil.

Step 3 : Ordered our top mulch
http://www.mulchnet.com
It's all ready and waiting for the final addition to make my garden soil as waterwise as possible.

NB : The "we" I normally refer to in this is not a "royal we". My mum (who lives about 3.5km away) is my prime garden helper, and is great at assisting in all aspects (especially malicious chopping down of innocent plants - LOVE YOU MUM!!!) She's usually repayed with whatever garden leftovers we have (so about 15 bags of compost today)

Next step is to work on the reticulation - but I'll leave that for a another post :)

Chicken update

2008-02-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the black lace wynadotte ended up being a boy... thankfully removed from the pen and given back to the breeder before he started crowing... but not before he fertilized a few chickens!

Araucana number 1 unfortunately suffered a fatal death thanks to a very wet windy evening, and was replaced by Bluey 2 and Bluebell.

All 4 girls are now laying, usually about 2 eggs every 3 days each. So should be over a dozen eggs a week (the araucana's and banty have just come off being broody so they aren't back to laying properly yet).

Jessy (welsummer) lays lovely brown eggs, Banty lays cream coloured little ones, and the two blueys lay a greeny blue mid sized egg. Everyone is very impressed!

E's 6th Birthday

2007-09-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we had E's 6th Birthday party. The cake was a chocolate cake covered in white chocolate plastic icing and covered in edible glitter. The doll was the Elina doll from Barbie's "Magic of the Rainbow". E was so astonished to see her cake in the same costume as she chose for the day [got to love the gaping fish look]. All in all, E and her 14 friends had great fun (and after all that's what kids birthdays are all about!)

On a sad note...

2007-09-15T01:19:00.000-07:00

Poor Bluey (the grey one) passed away this morning. Many tears by DD#1(6). We buried her deep in the vege patch, and planted a tomato over her grave.

The New Girls

2007-09-12T21:30:00.001-07:00

OK -Here's a photo of the new (hopefully) girls. If I'm remembering correctly the grey (lavender) is an Araucana and lays bright blue eggs (we hope). The little bantam is of the Old English Game Hen breed (wheaten colour). We think the brown might be a Welsummer or a New Hampshire, and the black a Wyandotte.

These chickens are spoilt! They even have pergola covering on one quarter so that the coop will get some light (without [hopefully] boiling the chickens)

Mum and I had fun building the coop - the run just caused a large amount of scratches and blood (I hope the chickens appreciate it!)

On a good note - the girls(?) do seem happy! Apparently we can expect eggs around Xmas time, as they are about 6 - 8 weeks old at the moment.