My Garden

My garden is a topic that has been something to ponder on for a while. Is it blog worthy? Will it manage to meet my aspirations? Or will it instead fade away to the weedy snake bed that is the ominous and steadfast prediction of my wife's? Only time can tell and so I will start with a little of the history and then perhaps in a month or two the blog will be brimming with pictures of plump home grown vegetables and splashes of colourful flowers.

The initial plan of the garden was a chemical free, wondrous, cottage garden. I had read a few environmentalist magazines and was keen to use news paper and compost to stamp out the weeds and companion planting to deter the insect pests. This was to be a weekend hobby that would hold the kids interest, provide inexpensive, fresh tasting food for the family and lighten my environmental footprint. The final destination is still the same though the journey may have thus far taken a few changes in direction.

Starting with an all ready bare but infertile patch of ground a few months ago the first layer of newspaper was lain down, wet in place and covered with scraps. The compost heap was not established and basically what we covered the newspaper was kitchen scraps, and grass in very early stages of decomposition and still quite recognisable as scrap. The main lesson that came from this was that while five year old Sheryl was quite interested in the novelty of the garden her attention span lasted for about five minutes. transplanted into this garden were capsicum and tomato. Quite proud everybody calls it a day.

with watering the garden seems to progress along well for a couple of weeks and we are able to pick a couple of capsicum out of pocket expenses; none. The compost cover looking a little more like compost and the plants over any transplant shock. The excitement over the garden between the girls and I hits another level when pumpkins start sprouting from the compost. We plant zucchini seed and they sprout as well along side the pumpkin vines. It has been a good start.

Then things take a turn for the worse as other things start taking president over the garden and it starts to over grow with weeds. my thoughts when the pumpkin vines first started spreading in all directions were that they would stamp out the grass and all would be fine. Pumpkins prove to be more competition to tomatoes and capsicum then they are to grass and weed. it gets to the point of I told you so,so the environmental footprint turns to lead for a time and I mow over the lot with the ride on mower then I poison the matted weed that remains with only two zucchini surviving the onslaught. The crop so far amounting to three zucchini two pumpkins and a few capsicum; the costs negligible.

last weekend I took the poisened garden shape and dug a garden edge around it then lightly turned the earth finding that the fertility of the underlying soil had improved a little from the newspaper and compost. Then I was able to get the attention of the girls again for spreading a new layer of paper and grass clipings. Fortunatly there have been a couple of horses down the back on a short stay and we were able to collect a few droppings this may become a regular event also.

Today some plants are bought for $7.50 the first purchase made specifically for the garden. Sheryl has been a big help with newspaper mulch and planting and even Rachael almost two has helped with hoding the hose. our garden now includes corn, tom thumb tomatoes and our first flowers along side the established zucchini plants.

Home Alone

Earlier in the week Tereasa made a rather on the spot decision to take the kids to go and visit my parents in Toowoomba (over 600kms from Rockhampton). So on with the arrangements. Did you know that it could be possible to take 2 hours and thirty minutes to order a couple of plane tickets over the web? I surely did not. It started with a couple of drop down menus not working on the site, so I checked all of the usual suspects such as the sites listed browser compatibility and the java settings on my Mozilla browser but no luck. So this lead to a few fruitless phone calls first to the airline and then to the credit company and finally after much confusion there was a realisation that what had appeared to be a + symbol on my credit card was really a worn number 4. Then as if lady luck had changed her mode the drop down menus started to function again and I was home free. With printed tickets in hand the frayed tempers subsided to harmonious smiles once again and the smiles returned to faces.

Wednesday morning when Sheryl woke up the first thing that she said before she was even fully out of bed was daddy how many hours is it till we get on the big plane. Then before I even had time to tell her that I was taking off at 10:00 am the phone rang and grandma was asking about how long to go. I could see that both parties were keen to catch up.

It has been eerily quite at home since and I must admit to missing the girls though it has been nice to have some vacant possession of the television viewing time. I think I managed quite well at my first food shop in at least 12 months. I decided to get those things that get put off because kids just won’t eat it and I discovered that you can actually buy a pre-marinated kangaroo mini-roast. I cooked this I the oven at 200 degrees for about 45 minutes with my chunky cut veggies along side for the entire time and a good sprinkle of Italian herbs over the lot and it was to die for. My favorite little trick is to take a couple of whole cloves of garlic roughly pealed ad toss them into the spray oiled tray with everything else after cooking any excess peal will just fall off the garlic and you eat the entire clove. There is only a lovely hint of the strong garlic flavour left in the clove and even those who object to spicy foods would have to agree on this one mmmm.

Christmas Day

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Where else would I start telling the story of Christmas day but at the beginning of the day with the opening of gifts? With five rather lucky kids and five adults present there was always going to be quite a few gifts but I had not anticipated the exact size of the pile of presents which was encroaching on the limited sitting space of our over crowded lounge-room. Amongst the dolls, transformers, cars, clothing and lip gloss my daughter was particularly impressed with the popup princess tent/castle where she spent the morning hosting tea parties and staging fairytale stories. Meanwhile the boys were busy getting in some target practice with new guns and jousting one another with light sabers.

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The weather fortunately turned out to hold out with sunshine, we had been expecting the last few days of rain to continue over on to Christmas day. So we were able to get outside early in the day with ham and eggs cooked on the barbeque for breakfast washed down with a nice pink champagne. Once breakfast was settled everyone was keen to enjoy a swim and to morning proceeded with swimming and plenty of eating and drinking and everybody was generally enjoying themselves. There was quite a bit of amusement passing around the incoming text messages which added to steady stream of visitors with six families and a couple of individuals attending some part of the day.





Lunch was the pinnacle of the wining and dining of the day and my wife presented a lovely meal with loads of salads ham off the bone and fresh prawns with sea food sauce. The lunch was enjoyed by all on top of the readily available finger foods and home made confectionaries with all the ladies putting in a huge effort in the kitchen. All of this dining and a number of beverages lead some of us to take a quick nap before taking to the sports field mid afternoon.
The sporting prowess on display might only be described as a bit on the mediocre side but everyone had a good time. There was some good strokes played by everyone who stepped up to bat and we managed not to loose the ball. Only the simplest of the catches were taken with quite a number going to ground amid the laughter. By far the fielding effort of the day has to go to Justin who truly put his body on the line in a fine fielding performance.

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Christmas on the whole turned out to be a fun filled day that for some extended into the night. We have all had a very merry Christmas and are all looking forward to what the new year might bring.