Around the house/gardens

We have been having beautiful Autumn weather this week. Clear blue skies, warm sun, cool dry wind, and cold nights. Perfect!

In a few weeks time we are going camping, and need some wood for our fire as it will be very chilly!



So Ben went and got some wood from the timber mill Pa works at. Enough? and only $15!


Our gardens and aquaponics are powering along. Ben has started his new setup for his aquaponics. Will take some photo's of it this week to show you. But for now some of our vegies.




Never really had alot of luck with squash, but this time the weather must be perfect for them. So happy!




The lotsa lemon tree has lots of lemons this year and all bigger and healthier looking the last year.




We have about ummm 40 or more garlic growing strong... We love our garlic!




The Chilli tree in the old aquaponics just wont stop producing. I love how much it is growing but we don't use that much chilli to use them all!! I picked about 50 last week, and yesterday i picked another 60, with alot more still on the tree growing. It is a rating number 5 chilli, but seems to be a little hotter than 5. I think due to being grown in the aquaponics.




Finally our beans, we have 3 of this particular bean growing in 3 different spots, 2 in gardens and 1 in the old aquaponics. Can't remember the name of the bean. I think Scarlet something. But it is yum and growing so well.

It is Saturday, Job day :( Housework is not so fun, but i don't have alot to do, as having yesterday off i did some then as well. So will be able to help ben doing garden stuff (definitely more fun). And this afternoon will be putting a chook in the camp oven to roast for dinner! YUM! LOVE The weekends. Ben is out mowing right now, the job he dislikes the most. But he has an onlooker today, Mr Blue Eyes seems to have fallen deeper in love with his daddy over the last couple of weeks, and is watching him from every angle point possible (high up on the veranda or back landing, far enough away from the noisy scary mower) to watch HIS daddy!!

Hope you all have a great weekend planed :-)

Feeling weary..

I had another 3 full days of working this week!! I tell you what, yesterday i was very weary!! The working was great, I really love it!! First time ever (besides my jobs at home with my boys) have I said I love my job. My boss keeps telling me, you can't just stand around and wait for people, we have lots of jobs to do. But it is definitely not as much to do as my previous paid job. IT was crazy, too much to handle in my little brain. My new job is perfect. Clean and tidy shoes out on display. Receive stock in and send stock out. Pack and unpack stock. Sell shoes!! And you get to meet lots of different customers! I have nothing playing on my mind that i didn't get done whilst working, because it's all been done!

Its the getting home late after work with excited tired little boys, whilst mummy is a little tired that's hard. When Ben is on his early shift its good, i have daddy's firm voice to control them. But when he is on night shift.... arrrgghhhhh hair pulling time for mummy! We will get use to the routine eventually! I'm working the same 3 days again this week, so the more it happens the more we all get a good routine! (fingers crossed!)

Anyway, today I'm going to take some photo's of how our garden is going, Ben dug up some potatoes the other day. He was a little eager and they were a bit small, but still yummy!! I will post the photo's up tomorrow.

Hope your all having a wonderful weekend!

What a weekend!

Blogger is being funny with my photo uploads today. So they are all one after each other and i can't write inbetween them.. So the first two are of our new bamboo plants, what they look like and where the 12 of them went! My dad helped us out in getting these. They are Malay Dwarf Variegated, so they only grow to a max of 3 meters high, and Australia is only allowed to sell the clumping variety the other variety that pops up everywhere all over the yard is illegal here. So we know for sure it will stay where we planted it! My dad also purchased a special one for ben (my dad loves ben.. he is always buying him things for the garden!! he's a lucky boy!) Can't completely remember the name of it and it's raining so i'm not ducking outside the check it. But its bamboo stalks are black, it still has green leaves, it looks magnificant. In my next post i will find some photo's off the net of fully grown bamboo's of the varieties we got so you know how they will look in a year or 2's time! The black one is bigger than the first one i mentioned, so we need to find a higher space to put it!! So our saturday was filled with digging holes and getting the plants ready for planting.

On sunday, we were invited to go Water skiiing again. We were tossing up whether to go or and decided to go, as this was that last time this summer our friends parents were taking out the boat. We had a blast, (that is what the other photo's are about!). We went to Somerset Dam, which is about 2 and a half hours drive from our town. Ben and i both did an excellent job, much easier for us to get up and stay up than a couple of weeks ago when we went! Our landing's left much to be desired, we just kept going until would couldn't hold on anymore, Ben went over backwords and i did a great nose dive! Luckily noone was around with the camera!! The dam has a roped off section just for swimmer's so the boys had fun swimming and playing in the water.

They also have tube's to go behind the boats so we had a go at them aswell, heaps of fun!! It gets a bit rough at times but just trying to hold on and not get tipped off is the fun of it all! I'm a little sore today, the boys had so much fun yesterday they are a little cranky today, they did no fighting at all while swimming that they are catching up on it today with non-stop fighting. Blue eyes is sleeping it off now, and will be up again soon ready to do it all again!! So that means it's time for me to get off here and start organising dinner, so we can have more time playing outside in the cool before dinner! (providing it's not raining!) I hope you all had a great weekend, hopefully the photo's load up properly, silly blogger!!

At our house today..

Here today, it is oh so nice and quiet! The boys are at daycare (Nana's house). So today while i don't have any little helpers, i got stuck into finishing organising our cupboards. I had the bathroom and the boys blanket box to do, and was surprisingly not as big a job as i thought! Last week Ben and i did the cupboard in the toy room... Oh my i had stuffed alot of CRAP in that cupboard over the last year (and only year so far of us living in this house). There is still alot in there. Alot of books that i am not yet comfortable with the boys playing with as they are still in rip mode while reading... We got 2 big piles out of there, rubbish and Vinnie's bin. Alot of toys went to Vinnie's, mostly toys that the boys are to big to play with anymore and wont miss. But don't worry i still kept alot of their toys!! We also have alot of blankets i need another cupboard for (hint hint honey) to free up the blanket box to then turn into a toy box. As of the moment i have about 3 or 4 different little baskets keeping all the toys together and they are sitting on the old baby change table. Doesn't look that neat.. We will get there, my first step was to get rid of the CRAP we don't use/need anymore. I think i can successfully say i managed that!

While sitting and typing this, it is so nice and quiet here, i can hear the birds singing... Now with the boys being away, i could put my own tv shows on i want to listen to while working, or music for that matter. But there is always something going when they are home. So when they are not here i like it to be as quiet as possible, and to be able to hear the birds (the odd car driving by as well) its bliss!! (i can think for a change!)

~~Now to outside of our house today~~

Today Bom (Bureau of Meteorology) says we are to get to 30c, at the moment we are sitting on

27.5c and 38% humidity, doesn't sound to bad, but the sun is very damn hot! I now have to start remembering to put sunscreen on before going out, especially with a big load of washing to hang.

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.94566.shtml

Being spring, we have alot of flowers out, Ben will shoot me, but i can't remember the variety of Jasmin this is, but it has finally flowered. last year it didn't give us much. Hasn't really grown much either, considering the other variety is about 3/4 over the arch. But it still smells lovely!

And yes again, can't remember the name of this plant either. (why i choose to do garden post's while Ben is at work is beyond me..) It is pretty though!

Our veggies are taking off. The pumpkin is starting to get runner's off it and we think there are some flowers coming up off it already! And the corn has doubled in size!

Ben's potted lemon has gone nuts this time round, it has at least 10 lemons on it! I'm going to have to find some lemon recipes! YUM!

This is a very blurry photo, but it is of the tomatoes we have growing in pots with native trees. Now we are not really sure how they got there. There is alot of little tomatoes appearing, some a different shapes, oblong like Roma and normal round shape. We think there could have been seeds in the potting mix Ben topped up the native trees with. Doesn't matter a great deal, we get tomatoes out of it anyway!

The 3 native tree pots with the tomato plants taking over!

This is a view to the very back of our yard. Over the last couple of weekends the neighbour's have been doing some extensive pruning.. You see the whole of the fence line did have alot and i mean alot of shrubs blocking the view to our yard. Nice and private. Well not anymore. they have pulled everything away, what they have done is all along the fence line, so i'm hopeful they might being doing a new fence.. fingers crossed. They have always been busy out in the yard so i haven't wanted to interrupt them and be a busy botty neighbour and ask them what they hell they are doing with my privacy screen... Nobody lives there at the moment, haven't for quite awhile, so its probably a rental house. They may sell it after doing it up who knows..

We have 2 houses backing on to our back yard, the fellow in this house has also lost some privacy screening, now we can see directly to his house..

Hope your having a great week, I'm off to tidy up the toy room! xo

Our weekend at home.

This weekend we stayed home pretty much the whole time. We did pop out to see Granny and Pa on Saturday arvo for some play time though!! We didn't do a great deal this weekend, some more spring cleaning, tidying, cooking and normal cleaning!!

This is our Jacaranda in full bloom without it's foliage yet.

This is my clay pot, my mil gave this to me for my birthday, and i finally found a recipe to cook in it that is designed to be cooked in a clay pot. Its called Turkish Lambcooker, more or less it's a stew. But an oh so yummy stew!! Would be great for winter. Luckily yesterday was very overcast, rainy and cold so it suited perfectly! Here is the link for the recipe, it is so very easy, 10 Min's prep and 80 Min's cooking time in the oven.

http://www.cookadvice.com/recipes/turkish_lambcooker-48686-recipe.htm

I love the idea of putting everything together in one pot and cooking, so easy and the flavour's go through all the food yummo!!


Yesterday we finally got some rain, we need alot more but this was a start. Our cowboy was so excited to see rain, no matter what we said he would sneak outside to play in it.. Cheeky!!

This is the view from my kitchen window, looking out at our vegie garden and jacaranda, and into our neighbours side yard. I love watching the rain, its even better when i have something nice to watch the rain hit like our vegies!!

I gave our cowboy the umbrella to play with out in the rain, seeing as he wouldn't stay out of it, best idea ever, he had a blast!!

Having lots of fun mum!!

Sunday was a rest day for us, Ben spent most of the day in his bar watching Bathurst, playing computer games and napping hehe. I forgot to take a photo of him asleep but i got one of him multi tasking. Watching the car race as well as playing games.. And who said men can't multi task... hehe

Honey who is winning the race????? "oh i think Holden is in the lead, i can't remember" hehe Love you Honey xo

This is a geisha girl after our rain, wasn't sure if the photo was going to turn out, I'm not as good as Ben at taking plant photo's. I just use the Auto on the camera, Ben fiddles with the settings. I know you get better photo's with that, but usually i take photo's of little boys and they need to be taken quickly!!

Speaking of little boys, while we were playing after the rain, our cowboy wanted to have a go at taking some photos. He did a pretty good job, he took heaps. I will do a post this week with some of his photos in it. Here is a sneak peek. He likes to be like daddy and take photo's of the plants!! Budding cameraman and gardener i think! Hope you have a great start to the week. I've done some more sorting of our cupboards so i need to go and move it all to where it now belongs (bin, Vinnie's, or try and sell). xxoo

Loves his gumboots, got a few good shots of them, hehe.

Spring

The front garden, this used to be all grass, we used the wood chips from the old gum tree that was cut down out the back and the rocks from a bloke at work. I will post some before and after shots another time. This garden is just below the road and is pretty muck road base and clay.

Pink Evening Primrose, Nan has thease in her garden and mum pinched some for me.

White Evening Primrose, this does so well in the crappy clay soil.

Mock Orange

Iris

little lemons

Potato's have sprouted

Mums Pumpkin This fella I found while spraying . It was massive!

A bit scary!!

Wyatt was playing in the sand while I was taking photos ans asked me to take one of him.

So happy!


Well i thought I better put a post on here, I cant let Cass have all the fun. Today I was up at about 7:30, had a late night and now have a bit of a cold but didnt stop me from getting the whipper snipping done. I also raked up a few more leaves to add to the massive compost we have down the back. I then went over to a mates place to fix a couple of holes in his wall from a party last weekend. The people responsible are giving me a carton for it. I then came home to tidy up "The Bar" I will post a few pics later on down the track. Its getting pretty hot now, its 1:33 pm and Cass has been baking bread for the last 2 hours. So there are a few photos I took out and about today.