Little Miss B started kindergarten on Friday and, as you can tell, was terribly excited. It was a big day for one little girl who has never spent any time away from Mum unless she was with her Grandma or her Dad. We dropped her off at 8 am, she found a table with things to glue and got stuck right in. I managed to get out without any tears from her - or me! And when we picked her up at midday she had had a lovely morning. She has been looking forward to her next session at kinder ever since.
The children have picture tags on the hooks for their bags and also on their lockers. I spotted pretty quickly that there was a seahorse and asked one of the staff asking if we could make requests. She said that they don't but that she would take note of our request. And I am happy to report that Little Miss B has the seahorse. Yay!!!!
Little Miss T is just as excited by kinder, and asks if she will be going to kinder too. She has a couple of years to wait!
Growing Calluses...
I only started this today, but what possessed me to crochet something out of jute twine?! This is really tough going and I have 201 stitches per row and 19 rows total to do. It isn't going to be massive but I'm already thinking I'll be glad when it is finished.
It is my brother's birthday this weekend coming and I wanted to give him something for his shed. You know what men are like with their sheds! I decided that I'd like to do some filet crochet and spell out "N's Man Cave" (of course insert name in full). At first I thought that I would just use some brown crochet cotton. Vetoed that idea as it would look too much like a doily. Then I thought about regular brown yarn. Vetoed that idea too. It would look too much like a scarf. Then I had a brainwave. I had a ball (more like a round slab) of jute which I had bought for something else and never used. Thus the idea was born. I'm working on row three and row four is when I start filling in the filet for the words.
I've never crocheted with jute before and I've never done filet before, and I'm crocheting to a deadline of Saturday! Wish me luck!
As you may be aware we recently moved house. I'm taking the opportunity to plant some fruit and vegies, in the hope of living at least a partly sustainable life. To be quite honest it doesn't really matter whether we get much that is edible. The girls are enjoying the planting, watering and growing process and are getting quite a kick out of seeing the new shoots. We are planting seeds at least every week, and I'd like to keep up the impetus.
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| Spinach just starting to get its nice round leaves |
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| Cucumbers, just starting to get the nice proper jagged leaf shape. |
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| Dwarf butter bean, first shoot. |
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| Elderberry tree. Not grown from seed. Label says it grows to 4-6m in height but only bushes to around 1m, so would be easily kept under control by pruning. |
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| Watermelon growing its lovely crinkly leaves. |
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| Passionfruit, also not from seed. I decided to purchase a red fleshed passionfruit instead of the standard black, only because I have never had the Red Panama before. |
I'd also like to experiment with the fenugreek, poppy, cumin, coriander, cardamom, star anise and annatto seeds that I have in my spice cupboard. How cool would that be to grow your own exotic spices?!
I'm just going to continue with my plan to plant something as often as possible, and saving seeds from the food that we eat. I fully intend to live in my own little edible forest.
What do you have in your garden? Are you just starting, like me? What are your favourite edibles to grow?
Next on the agenda - chooks!
xXx Helen
So precious! Glad your little one transitioned gently into big school. She looks very happy. Your garden is going to be wonderful. Just a little heads up on the elder, it does not grow into a tree per say, but spreads and grows and grows and grows into tree sized bushes. The root system is infectious and will take over everything. Ours literally strangled our mango tree and tried to take over half the garden. I would have liked to contain it where is was but my hubby was put out by the loss of his mango and pulled it all out. I planted some of the shoots in pots around the yard. It still insists on popping up around the new vegie planter boxes as deeper roots must have been missed. It will grow from a broken piece of root too. Very resilient plant. Very useful and much loved at my house too. (by me anyway) :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice Karisma, I might have to dig it up and put it in a big pot then. It really is a pain when plants spread, if you don't want them to! When I was a kid my parents had a little section with bamboo growing and it used to grow up through the walls in the house. It took them years to kill it off. And I had a similar problem with a cherry plum tree at the house I just came from where little trees wanted to sprout all over the yard.
DeleteI hope your hubby got himself a new mango :)