Day 3 of the Health and Fitness Regime - 2nd day results AND Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere!

We are on to Day 3, we have today and tomorrow left of the Anti Bloat part of the Flat Belly Diet and I can honestly say that I won't be sad to see it end.  Overall it has been pretty easy to follow.  I have been feeling hungry at night but nothing too bad.  I have found the only part that has been hard has been the amount of sunflower seeds you need to consume for breakfast......1/4 cup!!!  After tomorrow I don't want to look at another sunflower seed again lol.

This morning's weigh in was another pleasant surprise.

Hubby lost 1.0kgs making a total of 3kgs lost.
I lost 600grams bringing my total to 1.6kgs lost.

Now if it follows the same pattern it did last year when we started this diet my weight loss should slow down to a dribble once I get past the first 4 days lol.  I remember getting cranky because hubby continued to lose decent numbers each week, while I lost only about 300 grams a week, so we shall see what happens this time!  Its so unfair that men can drop weight easily and us girls have bodies that just seem to want to hold onto every last gram of fat it can :(

But moving on lol, I am determined not to dwell on the negative for this "regime" and only focus on the fact that it can only be doing me good and I will be happy at the end of the 6 months! 

It has been rather amusing the last two mornings, as my Mr17 has actually been eating breakfast with us, complete with a full dosing of sunflower seeds this morning,,,,I wish I had a camera this morning when he hit a large amount of sunflower seeds in one spoonful of cereal lol, it was priceless.  He didn't manage to get through all his sunflower seeds but I am proud of him for at least giving it a go.  Yesterday he had the cereal with us but only had about a tablespoon of the seeds, today hubby was mean and gave him the full serving!

Today's menu is as follows:
Breakfast - Weeties with Sultanas and sunflower seeds (the sultanas did a pretty good job of hiding the seeds!!)
Lunch - Turkey with cherry tomatoes and a slice of cheese
Dinner - Steak with Beans and Sweet potato
Snack - Peach Smoothie

Now on to some other news,,,,just to prove that there is life outside of this diet lol.  From the garden we have picked 5 pumpkins and we have another 3 left on the vine.  Two of the biggest ones had started to get attacked by those black lawn beetles but hubby chopped away the bit that they had started getting into and the rest of the pumpkins is perfectly fine.  (I was more inclined to just toss the whole thing but hubby was determined to prove his point that the rest of the pumpkin is perfectly okay lol.) 

The first pic is of our smaller 3 pumpkins which I thought looked so cute stacked into a tower lol.  As you can see the top one could have stayed on the vine a while longer but I got a little over enthusiastic with my pruning one the weekend and accidentally chopped his vine,,,whoops!

These two big boys were my pride and joy until I went to pick them and discovered holes on the section that was touching the ground.  I was mortified lol, my pride and joys were less than perfect!  Hubby simply attacked them with his little axe and voila,,,,we have perfectly good pumpkin ready to turn into soup for the freezer.

The weights of the pumpkins are:  4.1kgs, 3.8kgs, 3.9kgs, 2.8kgs and 1.9kgs.

Early last week we picked our first "Spooky Pumpkin" as the label on the seed packet called them.  I was pretty happy that out of 2 little seeds of Spooky Pumpkin that I planted I have ended up with 3 pumpkins.  One of them is only little but I have also had 2 large pumpkins, only one of which has been picked.  We picked it and used it for our roast chicken meal and with the left overs we made pumpkin soup, yummy!  I forgot to carve a jack-o-lantern with it lol so the boys have their eyes on the other large one that is still growing.  As Mr9 informed me,,,,a jack o lantern is the reason we got those seeds in the first place.  He is so right lol, so in the next week or two we will be carving our jack o lantern a few months early!

Here is our first spooky pumpkin....

and our mighty haul of pumpkin seeds,,,,,the kids are already imagining many, many jack-o-lanterns for next year lol......all I can imagine is the amount of space that many plants would take up lol.

Well I have rambled on enough for one day I think lol.  Have a great day everyone and I will be back tomorrow with more regime results!!

Our Garden Produce

Well here we are nearing the end of January already!  I can't believe the school holidays have gone so fast.  In that time I feel that I really haven't done alot with the kids and that always makes me a little sad.  Out of the 6 weeks of school holidays we have 3 kids with birthdays, Christmas, New Year and two full weeks where we have Mr11 with autism which sadly for us means being confined to the house while Hubby is at work because I am unable to take him out by myself due to his behaviour when he is with me.  This time with him also means that I have to stay within viewing distance of him at all times, also due to his behaviour.  The kids decided they didn't want to play board games or do any crafty things with me in the kitchen/dine where I can keep an eye on Mr11 this time so that has meant that they have been spending alot of time on their Xbox or watching TV as it has also been too hot to spend alot of time outdoors.  Having had my whinge though, none of the kids seem to mind, they have all seemed to enjoy the indoor relaxed time and I am the only one that seems to be bothered by it (Must be a "Mum" thing lol)

Looking ahead to the weather forecast for next week, the final week of school holidays, the forecast is for high 30's all week :(, way too hot to do too much yet again.  I think a trip to the movies may be in order and maybe a night time trip to the beach, out of the heat of the day.  Maybe we can get some baking done ready for school lunchboxes....oh yes and we have to do the dreaded school supplies shopping expedition!  YUCK!!

When we went away for New Year, the weather here was around 40 degrees and our poor veggie garden suffered majorly!  We were only away for 2 days but sadly my beloved tomatoes are yet to recover.  I am picking the tomatoes off them that were growing at that time but no new ones are coming forth at all.

Also we had a bad wind gust not long before Christmas which broke a huge branch (The main branch) off of our nectarine tree.  My Hubby hasn't yet had the time to chop it up and I am so glad that he hasn't.  We have been able to get a few kilos of nectarines off the tree.  I couldn't believe it when the nectarines which at the time of the tree getting destroyed, were lucky to be ping pong ball size, actually grew into normal sized nectarines.  They taste beautiful too!!  Sadly for the tree, it looks like the whole thing will now have to be removed as what is left just isn't worth having.

Here is a sample of our produce......

The nectarines you see are probably just 1/4 of what I ended up picking, with probably about another dozen or so still left on the tree.  Our strawberry supply has been pretty constant this year, even if it generally is only 3-4 a day.   The tomatoes aren't too bad, although not as nice as they should have been.  The two large melon like things on either side are our mystery items.  Believe it or not they grew from a Queensland Blue pumpkin plant.  I have others growing which look like they are supposed to but these two grew like this and the flesh inside was very pale yellow and the only way I even knew it was pumpkin was because of a vague pumpkin smell lol.  I cooked it up for the dogs and even they didn't like it.  I don't have a clue what happened but somehow we grew a couple of freaky Queensland Blues lol.

The joy of getting it right with Veggie Gardening

As many of you know, I haven't been that successful lately with my veggie gardening, with my greenhouse blowing over and destroying many of my seedlings.  Well I do believe,,,,,touch wood lol,,,, that my luck has turned.  I replanted seeds and I have had a huge amount of success, I quite honestly can't believe it!  So much success in fact that I now have over 50 tomato seedlings growing, just waiting for their turn to grow a little bigger and to be planted into the garden (I may have to give some away lol, I don't have room for that many!!).  We planted out some cucumbers, pumpkins,  melons, tomatos, and various other seedlings last weekend and they are all doing really well too.  This weekend I have some capsicums and some other melons waiting to go in.  Hubby wants to keep all the tomato seedlings and try growing them in buckets.  His plan is to preserve tomatos, lots of tomatos so that we won't need to buy sauce for pizza, pasta, or for that matter anything for the next year.....I know who he is thinking will do all the preserving lol and I don't think it is him.

Yes I know its not a fruiting plant but I just love my Fuschia!!  This was one I rescued from the sad table at Bunnings,,,it cost me $1.00.  1 year on and just look at the flowers!

When my little greenhouse toppled over, I did as a few of you suggested and I just threw the soil which contained the seeds, onto the veggie patch.  Well we now have nasturtiums, a couple of tomatos, and few other things that have popped up which I'm not sure what they are lol.  It has done quite well considering.

Recent rains have made the weeds go mad but here you can just see the nasturtiums that popped up after our greenhouse incident.  Surrounding the veggie patch are our fruit trees which we have potted up.  They are all doing so well!!!!

This year is the first year that we seem to be succeeding and it is amazing how you feel so inspired when you actually get a few successes under your belt.  I bought a raspberry plant last year and we put that in the ground a few months ago,,,,,I now have a few raspberry plants!  I can't wait to be able to make my own raspberry jam,,,yummy!  Our strawberries are producing, not huge amounts but enough for me to go and pick a few each day and not to have to share them lol (sshhhh don't tell anyone!!)


Just a few months ago our selection of 10 fruit trees arrived from an order we put in with Diggers.  They arrived as little sticks and we planted them out into large pots so that they could form a fence of sorts around our new veggie patch to keep the dogs out.  Well they are all now very healthy looking young trees.  There is only one apple that seems to be lagging behind the rest but that one thankfully is showing signs of growth this week.  We wanted to pot them up also because we are in the limbo land about whether or not to move and I know that if those trees get put in the ground then we will stay here because I won't want to leave them behind lol.  This block isn't really big enough for ten fruit trees, although half of them are dwarf varieties, I must admit.  If we plant them all our yard will truly become just a large vegetable plot, although with the world the way it is, that may not be such a bad thing!!  If we decide to stay here, then they will be planted out and our entire yard will become productive, that is my plan.  I figure if we are staying here then who cares what anyone else thinks lol.  At least we will be feeding our children healthy organic fruit and veggies and saving quite a bit of money in the process.

This is an old clam shell pool that now grows our Rocket and some lettuce.  We just planted a few cherry tomatos in here too.

Sorry for the sideways photo - Some recent purchases - Blueberry, Lemon Myrtle, Spanish Licorice and a couple of flowering plants

Our old veggie patch which has our rhubarb plant and two tomatoes left over from last year which are beginning to fruit again!

Mr14's Peacharine tree - hopefully next year it may get more fruit!!

Strawberries, Tomatoes and Passionfruit waiting to be planted out

Sorry lol,,,,,I just love washing on a Hills Hoist drying in the breeze!  This also shows how mad the grass and weeds have gone,,,,,this was mowed just over a week ago!

Our new veggie patch with Mr9's sunflowers growing bigger each day

My seedling table,,,,,,I just separated many of the seedlings yesterday,,,,as you can see we have many, many, many tomatos lol

I just can't believe my luck lately.......grrr

After spending a couple of hours in the garden yesterday, planting out a few seedlings and potting up some more seeds, I came home to a disaster zone after walking the kids to school this morning.  First of all I stopped out the front to check on our pumpkins and sunflowers we planted yesterday.  I was horrified to find 2 out of the 6 pumpkins that we planted had been eaten by bugs :(, one is totally destroyed, the second is about half way gone.  That was enough to deflate me but then I actually walked into the house and looked out the back door.  I just about cried on the spot. 

 Our little greenhouse which hubby had lovingly tied securely (or so we thought) up on two of our benches had blown over in the wind.    Now it is a little windy today but nothing in comparison to some of the winds we have had over the last month or two since the shadehouse had been set up, but this time it got blown over.  I am just totally devastated. 

All my seeds that I had spent time labelling, and planting out and watering for the last week or two and some that I had only planted yesterday are now laying in a mount of dirt at the bottom (or should I say top) of the shadehouse :-(!!!

Hubby had tied it up on to our benches because our older dog likes to go around the yard peeing on anything that stays still for more than 30 seconds and I really didn't want to have to put the zipper up and down with his pee all over it,,,,,yuck!

Right now I am considering my options.  They are:

1.     To scoop the soil out of the shadehouse and place it in the veggie garden and sort of see what happens;

or

2.     Just shovel all the soil back into the 30 or so containers and replant more seeds in it, relabelling as I go.

I swear my luck just has to get better eventually!!!  Right now it just seems to be one thing after another with kids getting sick, school issues, Hubby's work and now garden issues grrrrrrrrrrr

Seeds planted, blossoms opening, spring is here

This weekend saw me plant up about another 25 or so little pots with seeds.  I had more to get planted but I ran out of small pots.  I made the decision to stick with using some small little plastic pots that I have here rather than using those little cardboard style seedling punnet things.  I found the cardboard dried out way to fast.  I had also been using egg cartons but similarly, they dried out too fast and I found I had no success in them.  I have previously used both with success but I don't know what is wrong lately they just aren't working for me.  The weather was a bit unseasonably warm though so that may have had something to do with it.

I have quite a lot of little seedlings which I am hoping will grow for me after my last "seed planting day" I had a few weeks ago.  This seems to be my problem time usually.  I find I can get seeds to shoot but it is getting the little seedling big enough to plant out into the ground that I seem to struggle with.  A lot of them seem to just stop growing, they never get their true leaves coming through.  Pumpkins and cucumbers and the more robust looking seedlings seem to be okay but things like tomato, lettuce, rocket etc I have problems with.

I have a nice assortment of sunflower seeds which I planted which are growing well and I look forward to planting them out this weekend.  I can't wait to see those sunny faces :-)

Today I have my Mr9 home with me again, for the second day this week.  He has a bit of a cold but it seems to turn into a croupy like cough at night time and last night he began vomiting up quite a bit of phlegm so we are off to the docs a little later just to check he is okay.  After Mr11 having pneumonia the other week I don't want to chance it.

This year has been a bad one for sickness in this house.  My boys have always had a great record of not missing days at school.  All of them for their entire school lives have only missed maybe 2-3 days at the maximum each school year.  This year Mr16 has only had about 1 day off I think so he is doing well but the younger 3 boys sheesh!  Mr14 had to have a week off earlier in the year with a stomach bug.  Mr11 has had a few days here and there due to severe colds and of course he missed a full week with his pneumonia.  Mr9 has now had probably about 8 days off for the year.  It is so weird how this year has seen them all alot sicker than usual.  I'm still trying to work out what has changed.  I know that each fortnight when we have my stepkids, Miss12 is notorious for getting colds.  Every time she comes, she seems to have a cold, every time she leaves she has so kindly shared her germs throughout the house.  I swear I am at the point of telling her mum that if she isn't well she needs to keep her, but I know that I will be talking to a brick wall.  I think this would have to be one of the most frustrating parts of being a blended family, the sickness that seems to flow so easily.  The boys seem to get a cold from their school environment, then they end up getting another cold right on top of it from the other kid's school environment.  Step families could well be the greatest germ transporters known to man lol.

Today in my garden.....

we have seeds sprouting

Peacharine trees blossoming (well at least Narla isn't blurry lol)

Plum tree blossoming

Orange blossoms a plenty

and look who I found still tucked up in bed!!!!  It's Smudge, still fast asleep after Mr9 tucked her up snug and sound this morning before he went to school, lazy darn cat lol.

Changing times.....Changing tastes...How getting older give you a different view on things

The beginnings of spring are here.  I have a few little blossoms opening up on my nectarine, peacharine and plum trees.  There are little buds on the feijoas.  I have little blueberries beginning to form on my bush.   The strawberry plants have a lot of flowers which hopefully will give us some sweet strawberries.

On Sunday I went and picked some lavender from the front garden.  I love lavender.  I said to my Hubby how funny it is that when I was a kid growing up, I used to hate lavender it always reminded me of old people.  Now I don't mean that I hated old people, I loved them but I just hated lavender.  I think it always reminded me of people who had died somehow and how fragile life could be.  I grew up with older parents so I had more than my fair share of family deaths in my childhood.  I said to Hubby that I must be starting to get old because now I love the stuff.  It is strange how as we are growing older our tastes change so much.  I also remarked to Hubby the other day when my Mr14 was asking why we keep trying to grow veggies and fruit when we hardly have any success.  We explained to him that it was to save money and because it is something that we enjoy.  It is the hope that each little seed gives.  He didn't get it.  It made me remember how when I was about that age I thought gardening was pointless too.  I always told my parents that when I grew up I would just have a cement or paved yard, I would never have a garden and that was that lol.  Here I am now at the age of 41 wanting to move to the country so that I can have lots of land and to create a huge garden filled with fruits and veggies and other beautiful plants.  I wonder if my son will change his mind as he gets older too.

Hyacinth in a Bowl - Forcing Bulbs......my first attempt!

Earlier this year we went to a Gardening Expo that was held here in Adelaide.  I love going to these things, I love the feeling of hope and inspiration you gain from the shows.  I always come away from them dreaming of how my garden could look.......if only I had a green thumb lol.

Anyway, this year I saw these small boxes which were called Hyacinth in a Bowl.  They came in white, pink or blue.  These flowers were so pretty that I just had to buy one to give it a try.  I purchased the pink one.  It came with a glass bowl, gravel and 3 bulbs. The idea is that you place the gravel in the bottom, partly fill with water and simply nestle the bulbs into the gravel and place in the fridge for about 3 months.

Now as I have never done anything like this before I was very cynical that it would actually work.  My kids thought I had gone mad when they opened the fridge to find these things that they thought were purple onions sitting in a bowl of gravel.  I warned them all to stay away, well away, from this bowl if they valued their lives lol.

I watched, I waited.  I watched the bulbs turn a weird kind of colour in places, kinda black and yes, mouldy looking.  I was tempted to toss them out but decided that since I had paid good money for these darn things I would keep them going.  Slowly I saw little roots digging down into the gravel, slowly little green shoots began to stick out the top of one of them, followed shortly after by the other two.  I was pretty excited and wanted to share my excitement with my Hubby.  He was a little less thrilled than I had wanted him to be, so I gathered around the kids, showing them my little babies.  They all said words similar to "Great Mum, the onions are sprouting,,,,,but can't they do that just sitting in the cupboard??".  Okay I would in future just keep my excitement to myself.  Each day I peeked into the deepest darkest recess of my fridge, watching my little bulbs get a little bigger.  The instruction book said to wait until they are about 8cms tall before removing them from the fridge.

Finally about 10 days ago, I deemed them big enough, strong enough to stand the test of life beyond the fridge!  I placed them on my family room windowsill.  Here they would get plenty of light but no real heat, exactly what the instructions said.

Each day, you could see them growing.  Each night they were that little bit bigger.  You could see the flower buds swelling up from the middle of the leaves.  Then this weekend, those little buds were up above the leaves, slowly beginning to open.  Two days ago there was just one little flower bud opened, this morning, look what I have........aren't they beautiful!!!

Sadly you can only "force"bulbs once apparently, so I will need to toss these out when they are finished, but gee, they are just so pretty that I definitely think it is worth it.  Next year I will try to plant some of these in the garden and see if I have any luck.

Now if only I could get my seeds to have the same kind of luck as the bulbs, we may actually grow something edible lol.

PS....the kids and hubby were at least a little more impressed when they saw the flowers, not doing a jig like I was but at least they said "oh they are pretty" Lol

Bringing Cheer into a winter's day.....I literally did a little dance with excitement!!!

Oh Boy, you won't believe what I just found, you just won't believe it!!!

I struggle growing things in the garden.  I didn't inherit my mother's green thumb,,,I think mine are kinda black instead, but I try!!

This year I desperately wanted to grow daffodils.  Hubby bought me this huge bag of bulbs to plant and in amongst the Ranunculis and the Snowbells were, you guessed it,,,,,,DAFFODILS!!  Now there were only about 7 daffodils, but thats okay, I was ecstatic I had my daffodils.

Now I am a pretty useless gardener in the sense that if I plant something from bulb or seed, the poor little things can shoot and unless they are precisely labelled, I will have no idea what the heck it is until it flowers or produces something lol.  I am trying to improve on this but hey these things take time right????

Anyway, I planted out a stack of bulbs into some nice round planters I had sitting here.  I put a mixture of bulbs into each one and miraculously I have had a lot of them shoot.  I have been sitting here for the last week or so watching a couple in particular which seemed to be ready to bloom.

Today it is pouring with rain so I  hadn't been outside till just now.  It is still pouring with rain but I braved it and stuck my head out the front door,,,,and what did I see,,,,I saw a couple of little bits of white and a rather large patch of yellow in amongst the green of the weedy patch in the garden.  To show you just how gloomy today is, here is a picture of the sky,,,,,within a couple of minutes of this photo being taken, the rain started pelting down again......

But this, this is what I wanted to show you,,,,first of all my little Snowbells (I think that is what they are lol)

Aren't they just so precious!!

And now my little beauty, my most favourite flower of all,,,,,My little buttercup, My one and only (to this point) Daffodil!!!!

Bear with me I'm a little excited, this poor things was photographed from all angles....

Sorry for the quality of the pics,,,,,my macro setting just wasn't cooperating at that point!!

But isn't this little guy just adorable.  He is now sitting in a vase bringing cheer into my kitchen.  I did take a pic of him in his vase but for some reason the picture won't turn (grrrrr).

Daffodils always remind me of the Brady Bunch in one of their shows (I know I am showing my age lol), you remember the one where they sing "Sunshiney Day", I used to sing that song alot when I was a kid :-)

Ok, back to my housework (centred around my kitchen of course!), now that I have had a little sunshine brought into my otherwise gloomy kind of day :-D

Nursing Homes are depressing but fruit trees show me hope

Today I went to visit my Mum who lives in  a nursing home.  She is 81 years old and suffers from Dementia.  Dementia it is a word that strikes fear into most people's hearts when they think of their old age.  Nursing home,,,more words that most people live in fear and dread of.  To my Mum, the thought of going into a nursing home was one that she just would not even think about.  She had always said that the only time she would permanently leave her home was in a little wooden box.  That was a hope that I had for her too, I wanted her to live out her days in her own home, sadly that wasn't to be the case.  She has been in a nursing home for almost 2 years now and every time I go to visit I come away feeling immense sadness.  I feel horrible for helping to put her in there, I truly do but at the same time I know that if my brothers and I hadn't gone down that path, she wouldn't be with us at all now.  She could no longer live alone and it got to the stage where caring for her on the occasions that she came to stay at my house was very, very difficult for me.  She is diabetic and legally blind.  Putting her into a different surrounding is hard work as she becomes totally dependent on others for her every need.  I know that in the nursing home she is as safe as she can be.  I know that she is getting the care she needs, but that doesn't take away the sadness I feel.

She still knows who I am but it is almost impossible to hold a conversation any more.  She prattles on about things that have happened in her mind, although naturally she believes they were real events.  She talks about "Dad" coming to visit her soon (we still don't know if she is referring to her father or my dad (Dad died almost 24 years ago)).  I ramble on to her as best I can telling her all about what the kids are up to and what we have been doing but I now get next to nothing back from her in response.  It is hard work trying to hold a one sided conversation.  I help to feed her if I am there at meal times.  She is becoming less and less the person she once was and it is heartbreaking.  I don't normally talk about this on my blog as I feel it is something private and most people don't want to hear about the depressing side of life, but today I feel the need to get it off my chest, share it with someone, anyone.

I have come home this morning and gone out in the glorious sunshine that this beautiful Autumn weather has given us.  This is the blue of the sky outside my back door this morning...isn't this sky beautiful!!

Notice I have cropped out the lower messy part of the yard lol.  We are undergoing a back yard transformation you might say and it looks very weedy and messy right now.  We were progressing but then Hubby hurt his back and mine isn't the greatest at the best of times so everything has come to a halt.  Hubby's back is feeling a little better now so we are hoping within a week or so we can get back into it.

This little guy is my fuschia that I rescued from the "sad trolley" at Bunnings one day.  I paid $1 for him as he wasn't much more than a stick with a few leaves attached at the time.  Now I am no green thumb by any means but I love fuschias and wanted to give it a go to save the little guy.  Well, I am amazed myself, but just look at him now!!!  I can't wait until all those buds decide to open up and share their beauty with us!!

And now the grand unveiling our my beloved fruit trees which we received last Friday.  Last night hubby and I spent a lovely half hour potting them up.  They have gone in pots for the moment as we are considering selling our house in the next year or so and moving interstate and there was no way I wanted to leave my trees behind!!!!  So for now at least while we come to a firm decision, they are potted up with plenty of room for their young roots to develop.

Just disregard the shambles surrounding them lol.  Along the side fence you can see what is left of a rather large and unruly rose bush.  I want to replace the four rose bushes that reside along there with kiwifruits and raspberry bushes.

Here you can see some of the fruit trees,,,,the wilted one is a peach or nectarine, can't remember which.  I watered them all straight after I did the photos so I am pleased to say he is now looking a bit perkier lol.  The pots either side of the trellis like structure contain snow peas.  I am thrilled with these guys.  I grew these from seed,,,,,yes I know I can't believe they are still alive either lol, or for that matter alive at all!!!  Needless to say I am quite fond of these little plants.  I can't wait for them to grow and provide us with snow peas to go in our stirfries,,,yummo!

On the right hand side, on the rather dilapidated looking table are our feijoa trees, our strawberry guava and our Mr and Mrs Kiwifruit.  The kiwifruit was another plant I rescued from the "sad trolley".  This one was reduced to $10 down from $20.  I had always wanted to try to grow kiwifruit so I couldn't walk past and leave him there, I had to attempt to save him.  I am proud once again to say he is thriving.  He has nice new leaves and is looking very healthy indeed.  With all these small successes I have been having of late, I am slowly gaining in confidence with gardening.  I no longer consider myself as a "death trap" for poor little unsuspecting plants which I drag into my home.  Now I am happy to sit and watch each new leave develop and gaze in wonder at them daily.

And take a look at what I just noticed.  I just went outside to see if I could photograph some beautiful rainbow lorikeets which are going nuts in the gum tree shown in the top photo.  Sadly I couldn't get a decent shot of them as they are too high up and too far back within the foliage, but look what I found which I hadn't noticed this morning...... (I apologise for the blurriness of this first picture but I am using an old camera cuz I couldn't find any fresh batteries for the new one lol).....flowers on my beloved blueberry bush!!!!

We bought this bush last year and it was half the size it is now.  Last year we got a handful of berries off it and they were simply devine.  This year there are many little buds forming on it and these flowers have been sitting there, just as little buds for a little while now and finally one has opened up.  Oh I am so excited to see this, I can already taste blueberries,,,I cannot wait!!!

I am driving my hubby crazy and my kids too I think when they get home from work and school and I go on about each plant's progress lol.  All they hear about is my cooking, my plants or my crafts and things I want to make!!!

But hey, no home is happy unless Mum is happy right????

Preparing to change our garden space......one messy part at a time!

 This weekend saw us begin our garden transformation as I will call it.  As part of our simplifying journey we are determined that we will start growing veggies and fruit on a more serious scale.  We have decided to add 2 large garden beds into our small back yard and take up the lawn area that now lives there.  The kids don't really use the back yard for much these days as they have all outgrown the small area.  Now if they want to play they head down the road to the oval.  Therefore the backyard has laid dormant, used primarily by the dogs and cats and as you can see in this photo,,,,,tends to get very neglected looking.  The last few months we have basically done the bare minimum to the backyard, tending to just keep the grass area in check (as you can see by the photos though, the recent rain has made the grass grow like crazy and our lawn mower died a few weeks ago and we can't quite afford to replace it at the moment, so the whole area looks pretty horrid!

Well that will be no longer, of course we will still leave the dogs area to roam and explore as they like but we will have a productive section too.  We have placed orders for 10 fruit trees which for the moment we will grow in large pots.  Yesterday we bought 4 more feijoa plants and one strawberry guava plant.  These will be planted in the front yard, adding to the 5 feijoas we already have planted and our mulberry tree.

My plan is for the space along the fence to be filled with raspberries and blackberries and possibly kiwifruit.  This area will be underplanted with strawberries.

In front of this in the grassy area will be two narrow garden beds for zucchini, tomatos, cauliflowers, pumpkins and whatever else we decide or should I say lol, whatever else we can manage to grow!!!

This will be a long drawn out process like most things in my life but we will get there!!!!  Below is our dwarf orange tree which I hope will start producing fruit sometime next year.