Mumsie vs Cat

I went to water the back garden today and found it dug up with little paw prints all over the place. Those darn cats!!!! This is the new garden that I planted seeds in lovely straight rows last week and then tied string across to keep the cats out. Obviously that worked a treat!

Fortunately the Get growing weekly newsletter arrived in my inbox this week courtesy of mum with lots of reader tips about how to keep our feline friends away from the vege patch. Soaking tea bags in citronella and placing them around the garden sounds promising. We probably produce AT LEAST 10 used tea bags every day (and that's a slow day) at our house. Time to put them to good use. Now to scout out citronella oil at the local shops this week. In the meantime they also suggested leaving slices of lemon or spraying cider vinegar around the garden box so I'll see if we have any luck with that.

Neigbourhood cats. I declare war!

Our garden box...

It all started back around March when I decided my little garden of pots on the front porch wasn't big enough to house everything we wanted to grow. I do most of the gardening at our house but occasionally the girls help and chip in money, mostly from our groceries account if there's a bit of surplus. It's grown a lot in the past 6 months or so and here's the photos to prove it...

One garden box off trademe + soil from ZooDoo (they deliver)

= one garden ready to plant seeds in

It worked, the seeds started to grow. But issues with neigbourhood cats spread them all over the place

And so the string garden was born to keep the cats out

It grew

And grew, and survived the hail and snow...

This is it 2 weeks ago when we ate the last of the silverbeet and planted new lettuces and pak choy (the toilet rolls are to scare the cat away from the radishes. Everything grew except the caulis it seemed, they were just all leaves

Until today when the english flatty had a look and look what she found!!! Now she knows for sure that caulis grow above the ground which is something she has learnt this year. Bless.

We were all so excited and ran out to see for ourselves (that is me in the foreground with 6 months worth of hair. Yay!)

So very excited that we took a photo of all three of us with our bountiful garden

Then my very kind friend took time off from playing with his gorgeous baby to go out for lunch and take me to Bunnings to spend up on new soil. We've planted purple beans, peas, spinach, radishes and lettuces and taken a pre-emptive strike against neigbourhood cats by raiding all the water bottles out of the survival kit...at least if there's an earthquake and the house collapses our water is safe outside...

I also got more strawberry plants but was too cheap to buy another planter...and I found a tomatillo (cape horn gooseberry plant for sale. squee!)

And made the tough choice between buying a purple basil plant or chocolate mint

After all that gardening it was time for afternoon tea. I made the louise slice with pommy flatmate's homemade plum jam (half it went to the friend that chauffered me this afternoon to say thanks). It tastes prettier than it looks haha.

While jafa flatmate and I were busy gardening, pommy flatmate spent her day in the kitchen making rolls and fruit bread and tonight's dinner of egg plant and tomato pasta sauce... please Immigration don't deport her otherwise I'll have to bake all the bread myself! :-)

Green thumbs: front garden update

It's getting warmer and with it comes the cravings for salads chocful of summer vegetables. After a disastrous attempt at growing cauliflowers this winter (planted them in march and still no sign of anything but leaves), I've decided to concentrate on growing salad stuff - mainly rocket, lettuces, radishes and cherry tomatoes. 

When I pottered about the garden tonight, weeding and planting some new seeds, I noticed it's gotten a lot bigger than when it started with a couple of herbs at the beginning of the year. Here's a few pictures of my 'pot garden' on the front porch. I'll put some photos up of the back garden later in the week. This gardening jazz is rather addictive. Pity the landlord's not keen on me extending it onto the lawn so I may have to get creative and start gardening in hanging baskets. And I wish the neighbours would get rid of that ugly chair! 

I think the key to it still being alive (mostly) is that there's a fire hose right there and I have to walk past it every time I leave the house/return home so it's very difficult to forget to water. 

March 2011

March 2011

September 2011

October 2011

End of Sept 2011 (new pop up planter filled with lettuces)

It's official, I'm a right nana

I have a tidy bedroom! My flatmate bets it will last until Wednesday but I shall prove her wrong. it's been one week already (5 days of which I may not have been in Wellington). I've always been just a little on the messy side and having a tiny bedroom with no wardrobe doesn't help. However, it was uni holidays and so it got spring cleaned from top to bottom, storage containers were bought, photo frames that have been sitting there for months finally got filled and hung on the wall and a mountain of paperwork got sorted through and disposed of. And now I have a clear path from my bed to my door. Very handy!

Spot the hopelessy tangled ball of knitsch I've spent
 hours already trying to untangle

And I finallly hung up the photoboard I made with material I found at Fabricabrac
- sorry for the shoddy photo, too cosy in my bed to move!

I made lemon curd and jam and lemon curd over again while at my mum's. Not only is lemon curd delicious eaten straight from the jar, but also atop some homemade muesli with a little greek yoghurt fresh out of the new easiyo maker (can I give myself a gold star?! And it's even better in a trifle. With blueberries. Oh yes, I did!I also came back from the Waikato and got stuck into some gardening. Zoo Doo (number one for number twos - how's that for a slogan?!) delivered some dirt to our door and so I've planted lots of little seeds which I'll now need to find pots for. We even purchased a lemon tree before discovering the pots we gleaned are the indoorsy type without any drainage holes - need to track down a drill to fix that one. 

The pot garden

Flags have been hung in preparation for rugby world cup. I'm not letting an English flag get anywhere near the house though. Most importantly Maori TV has been tuned in, ready for some serious rugby watching from the comfort of my couch with a white 1987-style steinlager and a bowl of onion dip and salt and vinegar chips. Let the fun begin!

Tastes like Autumn

I love doing the weekly grocery shop. Most Saturday mornings I get up, chuck on a beanie to cover the bed hair (that's right, 7 weeks of growth is enough to cause bed hair, which excites me no end - it's growing!) and head down the road to Newtown School.

On the way there's often a group of Samoans selling sausage sizzles to raise money for a church or school or family holiday back to the islands. It'd be rude not to buy one, and so I arrive at the market hurridly wiping tomato sauce off my chin. Every so often I have to pull a u-y and head back to the atm because I've realised at the first stall I've forgotten the money.

The best thing about the market is how cheap everything is. 30 odd eggs for $6. All sorts of fruit for 99c at the moment. And best of all yams are down to $4 already when they are still over $8 at Pak n Save. $20 later, laden down with a myriad of fruit and vegies I head home for a spinach nest and cup of tea if I've got enough time before work.

Tonight I used some of these goodies that were going a bit soft to make a crumble was all the gorgeous colours of autumn falling leaves. There wasn't much that wasn't in it - braeburn, pear, persimmon, kiwifruit both green and gold, mandarin...so delicious and served with a small dollop generous drowning of custard.

It followed goat casserole. Sneaky meat while the pommy lass is out of the house.

The only thing the crumble was missing was feijoa. But that's alright. Here's some feijoa jam I prepared earlier.

And here's a parting shop of the first bounty from the vege patch. We're very proud of our wee radishes, which is a good thing since I didn't stagger the planting, they're going to be ready all at once - whoops!

That's autumn over. Fingers crossed the warmish weather lasts until the end of the month when I'll be in beautiful, warm Samoa!