Garden - Old Plants

And just an update on our existing plants - the ones that survived the winter and are now growning again.

The lemon and olive trees that Katie & Andrew gave us are continuing to grow, the lemon even has flowers on it!


And the rosemary which hasn't grown much in a while but I'm hoping the fertiliser that we got today will help with that.


Interestingly, last years parsley and chives are still going strong (well maybe not strong, but are definately still going).

And the rose that we got given when Kim passed away got a trim and is now flourishing with growth again. Can't wait for the flowers. It was getting attacked by Aphids though, so we bought some pest spray today to help it out.

Garden - New Plants

Well its now well into spring and after an unsuccessful trip to the animal shelter (we wouldn't have suited any of the dogs) we went to Garden World. Ahh Garden World, so big! And inspiring! And full of lots of people doing exactly what we were doing - finding new plants for their gardens for spring and summer.

First find was a Cat Snacks pack - Cat Mint, Cat Grass and Cat Nip, all in one container. We have it inside sitting on a plate so that the water doesn't destroy the floor. Whiskers loves it and whenever we go near it she comes running over to inspect whether we have destroyed it. It was on the ground for no longer than 30 seconds before she was quite happily eating the cat grass. Consequently this photo is with the grass a fair bit shorter than it was originally.


Mum always has a pot with Lettuce going for summer salads so this year we figured we'd do the same. This pack had Lettuce, Silverbeet and Spinach. Yum! The pots were on sale for $20 each and looked a lot like cauldrons.


Next was Tomatoes. We saw a new variety on Better Homes and Gardens on friday night, a kind called Tomatoberry, little tomatoes but apparently with a lot of flavour. So we got 2 of these to use with last years trelice. Last years were a bit of a fail, I think we only got like 10 tomatoes from them. Hopefully this year will be better.


Included in the salad pack were parsley and chives so I included them in a long pot with 2 strawberry plants and 2 garlic plants. Should be interesting to see how they go. I have never grown strawberries successfully so this shall be interesting.


We also got mint, which got awarded its own special pot due to its take over nature.


And for a bit of colour we got some pretty colourful flowers that will theoretically be hanging somewhere - once we figure out where.

C25K - Week 4

I started C25K week 4 last night. Didn't quite manage to do it as planned.

5 min walk warm up
Run 3 mins, walk 90 sec
Run 5 mins, walk 2.5 mins
Run 3 mins, walk 90 sec
Run 3 mins (was supposed to run 5 mins here but just couldn't do it)
5 min walk cool down

I will build up that last run though. Burnt 400 calories in just under 1/2 hour doing this, which is a quite good calorie burn for me.

I stuck at week 3 for about 3 weeks so chances are I'll be at week 4 for that long. Either that or I need to be more consistent in my training.

Craft Projects 2009

To follow off from last years craft projects here is that updated list with a few new items:

To do:

1. Original Quilt (Created back in like 2002 - 2003, the top is all together, just have to do the backing quilting and binding)
2. Cross stitch given to me by K (Haven't started it yet, was focusing on the Enchantress one)

Half Done:

1. 21st Quilt - Combined the squares and it looks good. Now to do a border and then quilt it together.
2. Enchantress Cross-stitch - Have not touched it all year. Unlikely to touch it again before the end of the year.
3. Crocheted Amigurami - Need to do her shell and she's done.
4. Finish off the dress I'm making for myself. It was going to be a template for the ball in Oct, however as I found The Perfect Dress the urgency to finish it isn't there anymore.

Completed:

1. Mum's Christmas present
   
2. Crocheted a hat and scarf and gloves. They were fun.

Lemonade Scones

I haven't baked scones in a very very long time. At least 6 years I think. I was inspired to do so because K and A are coming over for afternoon tea.

I had the option of choosing my Great Aunts recipe or use a Lemonade Scones recipe from Taste.com.au. I chose the new recipe because I've never used lemonade in a scone recipe before so it was kind of exciting. As I'd been raised on my Great Aunts recipe, when I heard that you could make scones from lemonade I knew I had to try the recipe, if only because of the novelty factor.

The mixture made about 9 scones, I used a glass to cut them into circles. They were quite delicious if I do say so myself.

21st Quilt

So this is my 21st quilt placed together. Only been 5 years but its all good.

Theres a row on blank ones all around the edges then up the top you can kinda see my idea for the border: Longer strips of each of the colours all the way around the outside.

Backyard Design

I downloaded and installed Google SketchUp which is a free image design tool. With it I produced my idea for the backyard, which was a good idea apparently as once Pete looked at this he was much more open to my idea. Yes this will involve some concrete cutting and paving but I think it looks great.

The green columns will be Lilly Pillys (or neighbours begone) seeing as we have the 4 story building next door. These'll be in raised garden beds to add extra height to them. The red column is a Japanese Maple in a halfwine barrel (which Pete is desperate for).

The black box is the BBQ. The wooden thing on the right is the table and chair setting. On the left hand side will be the water tank and worm farm (if I can convinve Pete of this. His exact words were I'm not touching it or going near it).