Disputed

I would like to challenge the widely accepted notion that blue and green should never be seen…

and suggest that it should be seen everywhere.

Love / Hate Relationship

I am having a love/hate relationship with nature right now. In particular with butterflies and moths.

On one hand I love them.

Every single day we have Ulysses butterflies in our yard with their brilliant blue wings.

We’ve planted trees to encourage them into our yard.

They have courtship rituals outside my back door.

They lay their eggs up high and their fat green caterpillars eat their fill of leaves.

I love thinking that I am responsible for the next generation of Ulysses butterflies.

BUT…

I do not like the moths that lay their eggs in my soil nor their larvae, which are called cutworms, that nibble at the stalks of my tiny vegetable seedlings.

So far the beans have been chomped – we’ve lost all of those – and now they started on the capsicum plants.

I’d like to be the downfall of the next generation of these!

Any ideas or solutions?

I’ve got Mail

Sorry for my absence from my blog and yours. We have been a very germy household. First my Pete and then I have had a yucky virus. For three days I just laid in my bed and read books (actually, that part was kind of enjoyable) with aches and pains and a head full of slime. Too disgusting to be near anyone but those unfortunate enough to have to live with me.

Some lovely things did happen during those groggy, hazy days.

It was mothers’ day and my children were very sweet and kind to me. We had a family dinner in celebration.

My Pete cleaned the whole house and did ALL of the washing. He really did – while I lay sleeping and reading.

On the day I was feeling a little better I walked outside to collect the mail and found this.

A tiny green frog sleeping on my letter box.

Once he had been carefully removed I found something even better inside the letter box.

Something sent from across the oceans.

Something beautifully scented and divinely packaged.

Gorgeous handmade soaps from the very clever and extremely productive Julia B.

I wish that you could smell them. They are beyond lovely.

Thank you for your generosity, Julia. Something is on its way to you too. I hope it arrives soon.

Jojo’s Visit

Jojo came to see me for the afternoon yesterday.

“I bought shlowers for you Phrashey.” He announced as I opened the door.

As we ate our lunch he informed me that I could use my knife, but only older people can touch knives.

“Pippy can touch knife. I not touch knife, I not older. Ashy not touch knife too, Ashy too widdle to touch knife.”

He played drums while I sang:

Bee, bee, bumble bee. Can you sing your name to me?

We played a duplo game which involved a motor bike driving past animals sorted into groups; thee horses, three chickens, but only two cows.

Each time I reminded him not to put things into his mouth he asked:

“Why? It got germs?” (something to do with Yabba Gabba that those of us without three year olds are lucky enough to ignore…)

When he fell over we waited almost a full five minutes before he realised his leg was bleeding and immediately needed a bandaid.

So we watched Wiggles videos on youtube for a little while. Jojo was allowed to wear Pippy’s special headphones while Pippy was still at school.

As he left he told me, “You want to come to my house? You can come and play with me.”

Who could refuse an invitation like that?

Farewell

Rest in peace, Percy.

You were so loved.

Makes me Happy.

On Friday night we had a girls’ night. My two sisters, Ashleigh and I. First out to dinner, then onto a nightclub to hear some live music.

Sounds so hip, doesn’t it? Well… really we went off to a nightclub that had couches and chairs. I just sat on my chair and stayed there, waiting for the concert to begin.

Of course we were asked for our identification as we went through the doors. Although, once Ashy had shown hers the security person said that it wasn’t necessary to see the others.

A hopeful young man approached the beautiful Miss Ashy to chat. She looked over her shoulder to point me out and told him, “I’m with my mother.” He shook her hand and withdrew from her company.

Why did we go out that night?

To see the very beautiful Josh Pyke.

It makes me happy…

Tiny drops of water and big doggy footprints…

Over the weekend my Pete and I moved three trailer loads of dirt from the front yard into the new vegetable patch.

My Pete did the shovelling and wheelbarrowing and I just smoothed the dirt out with a rake after he had put it into the garden bed. You can see by this photo that my work was quality assured afterwards.

We planted peas, beans and tomatoes…

lettuce, basil and strawberries.

It’s still hot through the day here, so by the afternoon all of the little seedlings look parched and droopy. I am enjoying walking out the back  to offer them a sprinkling of water from the hose each afternoon.

This afternoon something was not right. My smoothly raked garden bed looked like a moonscape pitted with craters.

See all of those holes amongst my lettuces!

“WHO DID THIS?” I asked in my biggest voice.

This face might have given me the answer…

He’s still sitting in his bed in disgrace.

It’s Super

Today my boys headed off to buy two scoops of dirt for the new vegetable patch.

On their return I went out to have a look.

“Be careful!”, shouted Pip. “This is not just dirt. It’s superdirt*. It has a cape and everything.”

Luckily I kept my distance.

*Superdirt is the premium garden bed mix with lots of manure, compost and gravelly bits already in it.

Homegrown

So there it is…

right down the back of our yard.

It will be our very own vegetable garden and we are terribly excited about it.

We live on quite a large block of land, almost a quarter acre. This yard was fabulous when the kids were little. They enjoyed soccer games, cricket matches and badminton tournaments aplenty on this wide expanse of grass. Now, however it is just sucking up water and needing regular mowing. It has been a long time since the kids were just out the back and running around.

It seemed like a very good time to start doing something more productive with the space.

My Pete and I had long discussions about whether the garden bed would be two planks of wood high or whether he would make two beds, but eventually we made just one bed. It is a 2.4 metre square. It is a very good start. It will not surprise me at all, though, if my Pete build another one beside it in a couple of weeks. He rarely does things by halves.

This weekend we will get a couple of trailer loads of soil to fill it, then be back to the hardware store to get seedlings.

I hope this rain we are having hangs around until the plants are in the soil.

Then again… I quite like the idea of standing out there with the hose.

PS those people who voted for a deck… what a great idea! That might be the next thing I have my Pete doing while I prance about looking busy.

Working Together

Our backyard project continues to develop very nicely.

While my Pete did stuff with drills and clamps and hammers and a variety of other tools…

I roamed around the backyard and took photographs of butterflies resting on our trees.

It’s a partnership that works for us!