Mousehole

When I cleaned out the chickens, I found the woodlice pictured yesterday. When I cleaned out the rabbits, I found this mouse.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't have a decent escape route planned out and ended up trying to pretend he wasn't there in the top corner of the hutch. That good old flawed theory - if I can't see them, they can't see me.

Woodlice (are nice)

Setting Off

Sheltering

Fantail

Looking rosy

After a good, hard prune recently, our rose bush now appears to be flourishing. I was expecting to have killed it and certainly thought that I wouldn't see a growth spurt until next spring - after the builder has taken the fibrolite cladding off and weatherboarded the house. Hope he can work around it!

Timber!

We escaped the recent tornado that hit Auckland but subsequent storms brought a couple of branches down on our macrocarpa and one of the coral trees. Time to call the tree surgeon, I think.

Honey Tasting

I've done wine tasting, olive oil tasting, cheese tasting and even calvados tasting. But never honey-tasting. So I was thrilled to be invited to try four different types of award-winning organic South Island single source honey from J Friend & Co.

I dipped into clover honey, pohutukawa honey, manuka and wild thyme honey. My favourite, thanks to the unusually savoury flavour, was wild thyme honey. It really does taste of thyme and is said to be excellent with a good cheese.

Now I'm really keen to get our own hives. We have heaps of rosemary here so maybe we'll end up with rosemary honey... The next farm-based project is our baby though so our first bees will just have to wait a little longer.

Hedgehog

When we were sat in the living room the other evening, we heard a squeal from outside. I confidently identified it as a hedgehog, not expecting J to believe me and not expecting to be able to prove it.

So I was amazed when I returned from yoga later to find a spiny little creature tip-toeing across the drive and making a beeline for the aloe.

Here he is, trying to hide from my camera.


Sadly, hedgehogs are a pest in New Zealand. They munch through native birds' eggs and other native treasures like weta and skinks. I didn't feel inclined to drown him in a bucket though and J's suggestion of rolling him in mud and baking him for dinner would have taken too long so we settled for a quick pasta dinner instead. Next time...

Doorstepping

Our chickens spend too much time on our doorstep for my liking. They peer at us through the glass doors, intimidatingly, and crow under our bedroom window. Sometimes they even rope in the peahens to help.


Which means I have to sweep the front porch more often that is ideal. On the other hand, they do leave us some lovely feathers. I've started to make a mini totem pole with them by the front door, to ward off intruders (bottom right), but I do need some more crafty uses for them. Any ideas?


(And yes, I know that the paving stones need weeding. All in good time!)

Spider Plants

In London, spider plants were one of my great growing successes. Starting off with a mother plant gifted, aptly, by my mother, I produced dozens of baby spider plants and eventually couldn't even give them away. The house was covered in them and when I arrived here I thought I'd be pleased never to propagate a spider plant cutting again.

But then, feeling sentimental, I spotted them in a border on one of our garden club tours. And whilst no-one was looking, I pulled off a few sideshoots and they're now putting down roots on the kitchen windowsill.

So imagine my delight when I came across an article in the Guardian Online about recreating 1970s style using spider plants in hanging baskets. By the time we move back in after the renovations, my little spiderettes should be big enough to be a feature in our period home. And in our mild climate, all the excess offspring will flourish outdoors so I'll never be oversupplied again.

Basket Case

I have been following in my mother's footsteps and building up quite a collection of baskets. My two most recent purchases are pictured here - a beautiful round fairtrade Bolga basket from Ghana and an ali-baba style basket picked up at a garage sale for just $5!

Fortunately wicker is definitely a 1960s-1970s look so the baskets will fit right in once we've finished our renovations.

(Check back tomorrow for more ways in which we'll be putting our house in context.)

Uninvited Guests

I found out how much of a city girl I'd become at the weekend when I started putting away the fresh vegetables pilfered from my father-out-law's raised bed. I grew and ate my own vegetables in London but there aren't quite so many creepy-crawlies in the Big Smoke so I got a bit of a shock to find these little blighters about to enter the fridge with the green goodies. Next time I'll check carefully before even bringing them into the kitchen.

Harvest

I popped over to my father-out-law's house yesterday to check the mailbox and raided his raised bed at the same time. I managed to pick out a head of broccoli (it's not purple but it is sprouting so I'm going to see if it's a bit bitter), a beetroot and purple and golden chard.

I also snipped off a beautiful yellow rose which just had to be brought home and admired.

Toadstool

This is the toughest, woodiest, biggest piece of fungus that I have ever seen. And it's in our lawn. I'm not even tempted to find out if it's edible. It would need pounding and marinading for days.

Coromandel Cows

Driftwood

A great spot near Port Jackson on the Coromandel for gathering some interesting driftwood for the garden - I'm hoping that it will set off my cactus border at the front of the house.