Gardening Club

We had a working bee at the community club this afternoon so no photos but we had a lovely trip to a local garden last month where I picked up some ideas for our garden - a trellis/fence from fallen, lichen-covered branches and a new use for the concrete sinks which will sadly need to be evicted from our laundry when we renovate.

Prayer Time

Christmas Continues

I used to struggle to keep a poinsettia alive until Epiphany in London but this year my potted plant has gone on and on. I might just try to plant it in the garden next week though it does sound rather complicated...

I might even need to cover it for 14 hours each night next spring in order to persuade it to flower. Or maybe those are just the instructions for the northern hemisphere... I think there'll be some guesswork involved.

Books Galore!

I went mad again buying second hand books at the school fairs last weekend. This selection has some fantastically useful volumes - from home canning and finger foods (more morning teas) to crochet. And two copies of the same gardening book. Told you I went mad!



Can't wait to make some of these special seventies creations from the crochet book...

Cupboard Love

One of the side effects of giving up the weekly supermarket trip is that I've become more creative with leftovers and store cupboard staples. Last weekend, I made these pikelets with strawberry sauce.

The pikelets had been frozen after I made a double batch of mix when making blinis for a work morning tea. The eggs for the pikelets had come from our hens, of course, and the remaining ingredients from the pantry, including UHT milk.

The strawberries had been leftover from another work morning tea so I froze them. Once they'd defrosted, I mashed them with a fork and then warmed them gently with a half-tub of cream cheese (the other half had been used with the blinis at the second morning tea).

All topped off with a bit of basil-mint from the window sill, a gift from gardening club. A delicious, novel breakfast in ten minutes with time to unload and load the dishwasher too!

Supermarket Sweep

I've given up going to the supermarket. Not in a concerted, Guardian eco-columnist kind of way but I'd grown tired of the weekend obligation of making a special trip to the supermarket. Instead, we now stock up once every few months and make a quick dash for urgent things during the week in between. That's why our pantry looks like it is ready for Auckland's first ever snowstorm.



Instead, I now shop at one of several local fruit and veg outlets within a ten minute drive of our house. Some of the shops abut a market garden or orchard whilst others are connected with a plot a short distance away.



Most of the produce is seasonal with the occasional import clearly marked. And you get some lovely traditional treats like these manky looking blackboy peaches.

Catching up on the garden

After a few months of morning sickness and a hot and humid summer, the garden had become rather neglected. Until, that is, J's father decided that his new hobby was tidying up our block. Which shamed me into getting out there and doing a few jobs yesterday.

First up was checking on the weed tea. Interestingly, the two brews had developed quite differently. One had turned quite brown whilst the other, full of convolvulus, had sprouted. Both needed topping up with water. I was disappointed not to have any extra space to put in more weeds but I was pleased to see a brown liquid emerge from the tap when I turned it on.



Next, I fertilised both of our citrus trees, the old grapefruit which is promising a reasonable harvest, and the new lime tree (thank you Katie!) which has grown to more than three times its size this time last year.



And last but not least, I planted the native plants that I picked out at two school fairs last weekend, including a couple of hebes (top and bottom left), some coprosmas (?) (right) and a puka (centre).