Hippy Chick and Happy Chicks

  I Love this picture!!  It screams:  "A Hippy Chick Lives Here!".  It was completely and totally unintentional - having washed my tie-dyed table cloth from India, and $1 pants I picked up at a garage sale, at the same time.  I loved the colours side by side and had to run for the camera.  

Recently weeded under the wash line and barked  for easy-care.

What a World!  Russian meteorites, India protests violence against women and now South Africa in the lime-light!  Violence against women - the stats are shocking!!  Estimated that although there are 154 rapes reported EVERY DAY, figures are thought to be closer to 3600!  PER DAY!  Not per year!  How can that ever be??  We have got to stand united against this violence against women!  Vote online and add your voice.  I suspect it is a world-wide phenomena.   Politicians need to address this urgently.  Avaaz is an online support network - the Voice of the People.  This kind of violence is unsustainable!  Time flies by at a rate of knots, it has taken me more than a week to get back to this piece of writing and so much has happened since I started!  

On a much more peaceful note, we have helpers staying, Brittany and Michael, from the States.  What bliss to return home to work done that would have taken 4-5 hours, and yet you didn't have to do it yourself!  I figure out that by hosting travellers, you simply do more of what you would normally do - I have to feed my family every night, so I just add a few more ingredients to feed a couple of hungry travellers too.  In return, I have had wood chopped and stacked (rotting sleepers and slabs which we had always meant to do something with but never got around to), areas weeded and mulched, compost turned, pathways landscaped and produce harvested and preserved.  They are happy to stay another week and so are we!  They are great company and have learned to both play ukulele in the shortest time ever!  They bought themselves a little yellow uke, a travel companion to entertain themselves and others who would care to listen!

IN THE GARDEN:

Lavender is harvested.  This time I have had help - it is quite a time consuming job to remove all the little flower florets but is quite a heady-scented experience.  Calming.  Meditative, but hard on the fingers too!  As a sachet, lavender makes great drawer scenters, filling the contents with the sweet scent of the Mediterannean and keeping moths and roaches at bay.  They can also be tucked under a pillow at night, the aroma wafting into the olfactories as you turn throughout the night.  Sweet dreams!

Lavender cut and heads shredded for smelling bags.

Harvests in the garden are beginning to get larger and larger as we reach our mid-summer surplus!  Luckily for us, there are extra mouths to feed, so not much needing to be preserved, though I did make 3 more bottles of Dill pickles this weekend, as well as freezing 3 small bags of green beans.  Some bags of frozen plums and nectarines were combined into a mixed fruit jam - 9 bottles to tide us over the winter months - a taste reminiscent of summer.

Crinkle-top heritage tomatoes, radishes, beans, cucumbers and zucchini

Cucumbers, prunes, pears and zucchs.

Blue Lake runner beans and Yard Long Beans

More of the same produce...

And then some... night after night...

What to do with all these long veggies???  Made a sort of mousaka, without eggplant but with layered slices of zucchs, fresh basil, tomato sauce, sea salt and pine nuts. Slow- Baked on a low heat (150degC).  Very delish!  In fact, I have made it a couple of times as it used up so much of the zucchini.

And to top up  the nutrients in the compost bin, we managed to harvest lots and lots of sea-weed and sea-grass from our low-tide harbour last weekend.  Some went experimentally around certain cucurbits - so far, no sign of burn or salt overload, so maybe that was an experiment to repeat.  The rest went straight into the compost bin.

Sea-grass and sea-weed 

I have 2 rogue tomatoes that sprung up in my root bed, and I thought about pulling them out but left them and they thrived.  They are so full of tomatoes that their stakes could no longer hold them upright and so I have used our two ornamental garden forks as extra support.  Seems to be working.

The prune tree with bird netting protection - onion and produce bags re-used to good effect.

On the Chicken Front:

Sometimes we need to make less pleasant decisions and we had to come to the conclusion that as endearing as our little bantams were, they were too noisey for an urban backyard.  The solution came from a kindergarten mum - upon hearing my dilemma, she came up with the solution - she had a mother chook, with 8 babies, whom she had to separate from the rest of her flock, since they were prone to pecking the little ones.  Fearing for their safety, she suggested we swap chickens - ours for hers.  That way, Miss Molly (as the mum is named) will be safely away from the peckers, and her babes will be safe in our little chook tractor.  Once they get bigger and one can safely tell what sex they are, we get to keep two of the offspring girls and she will take Miss Molly and the remaining 6 back.  Liz and Spenny would get to be free-rangers on the farm! 

There was not much time to say good-bye to Liz and Spenny (Spence) since the swap took place that very afternoon!  All sadness was quickly shelved when we saw how cute Miss Molly and her chicks were, much oohin and aaahing ensued.   

On the first night I had gone outside with my headlamp, to check on our clutch, only to discover that they had not travelled up the make-shift ladder we hastily assembled for them that afternoon, to reach the sleeping quarters.  Spying dew on the grass, I was concerned the little ones may get sick, so in the dark, I groped around the shed and found a shallow box which I filled with shredded paper.  Miss Molly could not be persuaded to hop into the box, so I called my daughter and she helped me do a mid-night rescue mission - grabbing one chick at a time and popping them into the sleeping quarters, with Miss Molly shrieking with outrage, till we managed to capture her and re-unite her with her little bundles of fluff.  With hearts racing, we stood for a moment and listened to her little contented cluckings as she settled down inside the sleeping quarters.  Phewf!  Mission Accomplished!  Happy Chicks.

Miss Molly

Little Chicks

The story doesn't quite end there.  The past week has been a bit of a drama, with Shayni and I having to catch the poor traumatised hen and chicks each night for 3 nights, and just as I said, "I don't think I can be bothered to do this every night!", mother and chicks learned how to get themselves up to the sleeping mezzanine!  My Kindergarten mum sadly informed me that poor Liz had been ostracized by the others and pecked on!  So we decided to bring her back to put with Miss Molly but no sooner had poor little Liz been put into the chook tractor, when Miss Molly flew at her in a rage and attacked her.  So it was decided that she would be taken back and reunited with her sister Spenny who had happily been accepted by the others, and they would be isolated till Liz was okay to re-introduce to another flock of chooks further down the road.  So holding thumbs, the new flock will accept both character-filled Liz and screechy Spenny this time round.  Said kindy mum did say in parting - "Gee, they really are very noisey little chooks!"  And she lives on a few acres!!  I hope all ends well ......

Gorgeous Sunflower

With the extra help in the garden, I was able to take a deep breath and look around our little piece of paradise and marvel at Nature in all her glory!  The flowers, the fruits and veggies, the creatures: bees, bumblebees, praying mantises, butterflies..... A little piece of Paradise!

New shade hibuscus:  Flame

Pink Hibiscus

Fantastic February Fare

GARDEN FRONT
 It starts!  The mad summer basket-a-night harvests!  What a wonderful frenetic time!  We eat so much fresh food and still have plenty to preserve!  Everything is coming up cucumbers, beans and zucchinis!  We have been stir-frying our fresh onions, with zucchini and jazzing it up with freshly squeezed lemon juice and tamari (soy sauce).  Then adding seaweed noodles or rice or even on top of toast and cheese!  Yum!  Sadly, we would be harvesting mega-amounts of tomatoes at this time of year too, if it weren't for the fact that more than half my tomatoes succumbed to blight due to the unprecedented amount of rainfall at the beginning of summer!  Bummer! 

Plums, beans, small crystal apple cucumber, pickles, tomatoes, zucchs and cucs.

The weather has been beaut lately and while I feel for those who are experiencing drought conditions all over the country and accross the Tasman, I am loving it!  Luckily we have a sprinkler system in our veg beds which can be switched on and off for 15 mins each day or two as needed.  Other areas of the garden are lucky to be hand-watered once every week or two.  So the garden really is looking great in all her summer clothing!  We harvested our garlic crop which was a flop too, thanks to all the rain we had early in the season!  Bulbs were not fully formed on many, with plenty undersized ones.  Oh well, can't always have success in everything we do!!  We can still use the garlic, albeit small.  

Old garlic bed which was host to the chicken tractor treatment  for 2 weeks before being
planted out with some red cabbage seedlings and beans which can be good companions.

Chicken tractor now sits on a pathway which has become overgrown.
 Note bamboo blind which offers additional shade on hot days.

As previously mentioned, beans are the vegetable of the moment!  I planted out 4 types of heritage American runner beans for the Central Tree Crops Research Trust seed saving project.  Lesson to self next year:  don't plant too many beans at one time!!  I didn't know what the strike rate would be and so over-planted the beans and look what a jungle they have become!  This tent-shaped teepee is planted with Turkey Craw beans on one side and Yellow Yeome on the other side.  The Turkey Craw seem to be more prolific and earlier cropping than the Yellows.  I picked a small basket-full on Saturday and managed to prepare 4 bags for freezing, with a small bag of fresh beans left over to cook and eat.  The beans are all named after Native American tribes - Yeome, Hopi and Apache.  The Turkey Craw is named after a story of a hunter who shot a turkey and found the seed in it's craw or crop.  Very, very cool to be part of this project. All I have to do is save some seed and send it back and report on the growing conditions.

Bean Jungle

Red Turkey Craw bean harvest

 Mellow Yellow  Yeome

Our plum harvest is sadly finished, the tree did not bear too much fruit this year, probably due to the fact that I pruned it so zealously last year!  But we aren't crying buckets of sour sobs yet, as the prune tree (that's right - a prune is a fresh variety of plum, that is much higher in sugar content and therefore perfect for drying) is just beginning to develop the wonderful deep blush of ripeness.  The flesh is yellow and very, very sweet - beautiful to eat fresh!  I have bagged most of them to protect them from marauding birds who have already smelled their sweetness and are beginning to snack on the still-hard fruit!  Our Monty's Surprise NZ Heritage apples are filling out and dropping some fruit before fully ripe - good for cooking.  Unfortunately some of them have coddling moth!  What a bane!!  When fully ripe, the apple is tart but sweet, and is said to have one of the highest antioxidant levels of all apples.  Each apple is bigger than is comfortable to hold in one hand!

Prunes

Monty's Surprise 

Beautiful day lilies underplanted beneath our prune tree.

Curiously blue-black tomatoes ripening up

Turkey Craws

Grapes  clinging to our fence

 I have begun another little experiment - growing peanuts, ginger and potatoes in pots - that way I can bring them under shelter when the colder weather sets in.  I tried to grow ginger last year but the frosts got them.  So I will try again in a pot.  I got the tubers from our local Indian food supply store.  The owner, a friend, was throwing them out on account of them sprouting!  Perfect!  Just what I needed to kickstart my ginger project!!  Around the pots I have a dense cover of nasturtium and pumpkins.  I planted corn seed under and between the feijoa and fig trees - they are doing very well and the corn is fattening up nicely.

Pots of peanuts, ginger and potatoes

Nasturtiums supply ground cover between the corn, feijoa and fig trees.

Salads and juice - all from the garden!  A thrilling experience.  All home grown.

HOME FRONT:
Not sure how to describe our house style - Mike suggests Ethnic Fusion!  The exterior is Mediterranean, with Indian/Moroccan decor!  Added to that, a dash of kitch and a touch of  garish.  But home is where the heart is, where one can retreat from the craziness of the World Outside.  A safe haven.  A place where one feels comfortable and happy.  That is how our home feels to us.  How lucky to have a place we can call home.  Many people the world over don't have such a luxury!  A few palm fronds or corrugated sheeting is all that separates them from the elements.  It is good to count our blessings and experience that sense of gratitude and belonging.  

We went to the movies this weekend, to see The Impossible - a true story of one family's experience in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand.  It was generated by an earthquake of magnitude 9.1.  The movie was frightening and a little too real for us.  We shed a few tears in gratitude for having been spared the trauma and pain of being caught up in the wave.  Our own little family holidayed in Thailand at that time and experienced the earthquake and aftershocks on sheltered Koh Samui, being spared the full force of the wave which hit the western seaboard.  It was frightening for us, but we were spared so much of the devastation that occurred to Phuket and Khao Lak. Lucky us!   Peace, Love and Gratitude for Life.

Moroccan table

Moroccan lamp

And on the house front,  we've visited India.  One day we will visit Morocco!  And then maybe we'll cruise the Med! Then our home will make more sense to visitors.   As summer is so busy in the garden, we may plan some winter travel, follow the sun!  Sounds like a good plan!

Trusty little Masport Mulcher eating up pruned branches

ON THE ROAD FRONT

And in ending, I just had to add this gruesomely odd picture that I took on a roadside in Rotorua - a wallaby!  We were amazed, confused and disbelieving at first!  Was it a set-up?  A movie prop?  Was Peter Jackson filming an Aussie epic just around the corner?  Googling brings up the explanation - some marsupials were released into New Zealand in the late 1800's.  Despite attempts at eradication, it is not unknown to find wallabies, along with pesky possums in Rotorua bush apparently!!   This little guy probably met the Two Moon Monster (road vehicle) in the dark.  (Wallabies are nocturnal.)  

 Odd!  Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction!

Bottoms Up!

6.03.13 Post Script:  It seems curiously bizarre that I posted this yesterday and have heard that there is a Tsunami warning for New Zealand today after an earthquake struck the Solomon Islands this morning!  

Sweet Cicadas Serenade

My birthday card pointed by my daughter - appropriate!

The Sound of Summer.  Sweet Cicadas Serenade us with their shrill song!  Yup, gotta love alliteration!!  I know I do it often...... not being clever enough to really write poetic prose, I fall to common tricks of the tongue-twisting variety!  But jokes aside, the cicadas are shrilling outside.  I love it!  I don't even mind the annoying flies buzzing about.  Think I could comfortably live in permanent summer!  Perhaps a tropical destination for retirement.....sounds good!

The garden not only looks good at this time of year, but is also highly productive.  We can barely eat what we pick daily.  I am still amazed at how much food can be grown on a small section with care and time.  I hardly ever pick a recipe to make a meal.  I pick the vegetables and then come inside and think; okay, what shall I make tonight based on these ingredients.  I am so impressed with our cucumbers.  I have never had much luck with growing long cucs, only the smaller round types (crystal apple), so I am veritably excited about the long ones currently growing at a rate of knots every day!  We are having heaps of tzatziki (grated cucumber, drained and soaked in yoghurt, garlic, lemon juice and salt with a little sliced mint), cucumber salads, cucumber sandwiches and then some!  Cucumbers (native to India) are said to be very refreshing, great for detoxing and losing weight through being mildly laxative and removing faecal residues in the colon.  They are also great for skin, check out this great little face mask recipe, and for rejuvenating tired eyes by placing a slice over each closed eye and relaxing for a few minutes.

Daikon radish, Corrugated zucchini, cucumbers and beetroot

Our odd-looking black tomatoes

Plums, yard-long bean (first), cucumbers and zucchini

Rhubarb, zucchini, plums, tomatoes, pickles, egg, lemons, cucs and gem squash

Recent oniion harvest

Beetroot, purslane, zucchini, yard long beans, cucs

I harvested a kilo of beetroot on Saturday to make fresh beetroot relish, which is just about our most favourite chutney accompaniment to sandwiches, meals or on cheese and crackers!  I LOVE the colour it turns out and is a quick preserve to make.  1kg of beets makes 8-9 bottles of relish.

Beets to Relish!

leeks, rhubarb, lemons, radish and zucch

We have had the pleasure of hosting a helpxchange couple from Taiwan and Hong Kong last week.  They were delightful, interesting and interested people to share our lives and home with.  They were eager and willing workers, managing to paint our outside house wall, stack firewood, turn compost and help around the garden!  Always great to share ideas and cultural exchanges with others, breaking down barriers and finding common threads of interest.  A bonus:  they were avid ukulele players, having met each other at the Auckland Ukulele Festival!  We had a laugh on their last day when they took a photo of themselves with me wedged between them.  I pointed to the picture and asked them who was the yellow man in the picture.  They laughed and pointed to me in the middle - my carrot-eating complexion made me by far, the yellowest person, if we must talk about colours of people.  Who of us "whites" are truly white???  My husband is red, I am yellow.  Inside I feel brown - a kinship to Maori and Indian people.  And our surname is Green!!  Go Figure!  Mike points out that we like to talk of our differences based on skin colour but throughout the world, we all bleed red!  It's what's on the inside that binds and connects us as Earthlings rather than separate nations of people.

Sylvia and Lubio

Neatly stacked firewood

The undercoat for the back wall of our house completed!
Note our power monitor box in the foreground, which has 2
meters to measure the power going in and power going out!

Our house number made from a few broken tiles and plates

Astounding hibiscus in our courtyard entrance

Our little courtyard with potted hibiscus

A little boy at kindergarten  had a conversation with his mother not too long ago, which she regaled to me:  he knew that my car was the one with all the flowers on it.  But, he said, he wondered why I did not have carrots on my car, since I loved them so much!  Food for thought.  So when I spied the next rust spots to cover, I knew exactly what I was going to cut out of my old offcut car signage sticker sheets:  Must Love Carrots! One gold and one bronze carrot!

The little boy is delighted.

Latest addition to my car's rust solution

On the New Year's Resolution front - I have been managing to walk around our block most days.  It only takes me about 10 minutes, but I figure that's better than nothing!  And I have a mission - I take a plastic bag with me and pick up litter.  On Monday, there's lots more bottles and cans I can recycle - I figure it's from passing cars on their party trail.  During the week, it's mostly lolly wrappers and newspaper!

We have taught our lazy cat to sleep in a small cat transporting basket, instead of on every other surface she musters the energy to drag her sleepy body onto (she has tried several times to sleep on the harmonium!!).  She sleeps here just about all day and all night!  She's grown quite fond of it and can be found in the most interesting little positions!  You definitely can teach an old cat new tricks!!

Spot the cat!!

Shanti squashed in her little basket

IN THE KITCHEN:
A lovely way to eat healthy oats porridge in summer is to soak a cupful in 2 cups of plain yoghurt overnight, along with a handful of raisins/sultanas and a  teaspoon cinnamon.  Next morning, grate one apple into it and add honey to taste - a little reminiscent of Swiss Bircher muesli!  Super healthy start to the day!!  Delicious too!  Great for lowering cholesterol, improving bowel elimination, sustained energy and decreasing risk of certain cancers.  Cheap too!  And a quick and easy hot porridge in winter.  The Scots were onto it from way back when!  Aye!

Cold soaked oats