Home Holidays

Rosemary framing the sun plaque

There is just one thing that I enjoy next to Tropical Holidays - that's Home Holidays!!  Time out of a busy routine to get stuff done!  What kinda stuff?  Anything and everything!  There is a ticking clock inside of me - one that wants to make time stand still, and in the absence of these magical powers, to make the most of every minute of my waking hours.  The lack of routines, getting dressed, to work on time, deadlines, general weekday business seems to shift and change gears.  I vacillate between making, creating, reading, fixing, planting, tending, contemplating and drinking endless cups of tea, dandelion and coffee!  Pure bliss!  And it is made all the more exciting when you can cross off the lists (yes, I am a listy-kinda-gal) and view all that you have achieved at the end of a busy but productively relaxed kind of day! And being a geeky list gal, I even add things onto a list, that weren' on the list, but that I achieved anyway at the end of the day and feel smug with myself!   Bet I am not making much sense to the sane ones reading this............ it's just that I have an awful lot of things I wish to do and achieve before I die.  Holidays are good times to catch up on those things!

The first up:  a whack of hand and body balms.  I have been running skinny on this since I finished my last one a few weeks before the end of the school term - and no time to make any up till now.

Simple body balm ingredients:  about 2 TBspn beeswax, cup of cold-pressed sesame seed oil and olive oil and essential oils of choice.  Lip balm is also another option to make with the same ingredients, just use more beeswax to oils, and use "edible essential oils like peppermint.   Easy peasy, and I make enough to keep me going for a good few months, and some extras to give away.

Ingredients for hand and body balm

Finished tins of hand and body balms.  Great for tucking one in a handbag,
one next to the bed and one on the windowsill in front of the washing up sink!

Using recycled mint tins.

A quick jar refill of Gardeners hand and foot scrub: add 6 TBspn organic sugar to a jar, mix in 2 TBspn olive oil and some peppermint essential oil.  A teaspoon of this can be used to exfoliate hands or feet to produce the softest of skin - the key to romantic back massages from a gardener!

Hand and Foot Scrub

Last weekend, I pulled out some berries left over from my smoothie making expeditions, and combined gooseberries with strawberries to make a mixed berry jam.  Looks yum, haven't tried it yet but no reason why it shouldn't taste as good as it looks!  Jam is sooo easy to make - I use 1kg fruit to 750g sugar (organic golden).  Boil it up till it gives the setting test (actually, I don't bother too much about this - some of my jams don't set as well as domestic goddesses would have you strive for, but it still passes the taste test.  This is mostly due to the fact that I like to use less sugar than conventional jam-making would advise).  

Frozen berries

Gooseberry/Strawberry jam

And whilst the jam is bubbling like a witch's cauldron of spider legs and frog spawn, a spin of the blender produces some damn fine parsley pesto - I'm hooked!  The time has arrived in that gardening calender, when we can go into the garden and start picking our salad ingredients: small kale and silver beet leaves, nasturtium flowers and leaves, parsley, calendula flowers, lettuces are growing nicely....... add a few sun-dried tomatoes, olives and home-made pickles and pesto in the salad dressing............ yay!  Summer living is the way to go!  I know it's still spring, but knowing that summer is beginning to peek around the corner is thrilling!

Parsley pesto

Home-grown salad

The garden is definitely awakening, seedlings are popping up out of their soil substrate and flowers are brightening up the corners of the garden.  The last week and a half has brought the infamous spring equinox weather - evil spiteful winds and whipping rain showers.  But when the clouds part and the sun shines through, there is hope.  I am amazed that the garden has not been damaged ... seems everything has withstood the battering and ramming weather bomb and come out without too much bruising.  We did have to take our garden chimes down, as they were keeping us awake all night through the wind storms!  Clang, clang, clang - like living in a Buddhist monastery where they are constantly banging the lunch-time gong!

Beautiful baby sunflowers

The colour of these un-named flowers brings a smile to me!

Seed saving:  I have collected many seeds for spring/summer planting.  Pumpkins, kamo kamo, beans, coriander, dill, corn, nz perpetual spinach etc.  Many of my seeds are 5th or 6th generation GreeNZ seeds.  Meaning, I have been collecting them each year, from the same original parent seeds.  If you keep on doing this, the theory is that the plants become stronger for your growing conditions that they have been acclimatised to.

Saving seeds.  My daughter looking over my shoulder has insisted I
add that she cleaned and sorted these ones in such a lovely way!
(It was worth it for the kiss I just got as thanks!)

Holiday Gardening To Do List:

• Mulch blueberry bed with untreated cedar sawdust.  Check.   Done.  No weeds to pull for a few months.

Sawdust-mulched blueberry bed

• Pip fruits collared and pheromone-trapped.  Check.  Done 2 weekends ago.  Hopefully catch those buggery coddling moths!

Pear tree with cardboard collar to lure coddling moth ladies

Pheromone trap for coddling moth guys

Another cardboard collar to lure female coddling moths to lay their
eggs in here instead of the apple blossoms

• Set up tomato trellis for planting time.  Check.  Quite a good sturdy system even I say myself.

Trellised bed for tomatoes.

Seedlings hardening off outside.

• Plant out and protect salad garden.  Check.  All collared with anti-slug and snail deterrents and Quash bait.

Outdoor salad bed with lettuces, mibuna, rocket and brassicas.

Old catering size tins make great wind breaks, as well as snail deterrents.
The snail bait, Quash, is organic copper-based and non-toxic.

Lettuces in the hothouse.

• Mulch and suppress garlic bed.  Check.  Found some old wool fleece left over from building.  I think the garlic is cosy, warm and happy.

Snugly bedded garlic crop

Not sure why I added the frame, just like the sculptural effect.

• Sow seeds.  Check.  Have tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, beans, chillies and kale, cabbages and caulis all waiting to be planted out.  Next round coming up soon.  Just direct-planted my beetroot today.

• Get mike onto bamboo harvesting for stakes and support structures.  Check.  He did that with our German Helpxchange a little while back and they are ready to use.

Bamboo supply for garden structures

What now?  A good holiday read perhaps.  Lucky me!

Fatcat Shanti sun-bathing in the spring sunshine

Bliss!

Berry, Berry Smooth!

Home-grown bananas

Wowee!  Heaven!  I think I just invented our own new mind-blowing health drink that tastes sooo good, it tastes like it must be bad!  How can that be?

Well, I had a basket-full of fast-ripening home-grown bananas, what to do with them?  I hate to waste food, especially stuff that we grow ourselves.  Banana bread has been the obvious answer in the past but I just did not feel very breadish-bakerish, so I thought - "SMOOOTHIES"!

Strawberry-Banana Blend

I have spent a week making a recipe of sorts, which I tended to repeat, based on it being much like a mousse pudding rather than a smoothie.  It went something like this:

BERRY, BERRY SMOOTHie

2 hands full of brazil nuts - blended till fairly smooth, then add:

8-9 bananas (3 of our small ones equal one large store-bought banana)

One cupful frozen strawberries (from last summer's surplus)

1 TBspn honey

1/2 tspn stevia powder

1 TBspn LSC (linseed, sesame seed and chia seed, ground)

1 TBspn wheatgerm (optional)

1/2 cupful preserved feijoa puree (optional)

1 cupful of soya or oat milk

Blend all together until smooth.  Most of my smoothies had to be eaten with a spoon as they were fairly thick!  Hence, the mousse idea!

Chocolate Heaven

Fast forward to Sunday and I had just used up the last of the frozen berries to make a gooseberry/strawberry jam when I got the inspiration to do a chocolate smoothie instead.  Here it is:

OUT OF THIS WORLD CHOCOLATE SMOOTHIE

(or otherwise to be known as Feckin' Delishus Smoothie at home!)

2 hands full of brazil nuts, blended till smoothish

Add 9 small bananas (or 3 large store-bought ones)

1 TBspn honey

1/2 tspn stevia powder (green leaf)

1TBspn LSC

1/2 tspn vanilla essence

3 heaped tspn carob powder

1 Cupful soya milk

Blend all above ingredients till smooth.

Be prepared to be blown away!  Such decadence and opulence!  Ought to be banned!  It tastes fattening!  Utterly insane, to drink something that you know is packed with such a powerhouse range of nutrients, but your brain is telling you it tastes too good to be healthy!

It's been such a good roll, these smoothie mornings, that Mike eked out my secret recipe (wouldn't even wait for my blog to spill the beans) and took over.  Even when we ran out of home-grown bananas - now he's buying them from fair-trading, organic Ecuador or some-such-place!  And he's added blueberries the last 2 mornings - takes like dessert!  It's a hit!

 

Food for the Soul

Oh, what to do with old sneakers long past their Best Before Date?  Garden Art.  Simply screw them to the fence and hey, presto!  Instant garden artwork!  Maybe a little bird might even eye them out for a birdie condominium.  Who knows?

Garden Art

More inexpensive garden art -
shells threaded onto thick wire.

The garden is actually starting to spring to life (s'cuse the pun).  I eagerly waited and watched with bated breath - I was given 4 orchids which I had planted at the back of the house in a shady area, and one was promising to bloom. Now orchids fit into a strange category for me - I don't immediately feel drawn to orchids in the way I am to lavenders and freesias (nice smelly olfactory highlights), or dahlias and daffodils (bursts of brilliant colour, candy for the eyes) or even chammomile and rose geraniums (edible delights).  They fit in the category - "soooo ugly that they are rendered exotically beautiful!"   Well, I waited for the flowers, which took a week to open..... and between my snapping of this pic below, and picking the bloom - the bloomin' snails decided to snack on them!  To the point that they were rendered really, really just plain ugly!  Lots of frilly holes, which all edged up in oxidised brown, like a floral rust!  I was not impressed.  Note to self:  lay snail-fighting Quash thickly around the orchids!

Snail Fodder

The rosemary bush has gone BUSH!  It is as tall as I stand, and covered in tiny little purple blossoms which the bees just love!  So why is mine so large?  My rosemary is hugely under-utilised, given the fact it has so many properties to stimulate hair growth and condition (an infusion can be used as a hair-rinse), a mouth wash, it is a liver and gall-bladder stimulant and helps aid digestion and circulation.  I guess one can't keep up with all their is to do, with part-time home-steading! 

Rosemary blooms

Spring is a time to start thinking about the birds and the bees, the butterflies and the trees.  I have planted many chamomile plants out for the bees, and my lavenders are showing signs of new growth.  I watered the bird bath yesterday and was amazed to see a brown bird happily sipping from it this morning.  I have begun to refill the bird feeders dotted around the garden, to encourage the little winged creatures back.  The next day, they are empty!  I think it is mostly the little house sparrows we seem to be feeding.  The kowhai trees on our south side have already attracted a few sweet-singing tuis (also known as the parson bird).  And I have put out a pheromone trap for the coddling moth, to lure the males to a sticky death, so they can't mate with the females who lay their eggs in our pip fruits!  I have also added corrugated cardboard collars around the trunks (so the females, who manage to mate the only few viable males, can migrate up into the cosy nest of cardboard and lay her eggs there instead of in my apples and pears!!).  Set!

Kowhai flowers hanging in clusters brighten any dull day

An A-Frame feeder with spikes to impale fruit for
fruit-loving birds like wax-eyes

The fig and lemon tree reflected in the cottage window

The garden is again producing enough food to harvest every week.  Broccoli, lettuce, peas, jerusalem artichokes, yacon, citrus, silverbeet, parsley and kale.  We still have heaps of yams, a few leftover pumpkins and frozen beans in the freezer.

Beautiful vitamin C and fibre-rich broccoli

Plum tree candyfloss

Little blue-centred beauties

Slow-growing Viniglia  Acid-less Orange - looks like an orange but inside it's pink!
Tastes like a watermelon.  Strange but true!  A very old Italian heirloom variety.

Cat-ching Gardens for Felines

Our cat is a born garden fiend.  She's lazy and if left alone, will gladly choose the Snooze Option (or catnap) unless cajoled into a walk in the garden. 

Shanti at one of her many natural scratching posts outside

 She follows us like a dog, stopping to sniff things on her way, or playfully hide-and-seeking herself in a bushy caryx grass like a kitten.  She hides and then runs at you, at the last minute, avoiding a head-on collision with a deft alteration of her course, like a stunt pilot.  She will patiently sit and watch me sow my seeds, sometimes choosing to sit right in the pots I am working with, or just jump from raised veg bed retaining wall to the next, like an agile gymnast.  And lately, I've discovered her newly emerged legal cat high - catnip!  I wondered what it was that she was sniffing continuously, like a drug addict, and then remembered that I had sowed some last summer and forgotten about it.  It must have died down and then re-emerged in the warmer weather.  It is highly entertaining to watch!

The cat looks on to the garlic crop

Mmmmn, Love this smell!

Catnip up close - a cat's eye-view.

Weekly harvests looking like this at the moment

I am loving the colour in the garden.  Below are a few captured images to whet the appetite.......

The double beauty of freesias - to smell and to see

Freesias

Freesias

Freesias

Shade-loving Cyclamen

Early Cheer

Little Turkish fairy lamps (fuscias)

There is even beauty in the edibles.......

The edible beauty of calendula

Red-stemmed silver beet (bright lights)