Tuesday, August 17, 2004

My busy day!

It's been a nice, but busy day today. I was out tonight for a 'girls night' at a friends. We had a 'Mediterranean' theme and I was taking some food. So I spent most part of my day cooking - Spanish omelet (12 eggs!!) & Salad and a Cheesecake. My day was made a little easier by both boys going to play at friends' houses, and the girls just helped me make the biscuit base for the cheesecake before they got bored and went off to play.

Whilst preparing the Spanish omelet...I found some Garlic bulbs growing in my fridge! Posted by Hello


so I thought I'd plant them properly and see what happens...!

While I was at it I thought I'd take some pictures, to share with you, of...Our 'guinea-pig hutch' garden! Posted by Hello



Jacob's apple tree - planted from a single seed last spring. Posted by Hello


Jacob's flowers that we planted for science last term Posted by Hello


At the other end of the planter we put some old pea seeds and bean seeds I found in the shed, but they never grew. My guess is they were too dead (open packets from several years ago!!) - hence the empty space. We'll try again next year maybe, with some fresh seeds.

Under all those flowers there is also some lavender growing, so hopefully that will flourish more once the flowers die off.

At the other end of the hutch I am nursing a Miniature Rose that almost died indoors over the winter, but seems to be doing well on sunshine & rainwater. And also Tiger Lilly that has unfortunately got really battered by the weather. The flowers were already finished, but I had hoped I might tend the plant for another year. I have 'stuck' the broken off stems in the soil and they seem to be surviving. I'm hoping they will shoot and live. More pics next spring maybe?!

Somewhere in the midst of my busy cookery, I had a brain-wave to draw some pictures in our yard for the girls to colour in with pavement chalks. This I duly did - hoping it would amuse them for a while.

Yard Art! We drew the pictures... Posted by Hello


We coloured them - a little... Posted by Hello


...and a little more... Posted by Hello


and then immediately the heavens opened and washed it all away :( ! It went from brilliant sunshine to torrential rain in seconds. It seriously is getting like the tropics here. As soon as we have any heat at all, hot on it's heals is rain, thunder and lightening.

In addition I managed to clean the kitchen, unload and re-load the dishwasher (twice) and put away all the piles of clean washing that had mounded in various rooms of the house! Brush the girls hair (no quick job sometimes!) & take them to Aldi to buy some bits and re-organise all the kid's millions of little drawings into the various boxes we bought (one for each child). The girls even had a rest too with cuddles and songs before they went down! I may sound like wonder Mum today, but remember - the boys weren't home!!

7 comments:

Classroomfree said...

Phew what a hectic, but wonderful day! I love the yard art, shame about the weather. We have been suffering from rain in these parts too...anyone see the floods in Cornwall??

Unknown said...

the boys might not have been there but you still had one more child than me with you, so yes, definately super mum! loved the yard art pics ;-)

Jax Blunt said...

I grow things in my fridge too, but usually I sneak them to the compost bin rather than planting them ;-)

Very impressed with the apple tree - did you plant it straight out or do a pot first?

Caroline said...

The apple tree was planted in a yoghurt pot at Jon & Jan's and lived on Jan's kitchen window sill for almost a year. It has been repotted twice this spring/summer and has at least doubled in size! I need to find someone who might be able to graft it for me. It would be a shame to not see it bear fruit now.

Jan said...

If you grow an eating apple pip it will grow into a weedy tree that's not strong enough to bear fruit. So you need strong roots such as wild crabapple stock, but you wouldn't want to eat the fruit of those. So you graft one onto the other.

Caroline said...

I know about grafting because of Jan!! And the way she describes it it does sound easy, but I think it probably takes real skill and Jacob would be devastated if I killed his tree - so best take it to the professionals!!


And yes Merry - we do have a very big yard, but with sadly no grass:(

Jax Blunt said...

Does that mean we don't have any normal apple trees any more - if they are going to have eating fruit they've got to be grafted? That's a slightly scary thought...