My birthday flowers were sitting right at the front door to welcome everyone who visited.
Thank you all for the birthday greetings you sent this week. I have to tell you, I don't feel like a 70 year old lady but I'm enjoying getting used to the feel of it. It's a good age. I feel like I've earned my stripes. 😊
April, week 3 in The Simple Home
By now you have probably had enough time to think about what you want to plant and where it will grow and hopefully you've gathered a few containers and some growing mix. Depending on what you're hoping to grow, you might also have a trellis or bamboo and string and you might have thought about fertiliser and a few tools. I hope you find second hand items and can keep your setup costs as low as possible because gardening can become expensive and it doesn't have to be.
Containers and potting mix
Types of containers
Look around your home, garden and garage, as well as your local recycle centre, to
see if you have any suitable containers. Most of them need to be big. If you restrict the root growth of what you’re growing, it will also restrict
your crops, so large containers are better than small ones. Of course you can grow a few herbs in small containers, or plant then around the edge of larger containers. Look for old rubber tubs, an old slightly rusty wheelbarrow, boxes made from untreated
wood, polystyrene troughs or metal containers. Most of the recycled containers
won’t last a long time because they’ll be sitting in the sun all year long. But
that doesn’t matter. You can change containers when you change seasons and
start planting again. Keep that in mind and as you go through the year keep an open eye for follow-up containers. And if you have any good ideas for containers that you're using at home, share them with us here.
Hello everyone. There will be no Simple Home post today but I'll have it up tomorrow. I had a computer-free weekend while I celebrated my 70th birthday. We had a wonderful time yesterday with the family here for afternoon tea. When I was asked a few weeks ago what I wanted to do, my immediate reply was: no gifts and I don't want to go out to dinner. I wanted to be at home with my family. So that is what we did and when they all arrived they brought strawberry sponge cake, cucumber sandwiches, chicken pieces and a bottle of champagne. I made some little sausage rolls and a blood orange cheese cake. So we ate well, enjoyed each other's company and when everyone went home, I had a very contented feeling that it was exactly the right thing for me. It's good when that happens.
Gracie has a new toy - a pink pig called Vivienne (Westwood). She took great care with Vivienne the first couple of days she had her but now she's slowly removing the ears and legs. Poor Viv.
Thanks for dropping by this week. It's good to see so many names I recognise from past years. I know most readers eventually move on but it's endearing and comforting to have many of you return year after year. I hope you have a great weekend and to those of you who are preparing gardens and containers for vegetables, herbs and fruit, I wish you the best with your endeavours. I hope we all have bountiful harvests in a few months. xx
It's been a busy week so far. We're still painting, although not every day, and we probably have another couple of days of work with it. I've taken the opportunity to go through all my old magazines - some of my British Country Living mags are 20 years old! I've thrown out all of them and just kept a few pages of recipes and gardening information. We looked after Jamie for a few days while he's on school holidays and planted up garlic and sweet potatoes bought at Green Harvest and the seedings we bought at the market last weekend. Even after a week, the garden is looking good.
For all the Gracie fans, here is a photo I took a day ago as she was enjoying a rest in the afternoon sun on her homemade tartan blanket.
April, week 2 in The Simple Home
For all our new gardeners, there are two things I want you to decide on this week - what you're going to grow and where you'll grow it. I hope you've found some big containers, if not, you'll need to get on to that this week too. If you're not sure what to plant, grow what you eat, not what's in fashion or what you want to taste for the first time. Your garden should be full of what you eat and that will probably be the common vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkins, onions, beans, cabbages etc. I'll write about two commonly grown back yard vegetables - potatoes and tomatoes. Planting larger plants first will give your container garden a feeling of being anchored and then you can fill in with your smaller vegies and herbs. If you don't want to grow potatoes or tomatoes, it could be anything that needs a trellis, such as cucumbers, peas or beans, or a couple of fruit trees in large pots.
Hanno and I were going to plant up our two potato containers yesterday but we were both exhausted after planting and fertilising the rest of the garden so we came inside early and rested. I chose the location for the potatoes last week but yesterday morning, sitting on the verandah listening to the radio, I realised the orange tree would shade them most of the morning, so I moved the empty containers to a sunnier space on the other side of the garden.
After a night with yoghurt draining over a bowl in the fridge, I finished off my yoghurt cheese this morning. I added salt and pepper and some chopped green onions. The whey was saved and will be used tomorrow to make a batch of scones. Waste not, want not.
Happy Easter everyone. 🐣
I'm viewing this screen with 20/20 vision; it's the first time my vision has been this good in 40 years. I had my final eye op on Tuesday, the cataract was removed and a lens inserted in my eye. This lens is the same prescription as my glasses so now I can see well without them - I can even tell the difference between HD and ordinary TV. Amazing. They did a test when I had my post-op check on Wednesday and that revealed the best of all results - 20/20 vision. I was really pleased. If you're thinking of having this surgery done, go for it. I was anxious before the first surgery but honestly, the worst part of the entire procedure is the six times a day eyedrops for one month, twice.
Hanno has been slowly getting the painting done and I'm very happy with the colours we chose - a very pale blue-grey and a darker blue feature wall. I'll be reorganising a few things in the living room and kitchen over the weekend (I'm not allowed to garden for two weeks!!) and we'll move closer to having it all done. It's another home maintenance item put to bed for a few years.
March, week 4 in The Simple Home
This is the final week in our food and home cooking month. We've been discussing food shopping, storage, stockpiling, menu planning, cooking from scratch, batch cooking and preserving. In this final week, we'll be talking about food fads, food waste and home cooking, surely the best food there is.
Very early last Sunday morning, Hanno and I drove over to a town about 30 kms away to buy our first seedlings of the season.
March, week 3 in The Simple Home
There has been a sharp rise in the number of products labelled 'organic' and 'free range' on supermarket shelves in the past few years. Often I am asked if the weekly shopping should include organic or free range fruit, vegetables, meat and chicken, as well as the newer organic products we’re seeing now – butter, cheese, wine and tinned goods. It’s a tricky one to answer because there is never just one clear path to follow, we’re all so different; we have different needs, tastes and incomes, and we all know that 'organic' and 'free range' come at a price.
What I thought was going to be my second eye operation turned out to be a post-op check. But now, vision in my fixed eye is just below 20/20, there is no infection or inflammation, the lens is in place. I go in for the second op 27 March. I'm pleased it will happen soon, I'm sick of having wonky vision.
While I've been writing The Simple Home series, you've probably noticed I'm not writing much about what is happening here on a day-to-day basis. Well, my friends, we're still pottering around doing what we do. Currently we're moving from a fairly slow time, when the weather restricted what we could do outside, to our busy season. March is when we plant our garden every year. The garden beds are still full of weeds with only one 90 percent ready, the rest are waiting their turn. We hope to visit the market next Sunday and buy a range of seedings. These will be planted along with seedlings we have growing in the bush house, Glen Large garlic from Green Harvest, ginger plants and Welsh onions in poly boxes and a stand of potatoes in a cage. We're keeping it small, having reduced the size of the garden last year, but we should have a good range of what we eat and that will help cut back our grocery bill while giving us the freshest food possible. It will be good to get out to the garden once again.
Above are the new chickens and below are some of the new and old chickens together.
Below are two of our Barnevelders - a silver lace and a blue lace.
March, week 2 in The Simple Home
This week we'll focus on shopping for food and I'm guessing that will mean vastly different things to most of you. Some will be buying everything they eat, some will be producing a small amount - maybe herbs or eggs, some will produce most of their food and many of us will buy raw ingredients so we can home-make some of the products we used to buy.
A popular meal here and very easy to make and freeze - lasagne.
I’ve gone from being an ordinary housewife, using my food
budget to provide as much as I can for the money I have, to being someone who
looks for fresh food that’s produced locally and ethically. I only want to buy into a food chain that considers kindness and quality of life in close alliance with nutritional values and profit. I always check labels and never buy products from compromised
locations such as China and Thailand. I silently sigh every time I pick up a food product that I know is grown in my own country, but it has been imported from somewhere else. We are shooting ourselves in the foot doing that.
It's been a busy week here. We started on another home maintenance project, I cleaned the fridge out yesterday and suddenly I have more room after four months of five people in the house. Gracie had a full wash and groom yesterday, I've been sewing and of course the everyday tasks of cleaning, tidying up, shopping and cooking.
I collect rubber bands and corks because you never know when you'll need a cork to plug a bottle or a rubber band to keep something together or in a bag. These are sitting on my kitchen window sill.
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