House work (no, not housework)

My focus currently is getting my house ready to sell. A while back I was starting to feel quite panicky (which is unusual for me) about how much work was needed to get the house in a decent state for sale. Someone suggested I have a working bee which I hadn't really considered. I am definitely not good at asking for help - am far too independent for my own good sometimes. But, I took the advice and set a date and asked friends and family if they would be able to come and help me.

Well, Saturday dawned wet, cold and miserable but I got myself sorted, did some baking and crossed my fingers. In the end I had 13 people come and lend a hand.

Three very hardy souls had a preference to working outside in the garden. I thought they were very brave as the conditions were pretty awful out there. They did a marvellous job pruning trees, clearing out garden beds and water-blasting the house and deck.

Everyone else helped inside. By the end of the day the lounge ceiling was painted, the walls were prepared and the first coat of paint on, the bathroom ceiling and walls were prepared and undercoated, the hallway topcoat was complete and my kitchen cupboards were cleaned out and organised.

The kitchen crew did a fantastic job getting lunch cooked and served. I couldn't quite believe the generosity of people giving up their time to help me out - it certainly gave me the warm fuzzies as well as a huge sense of relief that the bulk of the work was done.

On Sunday my sons, their girlfriends and one of their friends came back and continued to help. So, by the end of the day the lounge walls were finished, two coats of paint were on the skirting boards in the lounge, the bathroom ceiling and walls were complete and a whole pile of rubbish had disappeared to the tip. A soak in the spa at the end of the day and Chinese takeaways for dinner finished the day off quite nicely.

I still have a long list of things that need to be done but none of the tasks are huge. By the end of next weekend I reckon I'll have 90% of it finished so hopefully we'll be taking photos next week and advertising the house for sale.

As soon as the photos are done I'll put up another post of before and after photos.

Garden tidy-up with a bonus

For a while I have been meaning to spend some time tidying up my vegetable garden - for one reason or another it hasn't happened - until today! I managed to sort out all four of my raised beds. I was considering taking before and after shots but, to be honest, I was far too ashamed of how overgrown they had got so you will have to be content with the after shots - oh, and some photos of the bonus harvest of the day. :)

So here are the photos of the beds after I was finished. I was very surprised at how dry some of them were - usually at this time of the year we would have had a fair bit of rain but it has been drier and warmer than usual.


I know they look a little bare right now. I am never sure what to try grow through our winter as we get quite hard frosts so most things don't survive. Maybe I will just leave them empty until spring. The next couple of photos are the bounty from my weeding session. Would anybody like some potatoes?


Mmmm, pumpkin soup. :)

Autumn harvest

Today's bounty was unplanned really. I had a self-sown tomato plant appear in one of my raised beds. The plant, with no care from me at all, has managed to produce a decent amount of fruit.
My friends and family will tell you that this is not something I would be especially pleased about it - I can't stand tomatoes. I often wish this wasn't the case as it does place limitations on foods I can eat. I have wondered whether I am just being fussy but the last time I ate tomato I was very ill. It's the only time in my life I am aware of that I was so ill that I burst blood vessels in my eyes from the vomiting. Oops, was that too much information?

Anyway, it's not like me to let things go to waste so I decided to collect up the tomatoes, cook them up with some onion, garlic and fresh oregano and freeze the resultant sauce. Of course the sauce isn't a lot of use to me but will come in handy for my family to use. :) Here are a couple of pictures of the dreaded produce and the sauce I made.

Garden surprises

I would love to be one of those people who has hours to spend in the garden and therefore be on top of everything that is going on. Sadly, with working full-time and having other priorities, that is not the case for me.

The upside of this is that, now and then, I come across little (or sometimes big) surprises. I had noticed a few things seem to have popped up around my compost bin and had realised there were several tomato plants - not much of a bonus for me as I detest tomatoes!

But today I finally had a bit more of a look and I have a pumpkin plant. Not only do I have a pumpkin plant but I also have pumpkins - at least three from the quick look I had this morning. I can see lots of pumpkin soup and other savoury, autumn dishes. Yum!

From the photos below you can also see I am way behind on weeding. Oops!

Moulting chooks

The saga with my chooks continues. They are not broody anymore so that is cause for celebration. Instead they (or at least three of them) are moulting - and not laying. Goodness, I never realised it would be so difficult to have a good egg supply. It seemed simple enough - get coop, get chooks, feed and water them, get eggs. But apparently not. They appear pretty happy with life and burble away quite happily when I see them. According to a wonderful forum I found (and the wonderful world of Google) I need to be sure to give them protein so they will grow lots of nice new feathers. Twice a day I am now giving them mash mixed with milk as well as their usual dose of fresh green vegetables. I am hoping this moult thing doesn't take too long as the three or four eggs a week I am getting is pretty pitiful.

My garden continues to provide me with the bulk of my vegetables - lots of zucchinis and sweetcorn. I am usually competing with the chooks to get any silverbeet but put some aside for me every now and then. My chilli and capsicum plants are all growing furiously and have loads of flowers so I am hoping for a good crop off them at some stage. They are in the greenhouse so any change in weather won't affect them too badly. There are plenty of potatoes in the garden - I just dig them up as I need them but pretty soon will probably harvest them all and find a nice dark place to store them.

Pecking order, vege garden and 101 things list

I am concerned about my chooks. Their coop has heaps of feathers in it currently and I am worried that one of my lovely ladies has decided she is queen of the coop and is pecking the others.

After feeding them the other day I hung around and watched for a while. Miss Broody (the supposed Queen of the coop) had been turfed out of her nesting box by me (as happens twice a day!). She stalked over to where the other three were munching away and started attacking them. I have three different breeds (not sure what breeds though) so maybe that is something to do with it? Hmmmmm! I have no idea what do you do about hen-pecking? Off to Google that one now but any suggestions are welcome.

My garden is reaching its peak currently which is sort of great but always a bit sad to know that my fresh produce supply will start to wind down over the next month or so. I would love to be able to keep my garden going year round but we suffer from hard frosts over winter which kill most things off. I will manage to keep silverbeet going (much to the delight of the chooks) and am going to research what else might survive in our winter.

I am loving having my 101 things list to motivate me. I review it every few days and it's a great reminder to me to get off my butt and achieve something. I love doing my sudoku although I don't always do one daily. I am almost on target with blogging once a week and I would really like to increase this to at least twice a week. I've had a massage, a bubble bath and am eating a lot more fish than I have in the past (salmon on Sunday night was divine!) I have a few things booked which will allow me to tick a few things off over the next couple of months. Next month I will blog about progress against each of the 101 things and needing to do that will certainly motivate me to get a few things completed before then.

Harvest time!

I had a craving tonight for fresh vegetables so went out hunting in the garden to see what I could find. This is what I found.

Two eggs from my chooks today so I have at least two laying at the moment. It's quite strange - when I go check on them there is only one who is obviously broody so maybe there are three laying for they are taking turns?

Dinner tonight was grilled chicken with steamed zucchini and silverbeet and with fresh sweetcorn. I have to tell you, the corn was simply amazing - so sweet and tender. The monster zucchini at the rear of the photo is sitting in the fridge while I figure out what to do with it. It may well end up in a pie or cake.

I went and had my massage on Friday. I tried a new place out and opted for a fairly deep massage to sort out my aches and pains. The massage itself was wonderful - a lovely Thai woman used her magic hands and ironed out a lot of the kinks I had in my back. Sadly I won't be returning to this place - the front-desk service was pretty shoddy (to the point of being rude) and the cleanliness etc of the towels was very questionable - plus the towels themselves looked almost threadbare and ancient.

Gulp! What a bad blogger I am!

It has been a long time since I last posted on this blog - and I have no good reason for that, apart from my normal routines being disrupted by Christmas. But I am now back - better than ever after having spent a relaxing time at home over Christmas and New Year.

With such a long break from writing I am a bit lost as to what to blog about first. I know I still haven't blogged with the result of my No spend month (and that was in November). I don't have all the figures with me right now so that will need to wait for another time.

A few people have asked after my chooks - my de-brooding exercise was relatively successful. After two days of being blocked out of their nesting boxes three out of four chooks started laying again - yay! Sadly last week one chook decided that being broody was a good thing so now I have two chooks laying and two chooks being broody. I will let it slide for now as I am still getting two eggs a day but as soon as that changes I will be back to de-brooding mode again. The positive thing is that the eggs we are getting are bigger than they used to be.

The countdown is seriously on for my son and his girlfriend moving out of my home and into their house. We are all very excited about that. Once they have moved out I will be continuing with my decluttering exercise. I thought I would be able to do this over the Christmas break but decided it would be easier once I have the house to myself and less furniture, etc to work around.

I did spend some time over Christmas getting some chores done that I wouldn't normally have time for. I have a large garden window in my kitchen (with a very deep sill) which needed to be sanded back and repainted. I have put that off for ages as I couldn't be bothered dealing with the mess that would create. But I bit the bullet and got stuck into that on a rainy Wellington day (ah, Wellington in the summer!). I think it stills needs one more coat of paint to be honest so plan to do that this weekend. Even as it is, it looks much better than before. The old paint had started to degrade and was flaking off in places - plus it was more yellow than white!

I also spent some time working in my garden. My pea crop this year has been a bit of a disaster. I'm not entirely sure why but some of it can be put down to the cats digging up the peas!!! Sometimes I think I need to devote one of my raised beds to be the cat toilet but knowing my little monsters they would ignore it and continue to dig up my seeds and seedlings! Other things have been more successful. My corn is coming along really well and my zucchinis and scallopinis are flowering madly so they will be producing pretty soon. I have chillis and capsicums growing in my greenhouse - they are growing well but something is munching on their leaves. I'm not too sure what is doing that right now but have sprayed them with a garlic / soapy mixture so hopefully that will get rid of whatever is eating them. I also have lettuce in the greenhouse so that is coming in handy for dinners. My "orchard" is still in its infancy - I got one cherry off my cherry tree and one raspberry off the raspberry bush. To be fair the cherry tree was planted a year ago so is still very young and the raspberry bush is probably about six months old.

I'll be posting some ideas for frugal, yummy meals for one soon so keep an eye out for that. Hope you are all having a great start to 2010 - I know I am.

8 days down - one slip

As I reach the end of day 8 of my No Spend month I am pretty happy with how it is going. As mentioned in my previous post I met my brother for lunch the other day. We had an awesome lunch sitting in the sun on a glorious Wellington day. It was great to catch up with him and totally worth the $23 it cost for lunch.

All in all the challenge is going well. It has certainly changed how I think about what I am doing every day. The only issue I have is that I have a list of things that is growing day by day of items I need to spend money on - next month. I need some putty to repair my garage window. I need some chicken wire to repair my strawberry bed cover. I am also plotting an extension to my chicken coop so that will require a bit of timber as well as chicken wire.

We've had a great weekend weather-wise - if this is indicative of what summer is going to be like I will be more than happy. The fine weekend has meant I have almost managed to finish painting the garage, mowed all the lawns and been busy in the garden weeding, planting seeds and watering. I made a point of taking my "before" photos of the garden on Friday so will post those sometime soon.

Attitude wins!

The forecast for the weekend was for rain. It would have been easy to plan for a sleepy, laidback day today. Instead I decided to go full-blast and ended up having one of my most productive days for ages.

Groceries were first on the list and were all over and done with before 8am. First thing Saturday morning is my favourite time for getting my weekly grocery shop out of the way. The bill was nice and low which made my day!

I put a load of laundy on and then had scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast (yummy fresh eggs from my lovely chooks!) while reading the newspaper and was at the gym by 9am. After a good cardio workout and some weights I was done with exercise for the day and headed to the library. I selected myself a good mix of books and a couple of movies to watch and then it was off to pick up chook supplies. I put my order in for wheat, laying mash and oyster shell then wandered off to get some cash to pay for it all (the store was having difficulties with their POS system). I managed to get a wee bit waylaid on my way back in the local craft store. I picked up a pattern and some wool to knit a baby jersey for a friend who is expecting. After picking up the chook food I headed for home.

It was raining on and off but it wasn't cold and it wasn't windy so I decided to get out in the garden which is what my original plan for the weekend had been. I finally planted my seed potatoes - I had been feeling guilty for not getting them in earlier but noted that some potato plants that had self-seeded in last year's potato patch had been badly frost burnt during the week so it was probably a good thing I had been a bit slack. I then planted my blackcurrent bushes that a friend had given me - I can't wait until they start producing but apparently it will take a while for that to happen. Once that task was done I got to work in the greenhouse and planted the following seeds : silverbeet, lettuce, sweetcorn, sweet peppers, zuchinnis, squash and chillis. My eldest son had ordered some super-duper hot chilli seeds off the internet so I planted those along with some other chilli seeds (not so hot) that I had bought. I spent a bit of time weeding the herb bed and planted some basil.

That was all the gardening done. I am in the process of having my house painted currently - the painters came the other day and waterblasted the house leaving lots of paint flakes around the place. I hosed the deck off and finally tidied all the miscellaneous junk off the deck that had been there for ages.

By this stage it was mid-afternoon so time to have a lunch break and get some inside jobs done. I spent some time sorting my bedroom out - general tidying up etc then it was time to have a bit of a relax so I watched one of the movies I got out from the library. Once that was finished with it was time to get dinner sorted - tonight we had homemade burgers followed by caramel dumplings - yum! And the evening has been spent getting my knitting underway - it's years since I knitted anything so I had a couple of false starts (of course I had chosen a tricky pattern!) but it's now going nicely.

So, reflecting on how my day has gone I realise today was all about choosing my attitude this morning, getting my body moving and working through my to-do list. Now I am happily tired and very content. Hope you all had a good day!

Grow your own and save

We are lucky where we live as we have a good sized section giving us plenty of room for vegetable gardens. I've been in this house for about 8 years and my original attempts at growing vegetables were not that successful. Over the past couple of years we've built four raised gardens and that has seen a lot more success in the quality and quantity of vegetables grown. Also, last winter we put in a greenhouse for raising seeds and for growing tomatoes. chillies and cucumbers. The greenhouse has been wonderful as we have been able to grow a lot more from seed making considerable savings.

Our garden over summer kept us well-supplied in many of our basic vegetables. We produced tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, sweetcorn, garlic, cabbages, broccoli, peas, zucchinis, celery and potatoes. In addition, our herb garden produces mint, oregano, rosemary and parsley. We're now entering the winter months so the garden isn't looking as luxuriant and is certainly not as productive. But we do have some cabbages and silver beet nearing harvest and have onions, carrots and parsnips doing well.

We struggle with keeping the garden organic (and have failed miserably so far) and I am researching this subject all the time. We've been inundated with caterpillars and slugs. I think, in the future, we will cover the gardens with netting to reduce the damage these pests cause.

In addition to the vegetables we grow we have started to work towards producing more fruit. Currently we have lemon and lime trees in pots, a cherry tree, a grape vine, strawberries, a passionfruit vine, rhubarb and a blackberry. Apart from the grape and strawberries, all the other plants are quite new and not yet producing. Next spring I plan to expand further and would like to plant blackcurrent bushes and raspberries.

I have never calculated how much our garden costs us but, since we have started raising the majority of our vegetables from seed, I know we're saving money every week. We are lucky to have plenty of space for our gardens but, even if we were constrained by space, I would find a way of growing as much as we can. I've heard a lot of good things about square-foot gardening and also container gardening. Both these methods could be used if you have limited space.