Busy Busy

Must blog about that…

I’ve thought that so many times this week, but too many competing topics and not enough time. Most of these thoughts have now disappeared from my head, never to be thought again.

Last week just kinda disappeared. I missed Harvest Monday, Tuesday Night Vego (and all the other stuff I normally blog about), mostly because I’ve been following a moving fountain around my house.

Little D is toilet training. I made him his own reward chart (took me aaages) with Thomas and Friends stickers to match. The first day was a complete loss, then on day 2 he worked it out and had only 1 accident in the whole day (during dinner). Since then however he’s worked out that he can do it if he wants to… but he just doesn’t wanna.

I’m ready to strangle him.

Baby T is developing a personality, but he has been a little demanding. He doesn’t much like sleeping during the day but he makes up for it by sleeping through the night, and he’s been doing that for a while now. I don’t think I’ve posted a picture of him since he was born, but here he is – getting nicely chubby.

Today P pressure washed all of the hard surfaces in the front yard – the paths, driveway etc. It looks so much better and this was after he spent several hours in the backyard deconstructing stuff so we can move towards a bit of landscaping. I’m really grateful, because it’s stuff I can’t do on my own. I hereby show my appreciation by deleting the photo I was going to post of him actually doing the pressure washing.

I constructed a cucumber trellice today. I have planted the cucumbers on the south side of the bed, and the trellice goes diagonally up, so the cucumbers will grow up towards the light, hang down for easy picking, and still leave room underneath for me to plant other stuff. It isn’t the sturdiest structure, but it should last the season.

I’m growing National Pickling Gherkin this year, and I planted out the seedlings this afternoon once the trellice was complete.

Apart from that , I’ve been slowly preparing beds and planting out the summer crops. The tomato seedlings have been pricked out and planted into larger pots, still waiting to get larger and the beds to be ready for them.

The first of the strawberries are ripening, but the first ones of the season are always small.

The apples trees are in full flower and I’m thinning fruit every day as they set.

I picked the first ripe mulberry today, and I bought some eggplant seedlings from the nursery yesterday. Eggplant is one crop I find difficult to raise from seed. It germinates just fine but doesn’t reach sufficient size to crop before late Autumn, by which time it is starting to get too cool. I find it is much better to buy established eggplant seedlings at about this time.

What has been keeping you busy?