A bush baby

This cute little wallaby eats grass right near our lounge room window most mornings....I noticed the other day she had a super cute baby on board and it has just started to get interested in the outside world. It just doesn't get any cuter!!!

My kitchen garden...and some plants.

My edible garden right next to the back door - we're growing sage, parsley, oregano, curry plant, spring onions, bergamot, nasturtium....

 

patchouli

birds eye chilli

Three baby birds who just flew the nest...

dwarf pomegranate

Flowers!

It's the start of the winter season here but that doesn't mean there isn't beauty in our garden!

Poinsettia - even though the 'flower' bits are technically leaves ;)

Pumpkin flower!

Camellia

Eggplant flower!

Picture post!

 

 

Garden goodness and baking! Sunflower seed cupcakes, yummy winter fruiting strawberry and our first harvest of chia!

Starting points.......

Beanies and this time one for me too!!!

Cropped version of the 'my honey' cardi....

More craft at Christmas.......

So what are we up to now 11 or 12 days to Christmas?.......It's flying by so here is my next bunch of crafty things to show you as well as some baking and a critter.

A simple drawstring bag I sewed for my youngest son - I know Santa will be bringing some cars and airplanes so now he has somewhere to store them all :)

These cool socks are a RAOK for one of my friends who hasn't been having it that easy lately - I hope they cheer her up

I think this is an 'Imperial Moth'????? He landed on the wall beside my laundry and was so pretty and big I just had to get a piccy........

And a major tradition in our house is gingerbread - my kiddies cannot get enough so hopefully 226 cookies later we will last til Christmas LOL  Took me the best part of a day to make them all but they do look great when iced and finished.

These two are done with 'super Mario' themed ribbon for my next two sons - they will be storage bags for some bits and pieces they are getting :)

An angel for a friend - this time I crocheted some lace around the dress too

A second mandala for a dear friend :)

These angels are the finished group that my kids gave to their school teachers - always nice to appreciate their hard work teaching.

 

 

 

 

February post!

As February rolls on so do the bits and pieces of our family, garden and life.....Here is what has been happening in our corner of the world.

These habenero chillies became.......

Homemade 'HOT' sweet chilli sauce...my husband fav!

Our raspberry is starting to bring out the goodies.....

I finished a cute lil winter dress for a friends lil girl and....

then decided to add a matching beanie!

This has to be the squishiest, softest cowl ever (made in malabrigo)

And then I whipped up a heart doily for a swap.....turned out quite cute!

Green living adventures....

Summer days in our garden and the heat sees us watering like crazy (lucky we have big dams) and only able to do the bulk of the work in the late afternoon but so much is progressing and the days have been full of learning and just playing around in the dirt.
Over the last week we've planted turnips and silverbeet (spinach), tigger melons and I've just planted my pumpkin seeds......
We're also harvesting quite a few foods - below is my coriander seed harvest! I've chopped off all the stems and will now leave them with the seeds on to dry out for a few weeks in paper bags before sifting all the seeds and placing them into spice jars, I'm quite excited to have our own little stash of this herb and what's more I bought the seedlings as rejects at a nursery for only 50cents. It always pays to look in the clearance/reject section of a plant nursery....most plants only need a little water or care and they repay you so much :)

This is our other harvest - our sunflowers. We got heaps of seeds from our flowers and they also attracted lots of bees to our garden which helped the other plants. We are now starting two more gardens with some of the seeds.

cut and ready to leave in the sun for a few days to dry before rubbing out the seeds.

Strawberries are one of our families favorite fruits so we have to grow a lot of them to keep everyone satisfied with so many mouths all wanting that sweet taste. At the moment we have 4 long rows of strawberry plants and we are now propagating their runners and planting out more rows once they take root.
It's so simple - we just place pots of dirt beside the plants and put the runners into the pots where they find the dirt and take root. Once the baby plants are chugging along we snip them from the main plant and into their our garden patch they go ready for next season......

This is a tiny little mango tree that I have grown from seed......It's the way of nature but it sure does feel special to grow something from seed.
We will be starting a fruit tree area soon next to our vege garden so that is where this lil guy is destined for - we've also got a pomegranate tree growing away too.

And who is this?  Why little baby 'Arabica' coffee plant of course ....always the way I start my morning so I couldn't resist giving a coffee bean plant a go myself :)

And our mini greenhouses made out of cut juice and soft drink bottles are perfect for shielding the new baby capsicum plants from the toads who dig and tromple everywhere uprooting the poor seedlings (This is how I lost all of my celery seedlings that popped up, NOT happy Jan!)

And what else does every green garden need why feathered friends of course!!!! Meet Classic and Roast our new chickens! Already they've become so much apart of our family spending time with us while we garden. Our children love them and run around finding them grasshoppers and bugs LOL
Once these two start laying eggs that will be another item ticked off our 'provide for ourselves' list......

Til next time...........xxx

Conjoined twins....

Isn't this sunflower amazing....they're conjoined twins!
Both flower heads are joined completely on one side of each head, sharing a central "face" which continues on around the back. How interesting!

 

The beauty of nature........Raspberry....

 

Green living...

"The biggest part of how humans function must be green 

or we will have failed the planet"

Kookaburras taking time to survey our vege garden...

Our first raspberry

An ants view....looking up into the sunflowers...

Found this lil guy as I was planting flowers - google tells me it's a fiddler beetle! I love his markings.

Fresh made pesto for the freezer - my husband has grown the most yummiest basil this year!

Our vege garden....

We are trying to live our lives with respect and thought for our beautiful planet....true, we don't always tread lightly but each day we aim high and add another environmentally conscious act to our list.
This is our vege garden, it's a work in progress as all gardens are, and it's here that we spend a lot of time as a family. It's relaxing and fun at the same time.......we get yummy things to eat and our children get dirty (oh so much fun for any child) for a purpose.

This is the WIP of our vege gardens......

This is our strawberry patch.....our kids adore strawberries so we have to grow a lot

And this mornings pick......

Our patch of mint......it WAS a small plant......

The sunflower seeds our boys helped Daddy plant.....

And this is Daddy's project.....growing pines native to our area.