November 2020

   

November has followed suit weather-wise with October, except that there's been heaps more rain.  The farmers are mostly delighted, and we'll likely cut hay much sooner than previously.  Spring is in full flow - lime greens and vivid colours everywhere.  Bees are buzzing, tui are feeding, fruits are swelling and rabbits are devastating my vege plantings.

                                                             

The most exciting event of the month was the surprise arrival of our first lamb.  I'd been checking my last year's blog to find out when lambing last happened.  It was in October 2019 so I resigned myself to being lambless in 2020.  The very next day, Marie, gave birth to her little ram lamb.  His name is Saul - in-keeping with the Breaking Bad theme - and he's healthy and delightful.  I'm holding out a small ray of hope that he'll have some play-mates.  His mum keeps him close by, and his grandma is very challenging when you get within shouting distance, so he's not a pet lamb in any way.  The calves are growing too, but not too old yet to come over for some attention in the form of sucking your fingers, especially Pandora.

 

The peas that sprouted from the pea straw in the herb garden have been picked and eaten, and their pods are waiting in the freezer to be converted into pea pod wine.  There aren't enough yet, and I was considering buying some until I noticed that the new pea straw in the fallow vege gardens is sprouting away its own crop.  Just a little patience and I'll be able to use all homegrown ingredients, assuming that I remember and don't discover the bag of frozen peapods in the bottom of the freezer in 2025. 

Madame Cholet has been planted up with several pepper plants and some rock melons grown from seed.  The basil seeds had a magnificent strike and several have been gifted to work colleagues.  The rest are dotted around, inside and out.  The turmeric has started to sprout, but no sign of the ginger.  I'm suspicious that the ginger roots have died off, though they did look alive in very early spring.  The grain seeds eventually arrived and are now germinating nicely - amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa (black, red & white).  

                                    

The corn germination has been pretty poor, so I've sown more of my own Aztec seeds from last year.  Those that had germinated are planted out.  After being completely dug up 3 times, presumably by rabbits or birds, they're now protected by ground-level mesh that seems to have done the trick.  The acorn germination has been spectacular, and so there's the problem of what to do with 16 healthy young oaks.  The only acorns that didn't germinate were our competition ones, planted in a large terracotta trough on the deck.  Maybe it was too dry for them.  The acorns that were randomly buried anywhere were the most successful.  Of course.  

  

The flower garden continues to nourish my soul and create a haven for bee activity.  The old favourites - forget-me-nots, red poppies, rhododendrons, nigella, paeonies and asters - are in full, delightful, sprawling, vibrant bloom.  The wisteria flowered beautifully and the scent was heavenly, but alas the trailing blossoms didn't last long.  Karyn's vege garden is more of a flower garden now, with foxgloves taller than me.  She does have some veges in there too though, and I have been nicking her broccoli, so probably should be careful what I say...

 

The 2 rams were unceremoniously relegated to the orchard when the lamb was born.  They've been doing some ring-barking of the trees but nothing too damaging.  Happily the greengages are fattening up, and our opportunities for damson gin are looking promising.  The other plums are productive, not surprising in this region renowned for its stone-fruit.  Apples and pears are looking great too.  Even my newest cider apple tree (Slack Ma Girdle) has several clusters of fruitlets.  The perry pear is taking its own sweet time to decide which year to start fruiting. I'm resigned to waiting a while for its final decision.

Meanwhile, the house continues to be gradually torn apart.  The kitchen and hallway are now missing most of the vinyl floor tiles (yes, a pain-staking process) and some of the kitchen cupboards/benches have been removed (using screwdriver, sledgehammer and saw).  I'm quietly enjoying this destructive phase, and so is Billy, especially the grunty stuff.  Peter has burned the old units in a couple of big fires, along with several of the remaining old bathroom fittings that had been cluttering up the carport.  A new free-standing island and bench are tentatively in place, a gorgeous butler sink is awaiting its stand, and a dishwasher (yes, finally!), washing machine and cooker are stored in the garage.  We can't do much more until we get a date for the floor to be fitted, optimistically mid-January, but we'll almost certainly have to be patient with Covid delays.

 

Derryn and me have jointly bought an electric honey extractor, and we had a lovely afternoon in the fine company of Jo and Caroline, extracting some of her very early honey.  There isn't a word for the OMG sweet deliciousness of newly harvested honey, but it was absolutely amazing and absolutely required washing down with beer.  No fingers were lost in the extracting of that honey, so Health & Safety must have been adequate.  I'm hoping to have a couple of full honey boxes of my own when I next look.  

The womb is a heart-warming zone in which to relax and fish-watch, and a reminder that I really must get my A into G and get on with my formal hypnotherapy diploma. My tendency to creatively avoid getting my head into the portfolio is quite extreme, and it'll probably take a decent deadline to push me into action.  Hmm, maybe I need a bit of hypnotherapy to address my block...

Christmas plans are slowly unfurling, and I'm relieved it'll be a quiet and relaxing old Christmas this year.  A bit more Marlborough sunshine would be great, pretty please.

Womb With a View 2020

These photos chronicle the construction of our TradeTested 'Susanna' studio, fondly known as 'the Womb'.

 

                                

 

                             

  

                         

  

                        

And finally, the interior, including a storm in Peter's fish tank:

 

October 2020

It's been a typical spring weather-wise  Some frosty mornings with low level snow on Mount Riley, hot sunny days, sporadic rain and lots of wind.  Everything's growing, lawns need mowing, hedges trimming, weeds everywhere.  The flower garden is filling itself out and hay-making is being planned.  

Sam playing in the Christchurch Air Force Museum

We had planned to be in Australia, but that course was cancelled.  Peter and me took the week off anyway, and spent a happy weekend with Sam and Molly instead, trawling the tropical fish places, quirky shops and market (we don't get many shopping opportunities in Blenheim).  The rest of the time was spent at home de-crapping, burning what was flammable and taking nearly half a ton to the tip.  Not exactly a holiday, but very soul-cleansing nonetheless.  

The veg garden also got a look in, and much tidying and preparation of the beds has been happening.  Madame Cholet is nurturing numerous vege seedlings - all are last year's seeds or older.  Contrary to usual practice, I didn't make a seed catalogue order this year and I still have plenty left for next year.  The beds that will be fallowed this season are just about ready.  They were ready weeks ago, but I ran out of pea straw and the dastardly weeds took advantage.  The antique rotovator was chimed up and it made short (though exhausting) work of them.  The planting beds have also been rotovated and are now ready to receive their vege seedlings.  Oooh, the anticipation...

                         

The horse arena raised beds have had some attention too.  The strawberry bed is being covered with decorative gravel that Karyn inherited.  It disguises the ugly black plastic weed mat. I'll need to get on with bird protection as the strawberries are already blushing.  The feijoa bed has been weeded, filled up with more soil and thick weed mat applied.  It already had some bio-degradable weed mat that unfortunately let light through, so weeds still grew and then lifted the mat.  Most of the paths are weeded and the soon-to-be grain beds are good-to-go.  I've ordered quinoa and amaranth seeds (technically a seed order, but not quite, and who's judging?) that will have a bed each.  The 3rd bed will grow corn for milling.

                            

We managed to find an old crank-handle grain mill in a Christchurch antique shop. It took 3 runs through, on increasingly finer settings, to mill last year's colourful Aztec corn.  Quite a workout but deeply satisfying.  I baked some corn bread for the first time ever, and will definitely do so again.  Probably there are other recipes worth a crack at.  

                                                   

The calves have remained delightful and are now weaned, and in the case of Attis and Apollo, castrated.  They are less tame than when they were milk-feeding, but still enjoy a scratch from time to time.  Pandora had an episode of being pathetically unwell that coincided with a storm.  Blown down trees were blocking the road out of the valley but eventually we got out and picked up some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories from the vet.  Happily she recovered pretty quickly and doesn't seem to be any the worse for the experience.

The stone fruit blossom is done, and the apples have peaked. Tiny fruitlets are everywhere, including these gorgeous Red Bartlett pears.  And the currants are cropping abundantly. Clearly they never read the memo that told them to slow up their fruiting as they age.  The sheep have been doing a good job of keeping the orchard grass down and fertilising the ground.  They never choose to go into the orchard though, which we don't understand, so they just have a few days at a time in there.  And no, still no sign of lambing.

                                               

Both bee hives are thriving, to the extent that I could probably already take off a box of honey.  The hive that needed extra varroa treatment is bigger and better than ever.  Derryn's hives were so strong she decided to split them.  Jo got one split with caged queen, and I got the other, and Jo's bees have gone from strength to strength so far.  When I opened mine after a few days there was no queen and no brood, but several queen cells.  I added a couple of frames of brood/pollen/honey from another hive and am keeping my fingers crossed that they will sort it out and a new fabulous queen will emerge.  It looks like pretty normal activity around the hive entrance, but it's too soon to go back in to confirm.  

The gourds have been the source of much pleasure (and awful dad-jokes) this month.  They looked pretty unappealing at first, covered in mouldy patches, but these scrubbed off to leave beautiful markings.  Peter drilled bird-sized holes in each, and added some drainage and hanging holes.  The seeds and dried out inner flesh were removed.  Some were left natural, others dyed with some flax dye that I already had, and the rest dyed with a wood dye.  Both dyes took, but the wood dye took ages to dry and even longer to wash off my hands.  They've now been weather-proofed with polyurethane and are ready to gift.  I'm keeping some and have hung them on the side of the studio (now officially known as the 'Womb with a View' or 'the Womb' for short.  Extra blog post about the creation of the Womb to follow).  I might also fill others with potting compost to make planters.   

                   

The native clematis that is climbing the post at the edge of the decking has started to make its way across the chain suspended across the deck.  It's in full and spectacular bloom.  The Womb now has its own evergreen clematis too, and this one has scented white flowers.  There's also a large planter against the side wall that contains a blue/white flowers seed mix - a birthday present from Derryn. The seeds are coming through nicely already.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, plans are afoot to replace the downstairs flooring and renovate the kitchen.  Slowly the bits and pieces are being gathered and are cluttering up the lounge, but everything's a while off being put together.  It'll be a freestanding rather than a fitted kitchen and we'll be doing the destruction and some of the construction ourselves, starting with removing the current flooring.  Um...watch this space I guess.  Never a dull moment, or something like that.