all the spring things

Well hello there, it's so nice to see you. How's your week been? Can you believe it's Friday again already?

This week I officially ran out of space in my green house. Every shelf and every spare bit of table and even parts of the floor are covered with pots and tubs of growing things. Bren keeps telling me that I'm early this year, that I can slow down and take a break, but the reality is that I love it in there; I love the floral smell that greets you as you walk in, the pots of colour on the window sills, the plants in their various stages of growth and the view outside of the kitchen garden nestled in the forest. Apart from a few more shelves which will hopefully be added next week, I think we've built the perfect green-house for me. And so every spare second finds me up to my elbows in soil, playing with seeds, examining roots, getting excited about leaves and chatting excitedly with my plant babies about how gorgeous they're going to grow up to be.

This week I noticed that the self seeded tomatoes in the garden are starting to come up, so my green-house seeded tomatoes are right on schedule.

The first of my cucumbers are up which got me very excited about pickle season but also a tiny bit nervous about growing without a poly tunnel this year. Fingers crossed for a frost free summer.

And the beans started raising their alien-like heads out of the soil. I know most people plant big seeds like beans straight into the garden, and I probably will too later in the season, but I do love watching them closely as they germinate in their trays, potting them into bigger pots and then out into the garden.

This week the green-house extension began. Or rather the green-rooms. Building on to the sunny side of the house, we're planning a beautiful, bright area with lots of greenery and a big old kitchen table and chairs, a mud room, and a wood shed/room. I've already bought some rope to start macrame-ing up some hanging baskets to dangle down from the roof.

When our friend Annabel the architect came over the other day to pick me up for gym she said she feels like our house is transitioning from the house you see and think - oh wow do Kate and Bren really live here? To the house that looks like our dream home. That makes me happy.

The farm we bought 16 years ago had a house on it that we never loved. We always planned to build another but the children and the business sort of got in the way. Now that we finally do have the time and the head space to do something about it, we're freshening her up to our taste, fixing her up instead of starting again, I think she's going to love it as much as we are.

This week I finally started planting out into the garden. For weeks I was hassling my farmer boy to spade the green manure in and to prepare the beds and then when the weather cooperated and he finally could, I got stage fright. I couldn't work out what to plant where, and how. 

Eventually I just took the biggest of the the plants in the green-house, strung up a string line and popped them in. So far, under the black crates for protection from the kangaroos until we put a fence up, are cabbage and silver beet, and in the next row we've got onions and peas. Hopefully by the end of the weekend there'll be a whole lot more.

In other farming news, this week farmer Bren spread fertiliser in the orchards and then sprayed them with seaweed, fish emulsion and potassium bicarbonate for prevention of powdery mildew and black spot. Just as he was finishing up Mother Nature completely cooperated and dumped 30mm of rain over the top. If everything goes to plan and we have some beautiful, still, sunny days for the bees to fly and fertilise the blossom as it comes out over the next couple of weeks, we'll be right on track for a bountiful crop. Fingers crossed.

Earlier in the week we started watering the garden again. It's funny how seasons change almost inperceptively and all of a sudden you find yourself doing things that felt impossible and unnecessary only weeks before. Later in the week it rained heavily for hours so we won't need to water again for a while.

After deciding last weekend that it was time to cut my losses and pull apart the cardigan I was knitting because it looked like it was never going to fit Miss Pepper properly, I changed my mind and thought I'd do the i-cord bind off up the button band and around the neck and see what it looked like then. After I knitted the i-cord bind off I still couldn't decide (and my model was at school camp and couldn't try it on for size) so I started to knit the sleeves, both at the same time, until she comes home. I'm assuming she'll be too tired tonight to try it, so tomorrow is the day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it worked!

Ravelry details here.

This week we've been picking Peonies, Camellias, Proteas and Waratahs from the garden and planting so many flower seeds in the garden and in pots.

I particularly love how the Waratahs start out looking so faded until it rains on them and they turn up the colour to bright.

I've loved listening to this podcast about the sports bra,  and this podcast about periods and menstrual taboos.

And I'm half way through and loving Brigid Delaney's book Wellmania.

See that asparagus and spring garlic, just picked by those hands? Well as we speak it's being cooked in some butter with some herbs and tossed over a piece of toast and is the reason I have to love you and leave you now.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Do you have something fun planned?
What are you planting in your garden at the moment?
What is your favourite thing to eat for lunch?
Can you imagine life without a sports bra!! Ouch!

Bye bye!

Love Kate xx