A cat in the garden

A regular feature to my garden, whatever the season has always been my cat. She is a small silver tabby that we picked up from the RSPCA four years ago. And what a cat she is! I have never met a cat better with children and so oblivious to bird life in the garden. She seems more than happy to laze around under the shade frames or broad leafed plants while our amazingly coloured native birds inhabit our yard and nibble on the sunflowers.

But now it is off for another call to the RSPCA as our wonderful cat was last seen 4 days ago - the morning that we arrived home from our holiday. Sweet cat come home, we miss you!

PJG

Garden adventures in New Zealand

I have recently returned home from a family holiday to New Zealand. Although hard to leave home and my garden, which I missed being in while we were away, I found myself inspired with seeing different gardens. New Zealand is a beautiful place - we honeymooned in South Island and vowing to return, took a family holiday for 17 days in North Island.

This time it was much faster paced, with small children racing us around different sights. The different gardens that we visited, did slow them down and quite flatteringly my boy referred to many gardens as "mummy's garden".

Hamilton Gardens (not surprisingly in Hamilton) was a favourite, in fact we visited there twice. They had many different "garden rooms" in different styles, taking you on an adventure as you wander from space to space, being moved almost in time, place and mood by the different settings before you. Perhaps my most favourite was the "sustainable back yard garden" which gave an example of how a sustainable garden can fit into a small average back yard, complete with chickens and bees. The next would be the kitchen garden run by the tech college students, comprising of 6 garden beds of around 15x15 meters surrounded by more garden beds containing permanent planting and fruits.

We have been discussing having chickens for a while and seeing them both in the sustainable back yard garden and some beautiful Chinese Silkies at the Children's zoo in New Plymouth (a small zoo but FREE!) we have been planning where their enclosure will go and how to design it.

We also visited an amazing park in New Plymouth with huge joining green houses entered through tunnel grottos that was really just like a garden in heaven. The air seemed to invigorate the lungs and spirit. My girl has developed an interest in gardens too, and between exploring the different areas, would stop to say things like "Oh Mummy, this is a lovely flower, it is so pretty".

What inspiration - and desire to return to my own garden!

PJG

Dinner vegies

With the vast number of pumpkins that we have at the moment I have been including pumpkin in many meals. Perhaps one of my favourite ways to prepare pumpkin at the moment is tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme and spring onion and roasted. Simple but so very tasty. We have prepared pumpkin this way using the Jap, Butternut and Golden Nuggets and it is delicious with all of them!

Last night we had pumpkin, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, red spring onions and carrots prepared this way, making a sort of roast vegetable salad - the cherry tomatoes were especially delicious! We served this with steamed beans and corn, along side our versions of 'surf and turf' (fish for me, steak for my husband, cutlets for the kids). I love meals where all the vegetables come from our garden, I feel such a sense of pride in our meal and our garden.

It used to be that occasionally we would be pointing out the vegetables in the meal that were from the garden "these are the beans that we grew" (helpful when getting littlies to try new veg), now we point out what is not "only the meat and pasta is not from the garden..." (and now the littlies eat all veg grown from the garden without question or hesitation!) I love it!

PJG

Pumpkin harvest time

This year I feel like the pumpkins have been so much more work than pumpkins are supposed to be. I planted out butternut pumpkins and golden nugget pumpkins. My husband loves Butternut pumpkins best and Golden Nuggets are usually the perfect size to cut and eat in one family meal, with no need for storing cut pumpkin in the fridge. All good.

But then the mystery compost pumpkins sprouted and were doing rather well. 'I really should let them grow', I thought, as they did go to all the trouble of growing for me... I had no idea what variety of pumpkin they were - pumpkin surprise! They turned out to be something like a Jap/Kent and what I can only describe as a cross between a Jap/Kent and a Golden Nugget. We have tried one of these and they taste pretty good.

The pumpkins are dying back, so I am pulling them out over the next few weeks - partly because I could actually do with the path space back again, but also as we really don't need any more pumpkins! This photo has the first mass harvest picking, although I have picked 70+ to date and there are more still to be picked. To think that there could have been more... I have spent countless hours slashing and yanking pumpkin vines off the path, only for them to be choked and impassable in only a few weeks. My arms prickling from the spiky hairs on the pumpkin leaves and stalks and thinking that next time I should wear long sleeves, but not learning from my lesson. I don't often walk out into the yard planning to garden, it's just a wander over to check something out, kids are playing well or helping me out and all of a sudden we have been out there for hours...

We carved names into pumpkins, our names, names of family and of our children's friends. This has been delightful watching them grow into name scars over weeks and months. Sometimes we go on garden walks to visit our named pumpkins. Sometimes my girl comes home saying that we need to write a name on a pumpkin for a new friend. I love that she sees sharing our produce with a friend is special and important. I love that she sees the sowing of seeds, the watering and caring for the plants, the harvesting and gifting of produce and the meal where the produce is shared, all as being special and something that we get great enjoyment from.

PJG

Eco paper pots

Yesterday's potter in the garden was very productive, with children who were helpful and excited to get out into the wet mulch.

We had lots of fun making pots with the new wooden eco pot maker that I purchased over the weekend. I have made paper pots before, out of an old Yellow Pages, but the hand crafted paper pots dried out easily and I had trouble making a flat base.

I had been thinking about how to achieve a larger pot with a flat base and then I came across this kit. It is basically a wooden cylinder which the paper is rolled around, overhang at the bottom is folded over and then pressed and turned in a wooden cap on the bottom which secures it into place. The bottom cap and cylinder are then removed and you are left with a flat bottomed pot!
I think that I might be on to a winner. Here are the new ones with tiny lettuce growing in them.

My girl was very helpful in the making of pots, even making some herself without any help! She then chose some seeds out of the seed box and has sown some sugar snap peas - because she can either eat them whole or shell them, depending on how she feels :)

PJG