Much of the same

It feels like we've been playing catch-up since my last post and I wish I could rewind time for a chance to slow things down and get things done. (I haven't even sent out my Christmas cards... eek!)

I did a little bit of working over Christmas taking Santa photos. Even though you can get some trying customers, I really enjoy it (this is the second year I've done it).
We had our usual busy Christmas, opening presents here with Grandma on skype, off to SIL's quickly to give presents then to MIL/FIL's for lunch and then off to visit some extended family for dinner. I'm always amazed at how many people are on the roads on Christmas day. It's a really common thing for people to visit multiple family members on the big day (it's like everyone tries to cram visiting every single family member in on one day) so there's a typical rush in the morning, just before/after lunch and just before/after dinner. Despite all the rushing around and driving, we had a great day.

The garden has hit it's peak and is now on the way down. We've gotten a few dozen grape and cherry sized tomatoes off our little plant and we'll get about a dozen regular sized tomatoes off our other bushes. They've struggled quite a bit with the heat - especially since our nights haven't been cooling off at all. I managed to get one very pathetic looking carrot and hopefully we'll be harvesting some corn in a few weeks.

My flowers have definitely hit their peak, I need to get out there and clean things up a bit. I was at the store yesterday and all the spring bulbs are out! So excited! I bought some tulip bulbs (my favourite) and I'll pick up a few other things, it seems like I have way better luck with bulbs than I do seeds. I might pick up a few big pots for out front to put bulbs in.

Other than that, there's been a few crafty projects which I might save for other posts and of course the regular baby wrangling. Except I think I need to start calling her a toddler now!

Gardening

Things have been trucking along in the garden department. I've pulled up all the radishes and planted  more (for some reason most of them grew weird and crooked/spindly), planted more carrots (only one is growing?!) and planted my brussels sprouts. On the first day of summer (Dec. 1st) one of my glads bloomed and currently there are three others about to bloom with a few other set to bloom next week. I'm waiting to see if the mess of green in the flower bed is actually flowers or just weeds that I should pull up, I'm starting to think it's mostly weeds! Hopefully they'll start to do something soon!

My tomato plants are starting to get flowers so I'm really looking forward to eventually getting tomatoes and my pumpkin plant has really taken off. Hopefully some of the seeds I planted a few weeks ago actually start growing! I seem to have had the most success with planting things in small pots and then transplanting rather than planting seeds straight into the ground!

Finally, Flowers!

It's been almost three months and I've finally got a few flowers blooming or ready to bloom!

I have a few flowers on a few of my balsam camellia plants and one of my glads is ready to bloom.

The only problem I have right now is I have a total infestation of leafhoppers. There are certain plants they leave alone but they LOVE flowers (they've eaten three of my pumpkin flowers and are working on the balsam camellia now). Now that I've finally ID'd what they are (at first I thought they were slugs/snails and then aphids) I can hopefully figure out how to get rid of them. Unfortunately I haven't seen any beneficial bugs in the garden which is probably why there is such a big infestation.

I can't wait until I have more flowers blooming (and when I can see what of the mass of green in the flower bed is flower and what is weed!).

Randomness

We've had a bit of a busy few days around here. Tuesday was spent at Werribee Zoo and then we had MG on Wednesday, normally Glen has Wednesdays off but this week he had to work so I had to drive him in and then decided to go straight to MG instead of going home since traffic in the mornings can be iffy. I decided since I was going to be early that I'd take Aurora in to the walk-in clinic just to make sure that her lingering cough wasn't anything serious. She got the all-clear from the doctor thankfully and we were in and out quick quickly.

Thursday was another day at Werribee Zoo (our membership has now paid for itself!) with Glen's sister and her youngest (he's 4). Before we went to the zoo we got word from Glen's sister that she was running late so we decided to take Aurora to get her 1 year shots. I had been debating whether or not to take her for that session or wait until tomorrow or Tuesday to take her to a session in our old suburb. Taking her to our old suburb would involve driving Glen to work again so we figured we may as well just go to the closest one. It was also convenient to have Glen be there for these ones too (mostly because she's so mobile now, it's handy to have another pair of eyes! I think we can now say that Aurora is walking, she walks 95% of the time at home now and is walking in public now).

The zoo was great again and 4yo nephew seemed to really enjoy it. I was remarking to Glen at how neat it is that we can go so much and see little changes and see funny animal things that only happen occasionally. A good example of this was while we were on the safari tour, the tour guide was talking about how giraffes are herbivores and we looked over and said "oh, well, they ARE herbivores but sometimes they find a dead bird and chew on it!" we all looked over and there was a giraffe munching away on a dead bird (all you could see where massive white feathers sticking out of it's mouth). The guide said that she's only seen that happen one other time. I didn't think I needed a third post dedicated to Werribee Zoo so soon after the other two so I didn't really take many bloggable pics.

The other exciting thing going on here is that we've harvested three radishes from our garden today!

I ate the smallest one and I'm going to take the other two to the IL's tonight. The small one was SO spicy! I know giving someone two radishes is sort of silly but there's only two of them and they eat a lot of salad so I'm sure they'll use it.

One of glads has a flower spear so we should be getting flowers on at least ONE of my plants soon!

Bonnets

We got back from our trip (which I'll write about soon) late this afternoon so I thought I'd do a quick post with photos of the new bonnets in action.

Quick picnic in Warrnambool

At Canunda National Park, SA

Quick snack in the car after a walk at Canunda National Park

As you can see, they worked well!

First Harvest

We've had our first mini-harvest from the garden in the form of two snowpeas and then another three today!

So far the snowpeas seem to be the only thing impervious to the pests we have in the garden (I think it's aphids and not slugs/snails like I originally thought) and don't seem to be suffering in the same way my poor pumpkin is. My pumpkin produced a beautiful flower only to have it totally obliterated by the pests. I'll be really sad if things keep getting eaten before they have a chance to grow.
I've planted a few more pumpkin, watermelon and cucumber seedlings to hopefully ensure I get at least one!

The flowers are doing well and hopefully I'll start seeing some blossoms soon!

Starting Again

I sort of felt like I painted myself into a corner with my last blog, both with the title (I've been in Australia for three years now and definitely feel settled) and with my serious lack of posting. It's not that I don't have time to update or don't get a chance to sit at the computer, I felt like I didn't have a whole lot to talk about and didn't want all my updates to be baby updates. I haven't had a whole lot of time to knit or do other crafts (though I seem to be able to find some time here and there to get some sewing done) and started to feel like if I didn't have crafty things to talk about that no one would be interested.
I really struggled to come up with a new name that would offer flexibility for the future, I didn't want anything that talked specifically of being crafty or of only having one kid (we plan on having more) or even specifically our location (we do plan to stay in Oz but y'never know!). I was having some serious thinkers block when it came to picking something (and of course a lot of good names were taken!).

Anyway, so what have we been up to? In January we moved from our tiny cold flat to a beautiful, double-story townhouse with a yard and small garden. It's so much closer to Glen's work which is awesome for having him home at a decent time every day and it's close enough that I can drive him to work and use the car for the day if I need to. So, that also means I've been doing a lot of driving. I can still only drive to the same half a dozen places but Aurora and I get out a few times a week and do stuff. We drive out to where we used to live to go to mothers group (known here on out at MG) once a week, we sometimes drive out to Glen's sister's for the afternoon and we're a short walk from the shops and library so we're there a few times a week too.
We took a trip back home in June and July to see (almost) everyone and have Aurora meet (most of) her Canadian family and as many friends as we could fit in to the trip. We did A LOT of driving (over 5,000km) and only saw part of two provinces. Aurora was a superstar on the plane and while it's not something I'd like to do often, it wasn't torture like a lot of people said it would be (I flew there by myself and Glen joined us and flew home with us).
We've been sick on and off since we got back from holidays (that's what we get for missing all the winter bugs by being overseas!) but still managed to have Aurora's birthday party a few weeks ago. Can you believe she's one already?!

Aurora painting at my mum's in July

And that's kind of where we're at right now.  We got up to some exciting things last week but I'm going to blog about that separately.

Sorry for my ridiculously long absence! I hope to start blogging again on a regular basis!

Lake Eildon National Park - Wombat!