Pottering at home

It's been lovely this week to potter gently about at home. A bit of gardening, although the wind chill has knocked the fun out of it a bit. I don't mind cold weather but having a gale rip through you is not very pleasant. I went out for about an hour yesterday before retreating indoors. 

I did manage to take some baja sage cuttings - we have a very pretty and healthy plant and I wanted to get some more, but it's not common and I couldn't buy either seeds or seedlings. So I have ventured into (another) unknown world and I'm propagating by cuttings! No idea if it will work but I followed all the instructions and found nodes and dipped in hormones and the rest ... I've done six that I will coddle through winter and see if they live to be planted in the spring.

In even more exciting gardening events ... our veggie cage is being built!!!! It is too hard to protect edible plants from rabbits, parrots, kangaroos and wombats individually, so we are building a big netted enclosure and putting everything in there. Vege beds, fruit trees, maybe some herbs? 

It is 9 metres by 12 metres which seemed perfectly reasonable when we made a little map out of paper but looks absolutely enormous now it's a steel structure in the western paddock. But given that we keep saying things like 'how about a permanent bed for asparagus? how about espaliered fruit trees? how about thornless blackberries? how about cold frames?' it might not be big enough...

Back to the autumn

Even just a week away has changed the landscape into autumn. It's very very beautiful around here at the moment. 

I'm appreciating the time I took to do the last trim and feed of the roses because we're getting a late flush, including some that I don't think have flowered yet during the summer. I suspect there has been some thoughtful planting. 

The dahlias and tomatoes have all died - before we left for Norfolk Island I pulled up the tomato plants and made all the green ones into green tomato chutney. It was quite fun but far too time-consuming to do the day before you go off on holiday and everything in my suitcase smelled vaguely like chutney. I had fun though, and it's very satisfying. Here is an oddly blurry shot of me stripping a cherry tomato bush, in the late afternoon sunshine.

The day after we got back we went into Canberra to farewell drinks for friends who are off to Washington on posting. They most cordially invited visitors but I don't think we'll be going any time soon .... We've put off the planned UK holiday until next year, and we'll have to save our pennies again after that to go to somewhere with proper hard currency ... but it seems a shame not to go. These are the same friends we stayed with in Jakarta in 2012 and we did have a lovely time.

Then on Monday we went back in to catch up with both children  - number two had flown up for number one's birthday party on Saturday. We popped in briefly after farewell drinks, before the party had started, there is no overlap in time between old person drinks and young person party ... but went back on Monday to have brunch, a proper chat, and take number two back to the airport. Then we had to do a very large grocery shop which is more than enough effort for one day. But we LOVE our new car. It is so easy to drive.

Norfolk Island

We have just spent another lovely week on Norfolk Island with my husband's parents - which is why I haven't posted for a while - the internet over there is fantastic but I didn't bother bringing my laptop! It would take away from the time sitting, chatting, having a drink, going for a walk and poking about the shops. 

It was a very relaxing and fun week, although the weather wasn't as good as previous years. I took my togs but was not tempted into the water. I also didn't spend as much time sitting on the verandah chatting and painting ... I changed it up for sitting on the sofa chatting and knitting :) 

This year we overlapped with Brad's sister and her husband for a day, which was an excellent catch up. They'd been there for two weeks, which would have put me into an almost fatal level of relaxed I think. We tried to go for walks but wind, rain and laziness kind of put us off...

How pretty is this. What a lovely part of the world.