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Meet today’s pick of cucumbers. Yes, we did indeed harvest eight of them today. To go with the six and half still in the fridge. And many more still expanding on the plant. Want any?!

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been glad that a plant died before, but I’m now pretty relieved that the second cucumnber plant bit the dust early on.

And earlier this week I harvested an abundance of more green things…

Yup, a big pile of beans! The photo doesn’t really do them justice. I went out with what I thought was a pretty reasonable size bowl to grab them, but I had to do two and bit trips in the end. And with no need to eat that many beans this week I even got keen and blanched and froze a few bag-fulls for later. Now I just have to remember they’re in the freezer…

Unfortunately I think I left picking them a bit late. The bean plants (vines?) have now stopped flowering. I suspect that’s it. They might well have to be dragged out in the very near future to try to get one more crop of something in before it’s all over for the summer cropping.

They are finished! This week’s project was to finish making some blinds for one of the rooms. After calculating the material required and sitting on it for a few days (not literally), then nervously cutting the material, having to re-learn how to use the sewing machine etc. , I finally pushed the procrastination to the side and started the technical side of the project.

It has to be said that it has been a very long time since I have sewn anything. The last thing would have been a soft toy about 4.5 years ago. This probably wasn’t helped by the sewing machine being in storage for about a year on its way home, and then it has been sitting in the cupboard here for the last 10 months. So first thing was working out how to thread a bobbin and then the machine. But we got there in the end! Thank you little sewing machine!

And the sewing of the blinds, well they went pretty well with not too many errors on the way (could be a little bit straighter here and there). Hardest part was matching the material where it needed to join in two places and this was not an easy task with quite a number of fish needing to be matched up. So for the next lot of blinds, think I might try already lined and non patterned. One would have thought it was best to start with this first. Nothing like doing things around the wrong way.

Once I got going it was quite fun. And then I had Mike pretty much do the end bit of attaching them to the wood and hanging them up (not to mention a few other bits of advice here and there throughout the project – mainly checking my maths).

Well it’s been a bit quiet around here lately. Nothing much to report. But today after an email telling us that the chickens will invade soon I decided it was about time that the chicken run door got installed.

The installation actually went very smoothly. A bit of chisel action saw the posts squared off enough to hold the hinges and presto a real, operating door! First time too!

If you look carefully you’ll note the sneaky angle of the photo that hides the big gap between the door and the posts on the near side towards the top of the door. I guess the guys who plonked the posts in have a slightly different view of straight! But it’s still a small enough gap that the chickens shouldn’t be able to get out. I hope!

Now I guess we better look to getting the wire around the outside of the run too, so the chooks can’t just wander out the sides ignoring the door altogether!

We had a bit of wild weather here today. Not sure our drainage system knew how to cope with all the hail, and so decided just to dump it out on the ground instead.

I feel the need to point out:

• a) I only found this 20 minutes after it had stopped hailing; and
• b) This was on the sheltered side of the house!

Not that we’ll be racing off to get the milk with vehicle no. 2, but at least we’ll now be able to keep the lawn down now! A little ride on mower got delivered today. Yippee!

The first grass cut today was done with a fair amount of trepidation as I wasn’t sure just how many stones were lurking just below the surface waiting to fly through one of the large plates of glass lurking close to the lawn edges. But luckily we got through the whole mow with windows unscathed. Helped that we’re only just slicing the top off the grass for now. We’ll have to get a bit closer to ground level at some time soon, but it’s nice to get things looking a bit tidier. Next required step will be a big weed spray.

Didn’t seem to do a bad job. Me, I mean, not the mower! Getting used to the turning circle and the various acceleration and deceleration quirks was interesting, but entertaining. It looks like it’s possibly going to take a long time to work out the best mowing pattern to keep the most straight lines across the lawn. Still some way to go to even get straight lines, as you can see!

And the beast even coped with a bit of a blat through the longer grass and lucerne etc of the orchard. Hopefully I’m now done with weed-eating around there. Whew!

And as a bonus, tonight the soft scent of the local farmer’s silage pits that we get in a slight southerly breeze has been masked by the heady scent of freshly cut grass.

Now, all of you who said you’ll be more than happy to come out and mow for us can start to get warmed up. But you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer, as I don’t think I’m quite sick of it quite yet!

After two days of horrible winds that have made it just too unpleasant to be outside today was a pearler. Just as well as we needed to get some water on the grass, but that’s another story. But as it was nice I thought I better get out and enjoy it. By doing a bit of hard work. Go figure.

Today’s challenge was to finally bring the last two raised beds down from the top garden. Which I duly did. With only light strains and a couple of small blisters.

Even managed to get some pavers installed in the walkways, but I can’t quite work out how to finish the paths around the side as whichever way I turn the pavers I can’t quite get a nice straight edge. Guess that’s only to be expected when the garden plots were made before the pavers were on hand.

But at least that’s that chore done. Just in time to play with the new toy that’s just arrived!! YAY!

The star of the tunnel house is still the cucumber plant that’s taking over all available space around it. So to use up some of the six cucumbers in the fridge we made pickled cucumbers today. Not entirely sure what else you can do with a surplus of cucumbers really!

Yesterday I made a special effort and had salad for lunch to assist in using up the excess cucumbers. From the garden I had sugarsnap peas, radishes, lettuce, beetroot, spring onions, capsicums, tomatoes, with a bit of bought Edam cheese and olive oil…. and completely forgot to add the cucumber! I only realised that about 2 hours later. Idiot!

Oh! Oh! I know this one! It’s yarrow, otherwise known as Achillea millefolium. I think I’ll stick to yarrow!

While we’ve certainly got a lot of swathes of yarrow leaves around in the paddocks since we had the grass cut once again I had to venture down the back to find these specimens for you. Aren’t you lucky!? We’ve even got some really pink yarrow flowers down there too, but the photo turned out rubbish and it’s too hot to go for another walk. So tough luck there.

It was fun over the winter to watch birds perching on the top of the dried up flower stalks and eating the yarrow seeds. At the time I was amazed by the fact that the yarrow stayed standing with a bird on it. Now, having had to pick up quite a few birds that the cats have dragged in I’m not so amazed by the yarrow, I’m just amazed at how little birds weigh!

Nice as yarrow flowers are, they can be a right spreading pain in the butt. Around the vege garden I keep having to pull out huge matted pads of the roots. They go for miles and miles. Blech. But at least they come out relatively easy.

Just before the skies opened and they got a dump of water on them (finally!) I dug up the shallots that were the last veges growing in the top garden plots. Thanks to last year’s trusty garden diary I can tell you that the original bulbs were planted on Friday, June 17th. You really wanted to know that, huh?

Not a bad haul really, for all the neglect they got as well. We started out with five little clove/bulb things, so that’s about a 300% increase in a year. Not a bad return. But still nowhere near enough to get us through a cooking year. Some way to go before that happens. So now we have to work out which to eat and which to try to keep ready to plant out. Decisions, decisions…

And yes, if you look very closely (might help if you click to get the bigger version) you can see two perfectly formed garlic bulbs there too that I dug up a day or two ago. Just a pity they’re so small. Not sure if they needed more food, more water, or just more time to grow. They are very cute though.

Unfortunately there’s now no reason why I can’t bring the last 2 garden plots down to the “bottom” garden. Except for the rain, of course. Long may it continue!

Bit of a busy day here today. We had a couple of real rural kiwi blokes around to plonk in a bit of a fence for us. Luckily for them they had the right tools for the job. A tractor, a pile driver, and a bloody great metal stake to drive in the ground before even trying to drive a post in.

So now we’ve basically halved the plot into two bits. The back bit, which can just stay pretty untended for now, and the front bit that we can worry about tending to a bit more. It actually does a really good job of putting a nice square edge on the lawn too.

And we can also use the fence to support some wind-break cloth so we can start a garden along that edge too. That was kind of one of the major driving reasons to get some fencing done at all.

And while they were here I got them to drive in some bigger poles for the chook run. So now we finally have somewhere for my most excellent door to hang, once I manage to get some hinges and a latch thing. And for the actual chicken coop to hang out in too. Just have to get the important bits sorted, like wire netting and, of course, the chooks themselves.

But at least we’ve started the year progressing things along. Wonder how long that will last!