Hot, hot, hot!

It's been so hot this last week we have all been wilting. Thank God for the ceiling fan in our bedroom - I don't know how I lived without one before. Unfortunately, along with the heat comes the mosquitos. And I got bitten in my ear and it went septic! A week on antibiotics. Would you believe it? That put me out for a few days.

Before I go on, the mother-in-law has been transferred to Thames hospital, so no more back and forth every couple of days to Waikato. That will help take the stress off and give us more time. Poor Jarren is heartily sick of the car.

I have managed to get into the garden despite all of this. Not a good time to plant or do much that is exciting though (according to my moon calendar). Mainly weeding and trimming back and deadheading. It's awfully dry and things are running to seed as a result. There are good things going on though. Check out this monarch on my cosmos under the front pergola. And my lovely Little Joey rose at the back where I can enjoy it.

My other project at the moment is to make cards of my art to sell and to use myself. So watch out all of you - you are likely to get an 'AK-budget' card for your next special occasion! Funny though - some pictures didn't come out very well, but in the main I am pretty pleased with the results. It was a trial learning all the intricacies of the machine down at the chemists. Liz, the chemists wife, came and we figured it out together. Seems I am the first one to want anything non-standard since they have had the machine. Figures.

We went out fishing and caught dinner but not much else. It was great though to be out on the water. I changed Jarren's and my hooks to a size smaller and we caught enough small fish to keep the cats in food for the rest of the year. It kept us entertained. Here's a photo of Castle Rock from out where we fish.

Before I forget, I learned something important this week from my friend Pam about bought fertiliser. Her runner beans and tomatoes were thriving and set fruit well then began to die for no apparent reason. This is the 3rd year this has happened to her. She got fed up and rang MAF who did some research and came back with this: bought fertiliser is made from green waste at landfills and this waste contains spray residues for prickle weed which affects runner beans and tomatoes, not other vegetables. I am inclined to believe this because for the first time ever, this year I put bought compost onto one of my vegie gardens and guess what? My tomatoes have done the same thing!! Something to be aware of I guess.

With the huge glut of zucchinis in the garden I did some research about how to preserve them in some way for winter. I made ratatouille and soup and froze a heap of both. The soup particularly is delicious!! And I mean delicious. I ate a whole pot full - thick and creamy and very filling. Here's what you do: Fry up a chopped onion (I also put in garlic) and then add 250gm diced potato and fry until it is soft. Add 1Kg diced zucchini and fry that for 10 minutes. Put in 2 pints water and seasoning and cook with the lid on until soft (about 20 minutes). Blend. Add any herbs you have - basil, parsley, whatever. Eat. I added a bit of sour cream and sprinkled fresh chives on top. To die for.

I sold a painting at The Source this week. I think I have made enough money this month to finalise my payment into the business. Only one problem now - and that is that I have nearly sold everything I had to sell and have nothing else to sell. Thank heavens Jarren is going back to school next week so I can have some time to myself and get cracking.

For those of you not acquainted with my grandson Benny, please meet grandson No. 2 Benjamin Hugh. Drew and Barbie and he are due for 4 days on the 17th February. We can't wait. Isn't he a cracker?

Well I think that's all for now folks. I hope you all have a good week. I will. XX Annette

Gardening and painting again!

Well I'm back. This week is proving to be rather challenging. Just when I thought we would be settling down into the holidays at last. On Sunday Tom and Deb came to stay and we had a great night catching up with them. They went to Stony Bay for the rest of the week to camp and we decided to go up Tuesday night and share their 13th wedding celebrations with them. It was gorgeous up there and anice to catch up with old friends. We have decided we don't do it enough. This is a picture of the Tom and his boys Hugh and William boy-talking with Tim and Jarren overlooking Stoney bay.

Unfortuntely the peace got shattered when Tim got a call telling him his mother had had a serious fall and was on her way to Thames in an ambulance. Kind of spoiled the night somewhat. From Thames she was sent to Waikato and is due to have a hip operation Thursday morning. It's all a bit of a worry. Tim has been down to see her today and she is in a lot of pain. It has brought matters to a head though and it is very likely she will go into Tararu in the hospital wing when she comes out of hospital, so all is not bad I suppose. Though we would rather it hadn't taken the fall to bring that about.

This week in the garden the moon has entered a barren period, during the full moon on the 11th so no more planting. There has been lots of rain at night though so the ground has softened and so I have taken the opportunity to weed. It's all looking lovely at the moment. I am particularly proud of my roses. This is a picture of Little Joey.

I did 2 pictures for my project with Annette today. Pen and ink as usual. The idea is that I paint a picture of something in my garden every week for a journal to go with notes about what I did and what I planted and what we are eating etc from it. Hopefully fun and useful too. So, here are the pictures of what I did - a zucchini plant and my runner beans which grow up a bamboo tripod.
Something went wrong there and both images have come out the wrong way round! I can't seem to turn them. Oh well, stand on your heads or something.

Tomorrow I am off to a meeting to plan the art club exhibition. I will be showing 3 island paintings, 2 big and 2 small and a sunset island one (these include the 2 paintings in the last blog). I have a weird painting of lilies too so I will put them in even though they are a bit different. I was hoping my cards would be back from the printer to sell there too but no such luck. They went to be printed in November!!! I guess Christmas got in the way.

Well my bed calls. Darling Henry (cat) is quite recovered today from his wee operation on Tuesday and he is waiting patiently. Goodnight.
Annette

Here I go!

Right-o. This is it. I am blogging. I have to catch up with my gardening history for the first week of January, which happened to fall in the prolific period. That is, it is an ideal time to plant according to the phases of the moon. So I got stuck in and planted flat out. Planted
mixed Mediterranean lettuces , lemon thyme and camomile, more climbing beans and transplanted daisies I had raised from cuttings and a tobacco plant I had under the bananas.

We are eating fully from the garden now: zucchini, rhubarb, beans, lettuce, broccoli, a few tomatoes, carrots, parsnips (but they are getting to the end), cucumbers, beetroot, cabbage and celery

I have noticed some Italian parsley plants popping up out of the compost along with about 300 tomato seedlings. I’ve ripped out most of the tomatoes but left the parsley.

I mixed up some liquid worm tea to boost growth on the tomatoes and vegie gardens.
The tomatoes don’t look too healthy – the soil is poor so they need the boost of compost as well.

On the work front, I have been working at The Source a lot to fill gaps for other people over Christmas and as a result haven't managed to do a lot of work myself. I'm trying to get organised for an exhibition with the art group on the 23rd but can't seem to get going. At this stage I have 3 island paintings similar to this one and that's it. I did try to do an acrylic of a man rolling a fag ( a drawing I did last year) but it turned into another island!

I did manage to make a few more birds for the shop but that's all. I have lots of ideas but no time. I'm lacking that time you need to dream before you actually begin working. Hopefully things will settle soon. I sold 2 of my clay faces and would love to make more but Tim hasn't the time to get the kiln made yet. They'll have to wait. I ended up painting the background of the middle one black - I think it looks a lot better.

Time to go to bed. This has been a learning curve. I'm sure I'll get better at it as I go along. Let me know what you think.
Love Annette