The Garden Underway!

T-Rex Family, right, Klukky, left.

12 tonnes of wood and a chook shed

The veggie garden beginning.

Today I planted a heap of seeds in little peat seedling starter pots which you just put straight in the soil when they're ready. I planted cucumber, oregano, sage, coriander (in a mini green house), zucchini, dill, pak choy and a few other things too. We also bought 6 tomato variety seedlings. A has been industriously digging up the garden where the hot house will go. We've measured it and decided to get some cheap raised garden beds, we'll put a trestle over the top of them for pots.

The cat is settled in nicely now, and he hasn't given the chickens (now named T-Rex Family and Klukky) any grief so far. Speaking of the chooks, I should probably do a more formal introduction! We have been lucky enough to be given two teeny tiny bantums. So tiny that we call them phantoms. They came from the home of an animal hoarder who had fourteen of them all living in a small chicken run, so they're extremely unused to free ranging and they are very shy when it comes to people (although they seem to be accepting A, and they cluck at him when he makes chook noises at them). They won't come out of their shed unless we go in and shoo them out, which we do gently, once a day, so they can begin to recover from their agoraphobia. When we do make them go into the garden they usually spend a little while scratching about before they go straight back into their shed. They're the cutest little things, once they settle in we plan on getting a couple more.

We've decided to make all our giftmas presents this year. We're giving people a bottle of home brew, a bbq spice rub, and a citrus fruit with cloves stuck in it to make their house smell lovely. There will be a large family gathering just outside Hobart which we may or may not decide to attend. It's hard to decide coz being in our own house means we'd quite like to spend the day here, but we've never done giftmas with this branch of the family and they'd probably like to see us and the kids. Our giftmas tree is ready to be put up so we'll do that over the coming week or so, A and I seem to be more excited about that than the kids!