Winter Solstice 2009

It was wet, really wet, cold and blustery but the prospect of a bonfire made for two very excited Munchkins who happily put sticks into the fire and toasted marshmallows in between showers.

It takes a huge effort to get me out on this kind of night, but I guess once a year you have to, to really remind yourself what winter is all about and help you really appreciate the warmer weather when it returns. It helped that we had family around us, a lovely meal, some mulled wine, and a short drumming session which some of the family kindly humoured me with.
Good company and good food will always warm the coldest night.

The rain held off at sunrise this morning, so today for a change I gallantly ventured out to my thinking log, warming my hands on my first morning coffee and counted my blessings out there amongst the dew dripping gumtrees and bird calls. Sigh..... :)

Pay it Forward

I will make a handmade gift for the first 3 interested people who comment on this post. I have 365 days to do it in…What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise!The catch is that you must participate as well: you must have a blog and before you leave your comment here, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going.(just cut and paste this one if you like!, which I did)

So, if you are interested, sign up and send me your address . Also please let me know your favourite colour, one word to describe yourself (the you you aspire to be) and a natural element you identify with.

Look forward to your responses!

I responded to Crone's 'Pay it Forward' @ http:thecroneatwitsend.com

Eostre Moon Sleepout

We camped out on the trampoline last night and couldn't have asked for a better night. Perfectly cool, clear skies and a full moon.

We went for a nightstalk with our torches, watched the stars, found satellites, saw a helicopter pass overhead, watched and listened to the small flocks of cockatoos that flew over us on their way to their roosting tree and then bickered for an hour like kids at a sleepover, had a midnight feast and heard the story of Eostre and the Rabbit before snuggling down to sleep. After which I quietly took a few photos - this was one of them.
If there's a nicer way to spend a night I don't know it! :)

Pics at last!

Finally some pics - the patch looks so bare now since I've ripped up all the summer fruiting stuff. time for a clean canvas!
Here are the peas and ....carrots!













The other beds are a mix of stuff. Can't wait for the 'weeks ahead' photos. They grow so quick in Blogland!


Today Hubby sprayed poison (yes I know it's dreadful) around the house before the rains come and the millipedes do too. For those of you who aren't familiar with Portugese Millipedes (and I'm sure they're fine in Portugal) these introduced little blighters emerge after the first rains in plague proportions.
We have tried every natural trap there is, and sure pots of water with little lights etc work - but when you're talking about millions of the things coming in at once those remedies are a pee in the in the ocean. We literally need a moat. They have been getting worse and worse over the last few years. Last year we woke up every morning to our hallway and toilet walls that were black and wriggling. I kid you not. They form a mat of bodies over every surface and release a pungent odour in the oil they secrete. It meant about an hour of vacuuming every morning before we could start the day - and the house reeking for hours after from the smell of the bodies you'd walked on, and the full vaccuum cleaner which had blown out that smell throughout the house.
We finally sprayed last year around the perimeter and it meant that we just had to sweep up the piles and piles of them every few days. I filled our kitchen bin to the top with bodies in one morning.

Can you tell I really dislike these things?!

On a brighter note - I have promised the Munchkins a sleep out on the trampoline tomorrow night. It's a full moon or close enough to for a short bushwalk, and likely to be one of the few dry and warmish nights left of the year so we're taking advantage of there being no school the next day (Yay for holidays!) and making it fun. Might be some pics if we're lucky enough to spot some interesting animals.

Operation Chilli Dog and birthday greetings to Cynthia!

Bindi the Dobermann is an ...interesting mutt. Stunning looking, a true beauty, affectionate and very loving (when she's not mauling the kids), highly intelligent...and a thief.
She steals any morsel of food from the kitchen or anywhere - she has pinched entire school lunches that I was in the middle of preparing and left for 5 seconds to deal with some munchkin disaster, stolen whole pounds of butter, tipped breakfast bowls off the table int he time it took us to go get a spoon etc etc. NOTHING edible can be left unattended.

It occurred to me that years ago when our ball mad Border Collie took to jumping up and stealing all the mandarines because they looked like balls, that we cured him by painting the bottom few fruits with Chilli oil. He tried one ....and tried his luck again once more before deciding they weren't such a good idea. Cured.

So tonight after Bindi stole one of the kids bowls off the table (tipped it onto the chair so she could lick it out). I put her outside as usual as penalty, then liberally sprinkled chilli powder over the remainder of the contents of thebowl. I let her back in, shut her in the dining room and left the room so she felt she was alone.....ha HA!

Needless to say she took the bait...but this dog is like no other...she decided it wasn'tbad really....lick lick, not bad at all actually and promptly finished off the bowl licking it especially clean.
Admittely she went to the water bowl after with a little more urgency in her step but that was about it as far as a reaction.

This isn't over - there are hotter things than chilli powder. Breakfast tomorrow = Stage 2 in Operation Chilli Dog.

On another note altogether it is our dear Aunt Cynthia's birthday today and I've heard she occasionally drops into this blog - so if you're reading this Cynthia, we hope you're having a lovely day and are thinking of you!

XXXX

Autumn plantings underway

I met up with a new friend today - the mother of one of Elder Munchkin's school friends. the morning went very quickly as she and her husband are avid gardeners so there was lots of info to share. I'm thinking of trying out her hexagonal bed idea. She said there was noticeably less evaporation from those beds than the rectangular ones they'd put in.

In any case I was inspired to get out into the garden after they left despite my early decision to wait until the rains before planting stuff.

Today I planted some lettuce, celery, 2 types of broccoli, broccolini, bok choy, spinach and snowpeas. The ones I got are a dwarf variety (not sure if they are hybrid or not - they were from the nursery) and I made a kid sized frame that the munchkins can walk all the way around to access both sides without trampling everything else in sight! All up I spent $20 on seedlings but I know I'll get WAY more than that of vegies from them. I had thought about only planting from my saved seed, but decided to get a head start with these and use the seeds for successive plantings downthe track.

Last week I did plant some sugar snap and bush feast peas (just a few) and they have already sprouted. Some of the garlic has too, though it needs a little TLc as the soil was a little water resistant. It felt so good to get out in the garden today after the long hot summer. I had lost a little enthusiasm after collecting the last of the bulk of the harvest and watching every starting to seriously dry up. It's good to see moist soil again and green shoots appearing.

Pics over the next few weeks - once the hols are here and I have more spare time!

Good news...sort of...

Our youngest munchkin has had a wheat allergy since the age of 11 months, so we thought, resulting in chronic eczema every time wheat was ingested. We were told most children grow out of their allergies by the time they're 3, but this wasn't the case with younger munchkin, and in fact we've been noticing more and more things that seem to be causing allergies. With this in mind, and the worry of the development of asthma and further allergies, we decided we had waited long enough now to see if the allergies would go away by themselves, and now we would look at the desensitisation option. So today we took younger Munchkin to an allergy/immunologist and found out Munchkin DOESN'T have a wheat allergy per say (though yes wheat is having a negative effect). It could be Coeliacs or a partdermatology type eczema. That bit remains a mystery but the good news for munchkin is the doctor recommended trialling small amounts of wheat again, while being very careful to keep Munchkin's skin in very good, moisturised condition and see what happens. Munchkin got to have an icecream cone today, complete with cone, for being so brave, and you never saw a child enjoy one quite so much!

We did find out our suspicions of dust mites was correct. Munchkin tested positive to dustmites, pollen and 3 types of grass. The kiwi and pineapple is being tested next time.

So now an order has been placed for the desensitasation stuff (gets made into a lozenge to be dissolved under tongue - no injections for paeds - yay!) and we wait 6 weeks for it to arrive from France. The treatment continues for 3 years or so and hopefully within 6 months we'll start to see results.

I feel relieved to have been able to do something about this finally, especially a no pain option because when we first looked into desensitisation a few years ago the option was needles every week and not something we wanted to do to our little one. Fingers crossed now that the treatment will work out successfully and we work out what's happening with wheat.

Have to say though - that we're not too keen to change our wheat free diet. It has been good for us as a family in terms of varying our diet, especially grains.
Sometimes blessings are hidden.