Art for Heart's Sake

A Lovely Weekend!

Hi honeys, it's Wednesday and I'm sipping a cup of tea before launching myself out into the farm shed to prick out more seedlings.  I've been doing so much of it lately I'm running out of trays to put things in.  Perennials, unlike seedlings, stay in the trays until they are sold so I think I may have to bite the bullet and buy some plastic nursery trays which unfortunately, are not cheap!  Still they will last for a long time.  

This past weekend we went to Blenheim to spend time with Hadley, our 10 week old granddaughter.  I feel so lucky to have a granddaughter considering I couldn't have children.  For some reason I can't bring myself to say step-granddaughter, it just sounds horrible!  Here are a couple of photos of Hadley.

It was a beautiful weekend to be in the garden but alas I wasn't here.  This week is looking a little murky with some rain predicted most days.  I think I will be spreading compost and weeding in the rain if need be this weekend.

Well I'd better get out to those seedlings - they won't do themselves and I  have to take Monty to the vet this pm for a blood test to check his thyroid levels again (we just upped the dosage of his tablets 3 weeks ago because he wasn't responding well to the lower dose).  I also have ballet tonight so it's a busy day car-wise!  Smiles..

We Were Lucky!

Hi, just an update re the storm. We were really lucky.  It started to blow around 3pm, rising to very swirly gusts around 5pm and onwards along with lots of rain.  We watched as our eucalypts danced and tossed to and fro but luckily we were spared the main brunt of the winds.  The wind direction was SE and there are some hills  few km ''behind'' us that tend to shelter us a bit from the SE thank heavens.  We did hear a few loud cracks coming from the macrocarpa hedge that's between the top garden and the paddock but there are just a few branches hanging down, nothing major.

As for the rest of the district and Taranaki (the bump that sticks out on the left of the map of the North Island) suffered major wind damage and horrendous mud-slides and some flooding.  

I have to say I truly was as tense as a board during the storm.   The wind dropped a bit around 8pm and then the power went out for 1.5 hours.  Lots of other places especially in Taranaki have been without power for 19 hours plus!   I didn't realise how tense I must have been until I went to bed that night and slept right through until Wednesday morning which is almost unheard of for me.

Yesterday was pretty much normal.  I delivered plants to Mapua Country Store and then spent the day pricking out seedlings.  I set off for ballet around 5.45pm and class was wonderful as usual.  I always intend to do barre work at home between the Friday class and Wednesday night class but somehow it never seems to happen.  I'm always amazed how my body just ''slots back in'' to ballet when I start the class.  Oh how I love that!

Well, more pricking out to do before ballet practise this pm so I'd better get on with it.  Smiles..

Another Storm!

Hi honeys, I tried to post on Sunday but the Typepad blog site was down for some reason.  As you will see from the title we are expecting another storm to hit us later today.  Ex-cyclone Gita is coming straight through central New Zealand it seems.  I will admit to feeling a bit, if not very, nervous about this storm because the winds are expected to be severe gales.  As you know we have very tall eucalyptus trees close enough to the house that they could potentially hit it if they decide to topple over.  I'm asking them to stand firm for us - we would love to get them cut down but it requires absailing up the trees which increases the cost exponentially.   We may just have to bite the bullet and get it done in the near future because neither of us like the way we have been feeling over the past couple of days re this storm.  Fingers crossed all will be okay.  The worst of the storm is set to pass between 9pm-midnight tonight with winds building from early this pm.

I'm making more damson jelly this morning and this pm I will work on a gift tag for an order.  I'm taking my materials inside in case it's too windy to venture out to my gorgeous studio.  I also need to write a 400 word garden column sometime today too.  Hopefully I'll be able to do that after I've made the jelly this morning.

I'd better get inside and start, more soon!  Smiles..

Be Careful What You Wish For! Giggle!

Hi, yikes I was doing so well and suddenly 7 days have passed since my last post!  I have no idea how that happened except I've been REALLY busy!  As for ''be careful what you wish for'' - remember my last post asking the sun to go away.  It well and truly did on Saturday and we had 124mm of rain from Saturday night until Sunday late at night.  It was SO gorgeous but very warm and humid.

The humidity is still here and I'm wondering how I'll cope at ballet class tonight.  John and I were going to go out for Valentine's night tonight after ballet but we've decided it would mean eating around 8.45pm, then we'd gulp and not really enjoy it so I'm coming home after ballet to one of John's stir fries - I'm not a stir fry fan but I do like his.

One of the reasons I enjoyed the rain on Sunday was it meant I had time to make Damson Jelly!  Here are some photos":

I am going to make another lot this coming weekend so I can give some to my bonus son, David and his wife.  I love sharing my goodies especially when they look like jewellery in a jar!  Here's hoping my second batch looks as good.

I've been pricking out lots of perennials this week and sowing more seed.  I'm so excited about some of the perennials I will be adding to my website as the year progresses!  Well I'd better go and carry on potting on some perennial tall lobelia.  I'm getting new glasses so have to leave earlier than usual for ballet.  Smiles..

 

Enough Sun.. ahem...

Hi honeys, now I know it may sound silly spitting tacks because the sun's out, especially after the brief but nasty storm we had late last week!  I find it SO hard to do everything I need to do nursery/plant-wise when it's sunny!  This pm I need to get the ride-on mower out with the small trailer attached, take them down to the tunnel house area and empty out a lot of punnets that are past their use-by date (vegetables, that is)!  There are a few too many for my liking at the moment and that is mainly due to the very warm weather we had for a couple of weeks recently.  All of the seedlings grew like topsy - at least 3x as fast as normal so they soon went past saleable size.  It's just the nature of the best when it comes to vegetable seedlings unfortunately.  

I have been madly sowing perennial seeds and have also pricked out another lot of vegetable seedlings in the past day or two too.  I'm trying to get as many perennial seeds sown as I can at the moment because it is perfect conditions for raising them outdoors.  I have just ordered a lot of seed from Europe - they'll take a few weeks to get here - then I'll be sowing like a crazy woman again.

Ballet class starts for the year tonight and I cannot wait!  I have that funny feeling of anticipation, excitement and slight nervousness which comes with not doing ballet 3x a week for almost two months!  Crikey!  I've managed to practise at the studio once most weeks which is something.  Wish me luck - the hardest thing for me is not being able to eat dinner until I get home at around 8.15pm!  The class is starting 15 minutes later than it did last year.. Oh brother I may just eat the steering wheel on the way home!

I'm about to skype with Mum at her rest home so I'd better go!  Smiles..

 

A Beautiful Gardening Day....

....Except for the blasted mosquitos that are hounding me at every turn!  Hi honeys, it's a beautiful cloudy day here - we even had a bit of drizzle first thing this morning - totally unforecast.  Yay!  The temperatures dropped on Friday night and we woke to 11.7 degrees C yesterday morning with no humidity for the first time in weeks.  Absolutely sheer bliss!  

I leapt out into the kitchen garden and spent the day weeding a few areas, planting some lettuce, rainbow chard and silverbeet, plus sowing 2 long rows of carrot seed.  The soil is still warm so it's the perfect time to get another lot of carrots in.  To be honest I don't have much to harvest in my kitchen garden at the moment, the weather has been well and truly against me this season.  First we had a very dry late Spring/early Summer so it just wasn't worth planting anything - then we got rain in January which was wonderful but the weather became too hot to be able to do anything out there!  Crikey!  I managed to get quite a lot done in one day thank goodness but there's still heaps to weed.

I'm in the flower garden today doing rather irksome weeding.  The couch grass is in amongst my perennials so I'm doing my best to remove it.  I need to dig up the perennials in this section of garden to really be able to do a good weed but I don't want to do that until late Autumn/early winter so I just have to persevere!  As I go I'm planting more cosmos where there's room because they'll give me a lovely show right into late autumn too.

Well I'd better get back out there.  I'm being eaten by mozzies in here too!  Sigh!!!  Roll on the first frost to kill them! Smiles..

Wild and Woolly Weather!

Hi honeys, well the heatwave we've been experiencing has ended with a bang.  It's still warm but it is also very windy and wet!  I, for one, am very happy to see the rain but the wind, not!  Part of my Clerodendron (a beautiful fragrant shrub) has hit the ground already so I'll need to cut it off.  I don't want to do it while it's raining but I may have to because its blocking the way from the bedroom verandah to the drive!  I had to duck under it to get to my studio.

I must admit the wind does make me a bit nervous because we still have a stand of very tall eucalyptus trees a good distance away behind the house.  Some of the line part of our driveway on the other side of the roundabout that my studio is built on.  It is a bit creepy and I always hold my breath hoping one of the trees doesn't decide to fall the hit my studio.  Apart from not wanting to be in here at the time (funny that!) I have so many treasures in here that I would be heartbroken!  Fingers crossed it never happens.

I've spent most of this week sowing seeds and doing a bit of pricking out.  The seedlings I had to take to Mapua Country Store yesterday were a bit over-blown because the lettuces etc have been growing so quickly in this weather.  They look wonderfully healthy though so here's hoping they sell anyway!

Well I'm off inside to do some housework, I can't avoid it when the weather's like this!  Smiles..