My hard work is paying off

After seeing the amount of new growth the citrus in the chicken pen put out, I figured it was time to pay a lot of attention to my other fruit trees, and see if I could get them moving too, and it seems like it is finally paying off. There isn't much to see on this mandarin tree yet, but it's trying very hard to put out new leaves.

Same for this orange tree. They appear to have tiny flower buds on them too, so maybe we'll even see some fruit?

There's no maybe about this mulberry fruiting, it's covered in little mini-mulberries. I hope some of them set this year, last year they all fell off, probably because the poor thing was still in a pot.

The peach tree is also trying to fruit. Isn't it beautiful?

No sign of fruit yet, but the passionfruit are putting out new leaves and shoots everywhere.

Even the rosella's are flowering again!

With all this activity, you'd think it was spring. But no, it's as cold as ever around here (dropped below 6 deg Celsius a few nights ago). All this new growth is due to a bag of rooster booster, and some water (with a bit of seasol and worm juice thrown in).

A Mouse!

Well, we caught our mouse, although not through any cleverness on my part. I set an elaborate trap (a weet-bix in the bottom of a deep plastic box), which was totally unsuccessful. But when I went to pull the rubbish bin out to clean out DD's paint tin, a sudden scrabbling made me jump out of my skin. The little mouse had climbed in, and couldn't get back out. Lucky the bin was empty! He's now been relocated.

Of course, no sooner had we come back from taking him to his new home, than DH saw another mouse run across the bathroom floor. Seems there is no end to them.

And just in case you're wondering, no luck on the house front either. They still haven't turned up to do the last bits (mainly putting on the security screens). We've been assured they'll be there tomorrow morning, but I've heard that before. So we're still waiting...

I'm still here

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, just haven't been doing anything interesting to post about! Or rather, I've been doing lots, but not actually finishing stuff.

The daily planting is going so so. I had several days there where I didn't plant anything through a combination of no compost to plant into, and being busy trying to get the house organised. I have planted about 2 sqm of peas, which is something. Peas seem to be one of those things that you can just never get enough of, so I'm just planting as much ground as I can with them. I don't think we'll have any trouble with any of them going to waste. From a self sufficiency standpoint though, I think you'd be much better off planting beans.

The organisation was far more successful than my daily planting has been. Almost everything is mouse-proof now, and I'm feeling far more in control. Yes, we still have at least one mouse, and he's none too impressed with my anti-mouse campaign. I discovered this morning that the plastic container I put the chooks scraps into had been gnawed, unsuccessfully I might add. Tonight it's in the fridge, and I have plans to set a 'mouse trap'. No, not a traditional one, one of my own devising. I'll update if we have any success.

Progress on the house has been discouraging as usual. Very little has actually happened, despite repeated calls to the supervisor and the company. I think they're just getting annoyed at us! We did receive a letter today though telling us that practical completion is expected to be achieved tomorrow. I'll believe it if and when I see it. Either way, I'll have to ring the flooring company that we'd booked for Monday, and reschedule yet again. Even if the house is finished tomorrow, it will take several days to organise all the bank/money. Hopefully the end is in sight...

Today I darned DD and my slippers, and a pair of DH's socks that were wearing thin. The potatoes are starting to poke their leaves up, as are the carrots. I have a flower on my peach tree, and tiny mulberries on the mulberry tree. The chickens have taken to coming INTO the shed at about 10am, and again at about 3pm, trying to tell us they want food.

Attempted organisation.

It all started when my sister kindly bought over her old fridge for us. She's bought a new one, as this one lacks a freezer, and so we scored. It's a lovely fridge, lots of room, much bigger gaps between the clear plastic shelves, and being newer, I would imagine it's much more energy efficient. We have a small separate freezer, so this will work well when we're in the new house. Anyway, since we'll continue using our current fridge/freezer until we move, I had to clean out some space for the new one until then.

This has since sparked a cleaning/organisation quest that took over the weekend. Of course, it was also spurred on by our stowaway mouse, who was getting so cheeky he would watch us from under the TV cabinet while we were watching TV! We've managed to catch and remove 8 mice so far (one adult and 7 babies), and they've all been relocated to a block of bushland up the road. (Yes, I'm a softie, can't even kill mice. They're just so damn cute.) Unfortunately, the mousy smell was really starting to get to us, so on Saturday we pulled up all the mattresses and cleaned under the bed. Plenty of mouse signs, but no mouse. Then today, I had the brilliant idea of sorting through all the boxes down the side of our bed. These ratty cardboard boxes had been shoved there when we first moved in, had lots of things pulled out of them and other's shoved back in, and were the prefect hidey holes for mice. So we spent $100 on 10 plastic boxes, and everything in those boxes either found a home, or was shifted into a plastic one. Now we have a very neat and mouse-proof wall of boxes down the side of our bed, all ready to go straight into the house when it's finished. In the bottom of one of the cardboard boxes, we found our mouse, and he too has gone to a new home on the bush block. Maybe he'll find the rest of his family. I only hope he's the last one!

Kidney Beans

Today I noticed that the kidney beans I've been leaving on the bushes to dry weren't looking too good after all the wet weather, so I figured it was time for them to come off. Some of them were starting to dry out, other's not.

DD really enjoyed helping me shell them, and was fascinated to find that the beans inside were pink instead of green.

Out of the 4 seeds I initially planted, 3 grew, and we ended up with 43 beans in the end. Not a bad increase. I think if I had taken the beans off the bush as they grew instead of leaving them on, the bushes would have produced more beans, so I might try that next time.

I'm going to let these dry a bit more, then work out what I'm going to cook with them.

My First Meme!

Jess over at Sustainable Suburbia tagged me for my first Meme, so here goes.

What were you doing ten years ago?

Hmm, that is a hard one. I have trouble associating events to years, I'm better with ages, or other events. 10 years ago, I was 22. That means I'd finished my first university degree (Bach. Soc. Sci. (Psychology)), and was still sitting around wondering how I would ever get a job without having done honours (which you need to be a qualified psychologist). In reality, other than that, I was doing very very little.

What are 5 things on your to-do list today?

Hmm, well it's 6:30 at night, so not much on the to-do list, so I'll do tomorrow's list instead.
1. Change sediment filter on water filtration system.
2. Cook and bottle pasta sauce
3. Bottle pineapple
4. Plant peas
5. Fold washing and put away

What snacks do you enjoy?

I love sultanas, addicted to them (though not as badly as I used to be). Milo is also a definite (can a drink be a snack? I'll put it in anyway.) Other than that, I don't eat snacks much, too busy.

Things that you would do if you were a billionaire?

Hmmm. *thinks pleasant thoughts for a while*. Well, first, I'd pay off all my debt, then tell DH he can quit work. I'd probably give some to close friends/family. Buy some more land so I can have a cow. Other than that, I suspect I wouldn't change much. Those things would be huge changes to our lives though.

Three of your bad habits?

Hmm, bad habits...
1. Procrastinating
2. Having to have things done a certain way (like towels folded just so, plates in a certain order etc)
3. Once I start reading a book, I can't put it down until it's finished

Five places you have lived?

1. Kedron, Brisbane in a 2br apartment
2. Dakabin (outskirts of Brisbane) on 24 acres
3. Burrum Heads in a small shack with an outside toilet
4. Howard in a tent, then a shed
5. Northgate in a 3br house

How did you name your blog?

Well, Tir Tairngire means "Land of Promise" in old Celtic legends. It's also the elven kingdom in a roleplaying game called Shadowrun, which I've been known to be obsessed with. Then when I had to come up with a domain name, it was all I could think of that wasn't taken.

I don't know if there are too many bloggers who regularly read my blog, so if you're a regular reader, and you have a blog, consider yourself tagged.

Homespun Beanie

I finally finished DH's beanie last night. It's knitted from my homespun wool, the first I plyed. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, although it took a little more wool than I expected. I used up 2 of the 3 balls I spun, and a little bit of the 3rd.

It was pretty easy to make. First I cast on 20 stitches, and knitted a few rows of stocking stitch to get a gauge. Then I measured the length of those 20 stitches, divided that by 20, and multiplied it by the measurement around DH's head. In order to do a k1 p1 rib, you'll need a number that is divisible by 2, so round up or down depending on which way the wind is blowing.

I then cast that number of stitches onto my double point needles, and knitted in k1 p1 rib in the round until it was the length DH wanted. Then I did a few rows of alternated knit 2tog decreasing and plain knit rows, until there were only a few stitches left, then threaded the tail through the remaining stitches and secured the end.

If I was doing it again, I'd probably cast off a bit more slowly, as this was a pretty quick and not as smooth as I would have liked. Overall though, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Fresh Peas!

We picked our first lot of peas yesterday! Not terribly many, but the most I've had at one time before! Fresh peas are one of my favourite crops. The so called fresh peas you buy in the supermarket are horrible compared to these. Tough and nasty, they're picked too late, and then transported too far. You haven't tasted peas till you've eaten them straight off the bush!

Of course, they don't go very far once they're shelled! Not even enough to warrant cooking, so I ate them raw. Of course, I really don't understand why anyone would cook fresh peas. Why make them all mushy and yucky when you can have them like this, crisp and sweet. Since DH doesn't agree with me and would prefer them cooked, and DD won't eat peas in any form (she refuses to taste them fresh), I ate them all!

Of course, shelling peas is very inefficient. There is more left over than you actually eat. These pea pods are perfectly edible of course, and actually taste quite good if you don't compare them to the peas themselves! I prefer the pods from my climbing peas, as they are more tender than these ones, but either way, I often eat the pods in preference to throwing them out (though I do eat the peas first!)

Daily Gardening

Well, so far, I've proved that I can grow things. I've grown a watermelon, rockmelons, strawberries, potatoes, beans, peas, tomatoes, gooseberries, a few herbs, some lettuce, and probably some other things that I'm not remembering right now. But what I haven't managed is to actually grow enough to be anything more than a nice taste, a novelty. If I want to actually produce enough to make up any percentage of our food supplies, I need to do more.

So I've come up with a plan. Every day I'm going to plant something. It might only be a handful of pea seeds, or a single plant, but every day I plan to add to our food supplies somehow. Adding to this, since our soil is still pretty bare, I'm going to fertilise something. Again, this might be as simple as throwing some rooster booster around a tree, or giving a plant/tree a drink of seasol. But each bit will add to the fertility of the garden, and thus the amount of food we can produce.

So without further ado, here is the stuff I've planted since starting this challenge on Thursday.

Thursday, 12th of June

So far, I haven't had much luck with carrots. I've planted a couple of lots of them in the garden, and though they grow, they are quite bitter, and not sweet at all. They also don't do so well in the no-dig system, as they hit the paper and the root divides and gets broken up. So I figured I'd have a go in a pot. This pot is about 40-50cm across, and it's filled with a mixture of potting mix and store bought compost (I can't keep up with enough of my own at this point).

It's sitting near the house so that I can water it often, although I'm not sure that I won't have to move it to a more sunny location. As you may noticed, there is a little plastic crate under it that came with our moving trolley, so that I can move it easily. It would be far too heavy to lift myself, but with the trolley, I can put it anywhere I want.

Friday, 13th June

While I was up buying the compost for the carrots, I saw a 10 pack of marigolds. I don't have too many flowers in my garden yet, and we all know that you need flowers to attract the bees, so I grabbed these, and have planted them in various spots around the three garden beds. Keep an eye out for them in future posts!

This little chocolate mint also jumped into my trolley (along with a couple of strawberry plants that you'll see later). I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it, but it smells exactly like the mint slice biscuits my dad always loved, so I had to have it. Apparently you can make tea, and flavour drinks with it.

Saturday, 14th June

I did up the middle bed with some mushroom compost, peat moss, and some dry grass, and planted some more pea seeds. (You can never have too many peas, right?) I'm having a go at planting them closer together than my last lot, to see if I can fit more into a smaller space.

Sunday, 15th June

Sunday saw me planting some nasturtium seeds around the bottom of this mandarin tree. It's not too happy, so I'm babying it a bit. I also mulched it with the bedding from the chooks house, hoping that it will have a similar effect as the one on the orange in the chooks run. I was going to plant more nasturtiums, but it occurred to me that the chooks will just eat them all, so I'll see how these go first.

Monday, 16th June

I spent a lot of this afternoon turning over the compost, and finishing re-mulching the centre bed. It was getting pretty late by then, so I wasn't sure if I was going to get anything planet, then I found these strawberries I bought. DD picked out this one, and it's planted in her garden. it's called Strawberry Pink, and apparently has pink flowers, which I'm sure is what made DD pick it (I didn't realise it had pink flowers until I went to plant it today).

I planted this one, a Strawberry Tioga, in a hanging basket. Although we have a whole bed of strawberries already, I wanted to pick up a few different varieties to see if I could find one that fruited earlier in the season. The ones I have now are an old variety, from my grandma, and so far aren't even flowering (although my aunts, where they came from, have one or two, so maybe it's my conditions here). However, I don't want to put them near my current strawberries, as I don't want to transfer any possible diseases.

So that is what I've planted in the last few days! Much more than I would have done if I weren't challenging myself. I'll try to do a post about my plantings each week, but the regularity will depend on what else I have to post at the time. If anyone feels like joining me in the challenge, post a comment, and if I get a few takers, I might see about doing up an icon or something.

Growing Produce

Things are growing well in the garden now, and we're looking forward to some harvests soon. The recent rain we've had, along with all the work I've been doing on the soil and on fertilising (everything has gotten some rooster booster recently!) has been helping I think. You can see the peas here, with quite a few self seeded tomatoes growing among them.

I'm really looking forward to these peas! I've snacked on a couple of early ripening ones, but we should get a good few in the one picking in the next day or two! Of course, I somehow doubt it any will make it to the dinner pot, seems a waste to cook them.

I'm really impressed with the number of tomatoes on these Roma tomato bushes. They're much smaller than the other tomato plants I've grown, but whereas the other's only ever sported a few tomatoes, these ones are loaded! I'm unsure at this point whether this is because I've been working on the soil, or just because of the variety. More experimentation needed I think.

The broccoli and cauliflower are doing well too, the screen is doing a great job of keeping the bugs off, so certainly worth the effort I think. I have one broccoli plant, and 2 cauliflower that are just starting to flower. I also have a few plants in the seedling stage, and a few more seeds planted recently.

This is the navel orange tree that I planted in the chicken pen. All that new growth on the top has grown since I planted it, which was only 3-4 weeks ago! Apparently it likes it in the chicken pen! Not sure if it's the fact that it gets the chicken's drinking water poured on it every day, or the extra fertiliser it gets, but it's certainly happy. I think I'll have to plant a mandarin in here too.

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Beautiful Buttons

I've been putting off posting this weeks blog-a-thon post mainly because I don't have any pictures. I went to look out my buttons, but couldn't find them, I think they're in the shed, goodness knows where. I'll see if I can find them tomorrow, and if I can, I'll add a picture then.

Like many of the posters on this topic, my sister and I loved playing with my mother's button collection as a child. We would pour them out into a metal biscuit tray, and sort through them, searching for the few special buttons that were hidden among them. Ones shaped like a flower, or a clown, or pretty colours. Good for hours of entertainment.

Obviously this lead to a love of buttons, because many years later, when my mum found an add in the trading post for the stock from a store going out of business, and purchased it, we ended up with a whole stores worth of buttons! My sister carefully pulled every button out of their little plastic tubes, and emptied the lot into a chest (and several boxes!), just to see them all mixed up. She still has all those buttons! I'm sure her little one when she arrives will enjoy playing with them as much as we did!

And me? Well, we made a deal you see. She has the bulk of the buttons, but I claimed the 'special' ones. The rocking horse buttons, the ducky ones, the flowers, and many more. My own daughter loves sorting through them and picking out some special ones to put on the front of her dresses, or just for her own small button collection.

I am going to have to ask my sister for a bottle from her collection (and maybe swap a few special ones to hide in her collection for her daughter to find), so that when DH needs a button for his shirt I have one. I don't think he'd be too impressed with a blue duck on his work shirt!

Planting Potatoes

After the success of my trial potato plants, we've had a bit of a potato planting frenzy here. Jackie French reckons you need 60-80 plants to feed a family of four. We haven't quite got those yet, but these 25 plants should give us a good start. Assuming that they all grow of course, and that I don't kill half them like I did last time. (I'm pretty sure the grass was too green and heated up too much. Hopefully that won't happen this time, as the grass is dryer, and the weather is colder.)

Basically what I've done is put the seed potatoes ($2 a kg at my mum's local produce store) on the grass, and covered each with a spadeful of potting mix. Then covered the whole lot with some dry grass. As the plant grows, I'll add more grass/mulch, and hopefully keep building them up.

I've also had to cover the whole lot with an old sheet to stop the chickens scratching all the grass off. Hopefully they'll have given up by the time the potatoes actually come up, or else we'll have fenced this section too (which I suspect we'll have to do).

Getting Close Now!

A couple of days ago, our second tank went in, and it was all connected up to our roof. The building company only put in enough allowance to have 2 downpipes connected, but we paid the extra to have the whole roof (about 115 sqm) connected up. Hopefully it will fill quickly. As you can see, we've had a bit of rain since it went in, but mostly the annoying drizzle that the vegie garden loves, but not enough to really fill up the tanks.

The second tank is the same size as our stainless steel one, but is dug half under the ground to bring it below the roofline so that gravity will fill it. The water will run down the downpipes (with screens at the top), along a pipe under the ground, then back up the pipe on the side of the tank. Though the pipes will remain filled with water (there is a drain on the other side to flush them periodically), the screens will keep mosquitoes or bugs out.

Now all that is left really is connecting up the hot water and temperature test, clean up, and the final council inspection. We still don't expect to be in before the end of the month, what with paperwork etc, and getting the flooring done. Hopefully the end is in sight now though.

Inspiration

I bought a new book today. I've been on the look out for Jackie French's "Backyard Self Sufficiency", after seeing it in a bookstore several months ago and stupidly neglecting to buy it, but still no luck. However, I found this one, also by Jackie French, and it's instantly become my favourite book!

I bought it simply on the strength of the name, but when I first opened the book to this page, I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed. I just love it. Jackie French brings organic gardening from the realm of too difficult, into the reach of those of us who don't have the time or knowledge to test our soil, or get everything just right.

I was inspired enough that when we got home, I went out to the vegie garden and staked up my tomatoes (with stakes cut from scrap wood left over from the house building) and planted some more peas, beans and cauliflower. I was also going to have a harvest picture in this post, but unfortunately the 3 potatoes I uncovered had lots of brown spots, and the miniature rockmelons weren't ripe (self seeded out of season, so not surprising). The peas are going great though, had my first one a couple of days ago, and savoured the whole 5 peas that were in the pod! Lots more on the horizon soon. Jackie French guesses that you need 4-6 square metres of peas to get enough for a family of four. I think I have maybe 2 square metres. I think I'd better get planting! Unfortunately, it's a bit dark for that now.

So instead I'm going to get knitting! I've promised DH a beanie, and I think this beautiful grey wool, spun and plyed, looks just right. This was my first attempt at plying, and I think it turned out OK. What surprised me was that wool plied from two strands actually ends up thicker than the two strands together would be! I had two bobbins of this, and plied them together to get three! Very strange.

It's now all washed, and wound into balls and ready to go. How satisfying is that? I also love the way the wool winder leaves the middle end of the wool easily accessible. Knitting from the middle of the ball stops it rolling around the floor as you unwind it, much easier! Now to figure out how to knit a beanie...

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Quilted Memories

This is the first time I've participated in one of these blog world games, but I just couldn't resist. Miss Sandy over at Quill Cottage is having an "I remember Laura" blog-a-thon, in honour of the author of "Little House in the Big Woods", Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder books from a very young age. I think we first read Little House in the Big Woods in school, maybe grade 5 or 6? And as usual when I loved a book, I searched out all others by the same author. Her writing is beautiful, and her story of a family living simply in as they travelled further and further west was inspiring. In fact, I think I might just start re-reading them.

This weeks theme for the blog-a-thon is Quilted Memories. Quilts have always been a big part of my life. My sister and I both have memories of choosing out material, and arranging squares (or triangles, that one drove my mum mad, but I loved it.) Now my mother makes the most beautiful crazy patchwork quilts, I'll have to get a photo of one some time. Personally, I haven't done much quilting (except for the velvet ones I've posted about before, which are very simple quilts really), except for this one.

The history of this quilt goes back 14 years, to the year I was eighteen. I appliqued the 9 squares in this quilt, by hand, and sewed them together interspersed with pink floral squares. Each square was embellished with ribbons, ribbon roses, lace, and embroidery. It took ages to sew them all.

I think you can probably guess what the common theme of the quilt was? An impressionable 18 yo, I was obsessed with love and romance, and showed this by appliqueing hearts in one form or another on every square.

This was the very first square I did, and since I hadn't decided on the hearts theme, I embroidered some on later.

This is my favourite square. The original bird was a peach silk, that has long since worn away, leaving only the outline and embroidered roses. The blue colour is painted on.

I took this quilt with me when I moved out of home, and it adorned my bed for many years, until it started to grow tattered and worn (you can see in many of the pictures how worn the origional squares are), and I was well and truly over the hearts stage. In a big clean out, I was going to throw it out, but my mum, who was visiting at the time, asked for it. A few weeks later, she gave it back to me like this! She had taken apart the original quilt and saved my carefully constructed squares. She'd mended what was able to be mended, painted the spaces where applique's had worn away and pieced it back together in colours that fitted my decorating scheme at the time.

She added new appliques of dolphins (my obsession at the time), butterflies, teddies, and even this castle which she traced and painted.

This little girl she said reminded her of me as a girl, waving at the bird. (Although I don't have blond hair.)

It is still worn, but it is holding together. It doesnt normally live on our bed like this, normally it is folded at the end until bedtime, when I unfold it, and put it down the side of my bed for me to cuddle up to. It's the perfect weight and size for this, so it had better not wear out any time soon. It would be very hard to replace.

100th Post!

Back when I started this blog, I wasn't sure if I would keep doing it or not, but family and friends, and I think some others, check my blog regularly, and I find that thinking about what I will write during the day, or taking photos for my blog, keep me motivated. It's also a great reminder of what we have done here, and what our lives are like, and I hope my daughter will enjoy looking back on it one day.

I've been racking my brains all day for something to make this 100th post memorable, and finally I came up with this. It's a poem I wrote in Grade 6 or 7, and after much searching, it seems I have lost the original (although I am still hoping that it's somewhere in an unopened box that I will find again one day), so this is from memory, and I think some of it is missing. I seem to recall it being longer than this! Anyway, hope you enjoy.

She saw again the old log hut, each tree felled by her dad,

She remembered how the cattle died, the year the drought was bad,

She felt again the welcoming warmth from the crackling kitchen fire,

As the rain beat on the iron roof, while outside the floods rose higher.

Her fingers traced the stitches fine, each worked by a loving hand,

To join the patches of their lives, in an unforgiving land.

"Come on Gran, it's time to go, there's nothing here to see,

Just a tumbled down old shack, beneath a mango tree.

So come on Gran, it's time to go, it isn't very far

It won't take long, the roads are good, just half an hour by car."

The trip back from that old log hut, if only they could see,

Takes half an hour for them it's true, but ninety years for me.

Warm feet!

Well, I did it. I knitted my first pair of socks. Though I've been an avid knitter since I was a child (I started about 5 I think), I've always been a bit nervous about trying knitting in the round. But after finding several tutorials, I figured I'd give it a go. And I have to say, they didn't turn out too badly at all.

After looking around at a few tutorials, I decided to use this one, at Tameson's Musing. I chose it over some others (Silver's Sock Class and Socks 101) mainly because I prefer the method of doing the heel. However, I'd definitely recommend checking out those two as well, as they have some great instructions and photos about knitting with double point needles that were really useful.

Knitting on double point needles definitely took a bit of practice. It feels very awkward, and preventing the spaces between the needles being all loose requires constant care, but overall, I really enjoyed it. Funnily enough, I found myself knitting inside out! With knitting in the round, you constantly use the knit stitch, and I still did this, but on the opposite side of the circle to me, with the knit side going down inside the sock.

I had to turn it inside out to do the toe and heel, which I did in a different colour, just for fun. I found it much more awkward knitting right side out, but luckily these bits don't take too long.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, although getting the sizing right is a bit tricky. Both these are a little too big around my foot, one more so than the other. It's extra difficult using homespun wool, as it's not a regular thickness, so I'm going to have to work the size out all over again next pair. And there will be a next pair. I'm addicted. Well, they might have to wait until after I knit the beanie I've been promising DH...

Just in time.

After several months without rain, we've now gone to the opposite extreme here, with about 4 days of rain, and counting. We were sorely in need of it, being down to about 4 rungs of water in our tank. That's still several thousand litres, but we were starting to become concerned. Thankfully, after the heavy rain today, we're back up to around 2/3 of a tank, which should see us through the next couple of months, even if we don't get any more rain.

We had a few issues with the guttering at the back of the shed overflowing because it was choked with leaves. We didn't realise that until the heavy rain hit, too late to clear it. We did get it done in a break in the rain, but haven't had too much more since. Hopefully we'll get another lot of rain overnight, then it will clear in the morning, for DD's 4th birthday. We're all heartily sick of not being able to hear each other over the drumming of the rain on the roof.

Of course, it would have been even better if this tank, delivered the week before the rain, had been installed! It would have been half full by now, and might have stopped some of the buildup of water lying around the back of the house! Even once the tank is in though, I think we're going to have some serious drainage issues here.

Of course, these drainage issues are kind of serious too. This is our driveway! It's not really the water that's the problem, but the mud. It's that really slippery clay, recently dug up and put back to put the electricity cable across here. I haven't been bogged yet this time (happened early on, before we moved in), but we're being very cautious. At least, if it happens, we don't have far to walk home!

The garden is certainly enjoying it. I swear the peas have grown about 3 inches since it started, and they're all flowering like mad. Everything is greening up, and I think all the rooster booster I threw around last week was put down just in time. The rain is dissolving it all, and sending it into the ground.