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.