Garden Update

I have somehow managed to completely fail at blogging anything so far this year, and it's already April (how did that happen?) I guess I'm just too busy living life to write about it. Or maybe I'm just too busy working... My camera has also been a bit temperamental over the last few months, so I haven't taken as many photos as I wanted - completely missed taking a photo of the tomato bed in it's prime, which was a shame, it's not much to look at now. I'm just going to do a quick overview of the last few months, as I need to go to sleep soon for work tomorrow.

November - The vegetables are growing well and I was able to eat mesclun, spinach and pak choi. I've been eating juicy strawberries since the 8th November, they have been very productive this year and I'm glad I planted them in a bed instead of a strawberry pot (as I'd done the previous year).

Above is a box with mesclun, snow peas, beans, brocolli, pakchoi, carrots and spinach growing. The mesclun is bursting out of the square!

In November I also started laying weedmat around the boxes to keep down the grass and weeds, as I was getting a bit sick of mowing and strimming it away from the boxes. Here you can see potatoes, which I am growing in left over compost bags. I built a cage from chicken wire to protect my strawberry bed. The far bed in the above picture has broccoli, peas, and onions. It did have parsnips but they never germinated :( Think I had a bad batch of seeds.

Strawberries and raspberries - yum :)

December - I continued the weedmatting endeavour, and spent a day shovelling Otatara pebbles on top, with a lot of help from mum and my boyfriend. I think it looks almost stylish now!

The centre box has peas which you can see have shot up - they are Dwarf Massey peas which supposedly means they don't need staking, although I did give them a bit of support by making a cage around the box - primarily to protect my broccoli from cabbage butterflies and their caterpillars. I had a good, if short, harvest of peas - unfortunately the bulk of them were ready whilst I was away over Christmas and New Years. The fruit picking continues, and I've harvested my garlic (the pots in front of photo above), picking carrots when I want, and giant broccoli heads too.

January - Even though Summer seemed to have deserted us for most of the month, I at least still managed some great harvests. My experiment with cucumber fell flat though, with my cucumber plants promptly dying as soon as they went outside. Nevermind I have a solution for cucumbers for next season...

Carrots, strawberries, broccoli, peas, spinach... yum yum yum!

I also seem to be growing something surprising in my raspberry bed!

February - I came into my main crop of potatoes (I was hoping they'd be a bit earlier) and have spring onions and baby turnips too. My broccoli was almost done, and I ended up freezing a lot of later use as I just couldn't eat my way through it all.

March - This month has seen the bulk of my tomato crop ripen. They are in a raised bed by the back door and have done surprisingly well for being outdoors, although ripened later than I would have liked. Having said that, I did have some ripen before the next door neighbour's tomatoes, which are in a glasshouse. I have Roma, Moneymaker, Russian Red and Sweet 100 growing. I've made some into puree and frozen it. I love tomatoes, but there are just too many for me!

I also bought some fruit trees and planted them along the new fence my kind neighbour built as our new boundary. There are 2 ballerina apple trees, a meyer lemon and a feijoa so far. I've harvested all the potatoes from the bags I planted them in, and most of my crops are coming to the end of the season. It's also bulb planting time - I noticed last spring there was a severe lack of bulbs in my garden, so now there are tulips, daffodils, anemones, ranunculus, freesia, crocus and dutch iris.

April - The biggest accomplishment of April so far - my new tunnel house that Dad built me for my birthday!! Now I can plant even more food!

There are currently some pak choi, broccoli, silverbeet and lettuce growing in there. In summer I'll try for some cucumber again, and grow tomatoes so hopefully I will get some earlier. Unbelievably, considering how cold it has been recently, I'm still harvesting tomatoes, and strawberries. In fact I've had strawberries constantly since November, and haven't had to buy a single punnet.

At some point soon I'm going to write a post examining my successes and failures for the season and looking at where to go next. Right now, though, I have to go to sleep!

Intensive Update #4

Time for another update, as it took me so long to write up Tonga I never wrote about anything else! Luckily I won't be going on any holidays for a good long while due to lack of funds! So no more multiple holiday posts...

Not that I'm really sure there is much to update about my life. Things are ticking along, the house is going well, I had 2 flatmates for a while but one has just moved out. It's nice to only have one flatmate, the house feels more my own with only one other person here, and I'm hoping I can get by with just renting out one room but we'll see. I've been waiting months to get my bathroom renovation sorted and hopefully that will be happening in a couple of weeks. There are still plenty of odd jobs to do around the place, and lots of things I'd love to do too, but unfortunately the bills need to be paid instead! I've learned I hate paying Rates! They always come at the wrong time.

Other aspects of my life - work is going well, and the 3 week holiday from work is even better! Switching to 12hr shifts has meant I get a lot more time off, although I'm going up to full time (from .9FTE) when I start back next week so that means an extra 8hr shift per fortnight. My love life sucks, but then that's really nothing new is it? Spectacular heartbreak this year, but I'm mending slowly. At least the cat loves me. Oh yes, I got a cat a couple of months ago! Her name is Poppy, and a friend from work gave her to me as she didn't get on with their dog. She's taken a while to settle in but she's pretty good most of the time now. Doesn't like new people though!

I'm really getting into gardening lately, and planning to grow a lot of my own vegetables over the coming year. I'll be blogging a lot about it I think, have been taking photos as I go.

So friends, this is a short update, as really there haven't been that many newsworthy moments so far this year! I can't believe it is half way through August though, the year is disappearing so quickly.

Intensive Update #4

It's been a while since I've updated, and there have been a few reasons why. I thought it was about time I did though, because the last couple of months have been pretty action packed. Some things really warrant a blog post all of their own, but I literally do not have enough hours in the day at the moment so more detailed posts will follow later!

So, the first major event of the last few months was that I have bought a house! I found it in October and the deal was finalised on December 7th. Ever since then it has been a hectic time of moving all my stuff, unpacking, sorting, buying much needed equipment and furniture and cleaning up. The garden still needs a lot of work, but luckily mum came and lent a hand with some of it. I'm still having a few teething issues, particularly in relation to electrical problems (stupid washing machine...) and the shower (poor hot water pressure) but it's all stuff that can be sorted. I want to do a bit of decorating before too long as well.

The second event is the departure of several friends of mine. One close friend left a couple of months ago now to live with her boyfriend in the North Island, so at least there is the chance of seeing her again occasionally, but the others are just going too far away! Craig and Rhonwyn left just before Christmas, to head to Australia for the holidays and then over to Canada. Life just isn't going to be the same without them, though the reality of them not being here really has not sunk in yet. I've lived with these guys for almost 3 years so it will be a big change. I think it's helped I've had the new house to focus on. Hopefully I'll manage a holiday over there in the next couple of years! JT also left to pursue work in Oz, and another good friend of mine leaves in February, but not before we have a well deserved holiday in Tonga. It really has been a mass exodus of friends recently. I'll be advertising for new ones shortly!!

The third event is live music! There have been a couple of bands I've been dying to see and have had tickets for for months. First off was Pearl Jam in Christchurch, supported by Liam Finn and Ben Harper. The music was great, the weather was awful, and I was enjoying myself until some idiot behind me hit me on the back of my head with his elbow. Luckily the friend I was with and a couple other people around me picked me up off the floor and looked after me, but the b**st**d didn't even apologise or even seem to notice! I ended up with a headache and neck sprain which went on for weeks. Seems to generally be okay now, so I'll have to start going back to the gym and seeing how I cope.

I also flew up to Auckland to see Green Day, who were absolutely amazing! I was careful not to get hit this time! The music and the lighting show they had was simply fantastic and there was tonnes of crowd interaction - they got a young boy up on stage, and a woman with pink hair got to come up and sing one of their songs. I'll post properly on the event later.

Other than that, I've been working, working, working. Can't wait for my holiday in February and also for my sister coming to NZ next week! I wish she was here for longer than 2 weeks, but maybe I'll just have to steal her passport so she can't leave!

I'm not really one for New Year Resolutions so I won't bother joining the ranks of bloggers who've made lists of resolutions for 2010 - let's face it, I'd probably break them next week anyway. I'll just say I have one goal for 2010 and that is to write more than last year. That won't be hard!

Intensive Update #3

My blog has been taken over for the last 6 months by tales from my trip to South East Asia, and so I haven't written about anything else. Hopefully now I'll get back on track!

So, first a bit of an update in what has been happening in my life during the last few months:

1 - Job

I started my new job at the hospital about 10 days after I got back from my trip. Six months in, it is still going really well, and I really feel like I'm improving as an RN. As a new graduate I have this job for a year. After that I'll have to find a permanent job, hopefully in the same place I'm working now and definitely still in Dunedin - I have no plans to move elsewhere! I feel settled in Dunedin, and it must feel like home because I always miss it and am glad to get back whenever I leave! I'm not sure I've ever really had that feeling in my life before...

2 - House

I'm currently looking for my first house! Yes, I'm entering the property market, and hopefully before the end of the year when my rental agreement runs out or else I'll be homeless! It is proving quite hard, houses I like tend to be sold very quickly before I can even make a decision! I've got a few lined up to see this week though, so hopefully something will come of it.

3 - Free time

Well I don't have much of this any more, due to all the working! I've had to give up choir for the rest of the year, but hopefully I will be back there next year and able to be a bit more focused! My writing is also pretty sporadic at the moment, I think I need to get into a routine and plan my free time a little better to make room for it. I've also been trying my best to spend time with my friends lately, as a lot of them are leaving at the end of the year - won't have many left after that!! And then there's the boyfriend...

One new hobby I've taken up is vegetable gardening. Well, sort of. I've got the beginnings of it anyway. It'll all be in containers, at least until I get my own garden. I'll blog about it later.

I'm making this a short update. The clocks go forward an hour tonight, which means I get an hour less sleep. I have to work at 7am tomorrow! Argh!

Intensive Update #2

Life has been quite busy over the last month or so, even though I haven't really had any work at all. I've still got another post or so about my Wellington trip, and because I've wanted to get that finished I haven't had a chance to write about my GRADUATION (!), passing my NURSING REGISTRATION (!!), hiking the Kepler Track, or Christmas.

I was at my parents' house for over a week with no real internet access - they have dial up, but it barely copes with loading Gmail, and takes about 2 days to load a photo - so I was pretty much unable to keep up with the blog posts. Hopefully, I'll have a bit of time to catch up over the next couple of days, although I am packing up to move house, as well as finally getting some work. Life is ever hectic - but here is a photo of beautiful Lake Te Anau and Fiordland to bring some much needed tranquility...