MATE. It has been all systems go round here lately, trying to coax my garden into behaving (a new house/garden/soil always is a bit howyagoin the first year), to stop the chickens from destroying everything we hold dear, sourdough making, sewing, crochet, school runs, lunchboxes, emails, work work work, the constant cleaning that dusty old houses require, trying to get enough sleep, nominating myself for school council, baking, and of course, keeping up with mah Royals.
Like, destroy EVERYTHING. Our yard is scratched to death. There is (literal) shit everywhere that we are constantly washing off. Something must be done.
The san marzanos are taking their sweet-ass time. A late start got everything on the back foot, and the chickens keep digging up the roots so none of the four plants that survived from the 8 I grew from seed are very pleased with me at all.
But we are trying to make the most of the weather while we still can. Check out that parched grass, eh? The rain this morning was very welcome.
Popped this little number onto my crochet project list.
Beans. Never ending soaking of the beans.
Books. Never ending reading of the books.
Re-read this banger and never have I had such a successful starter. It was a 10/10 every single day. She’s currently hibernating in my fridge until I get a chance to give it a run.
Ah she’s beautiful.
No denying autumn is HERE. Just glorious tho.
Smalls flogged my phone from my back pocket to play Lego Rush at school pickup and ended up taking wonky photos of the street as we walked back to the car, including this one of her personal pack horse.
Spotlight had 40% off fabric this weekend just gone, so I grabbed some fun stuff to make blankets and cushions etc for an upcoming slumber party birthday. The sparkly soft fabric has been hemmed into blankets and Bigs has basically declared me Mother of the Year.
Smalls went on a little playdate to the beach and was that excited she got her hat, sunglasses, and backpack on at least half an hour too early. Bless her.
Again, the chickens. They don’t care that you don’t want to share, and they are FAST. They’re out of their minds.
Dust trap upon dust trap upon dust trap upon nodding violets.
The Melbourne mornings have been RESPLENDENT.
And of course, the comfort food has BEGUN. Cosiness commences: now.
What have you been up to? Are you a royal fan? Growing tomatoes better than me? Watching Nailed it on Netflix, which everyone’s raving about? Wishing it would rain? Scared of the end of summer? Tell me everything.
Worst year for tomatoes in the 9 years I’ve been at my house. So disappointing!!! I’m not sure what went wrong. All I know is I have NOTHING preserved from the garden this year & that pisses me off.
Not at all scared about Summer ending because it’s been the best Summer I’ve ever had in Perth but man oh man do we need some rain, everything is dry, brown & crunchy. Gross.
And I cannot wait to see your sourdough!
I feel your pain on the chickens destroying everything too, ours have ruined too many plants to count. my tips for chickens? Fence part of your yard off with bamboo stakes & chicken wire then you can have some distruction free yard but the chooks still have space to roam. Or fence off your garden where they wreck stuff, that’s what I did with my veg patch 🙂
Yes, I’m ordering them a chicken playpen! It’s movable and I can fold it away at night. Crazy chooks.
I’m not scared either about summer ending, and I think that’s for the first time since I moved to melbourne! Dare I say I’ve acclimatised?
Except for the no tomatoes, that’s been hard haha
I love the new podcast so much!
I have to ask: have you always been good at crocheting, sewing, cooking, gardening, etc. or is this a learned talent that came to you later in life?
My mother is a domestic goddess but unfortunately I don’t think I inherited the crochet gene 🙁
I wish I was better at just making/creating things in general, but almost all of my projects are complete fails.
Sorry for the long-ass comment. I would love it if you did a blog post on the topic of how to get started with domestic type things.
I’m so excited you love the podcast! I’m having so much fun with it, it’s been amazing to finally have an outlet for my royal obsessions haha.
That’s a very good question you ask… I suppose I have always been interested in little domestic pursuits. I embroidered as a child and my nana taught me to knit (my mum is left-handed so it was a bit difficult in that regard!). I loved cooking ever since I was very small, and kept my own recipe book from the age of about 10. Always the kid who wanted to play mums and dads in the cubby house! I also wanted to iron everything, which is weird, I know. Bloody loved ironing.
When I was older I was determined to not lose what I saw the country nannas doing, I loved that they canned their own plums, and made relishes and things. I started dabbling in all that in my early 20s and just tried out different recipes (the CWA recipe books are an excellent place to start!) until I learned what worked and what I liked. I taught myself to crochet from the internet in about 2002, before there was any youtube videos! I literally looked at scanned pictures of crochet books and tried to figure it out. I picked it up much faster than knitting, so completely switched to that for years, though I have found myself drawn to knitting much more lately, and get all my info from blogs and Ravelry. The sewing… well I can keep a needle moving but my lines are never neat and I’m yet to make anything cerebral from a proper pattern, so we’ll see!
So I guess the answer is a bit of both. There’s been an interest, and when I’ve felt a particular keenness for any one thing I’ve just given it a bloody go and gotten better as I’ve gotten older. I hope that helps! I’m still very much a beginner in just about everything but crochet and cooking.
Also: NEVER apologise for long comments! They are literally the best thing about blogging, as often I feel like I’m talking to myself. So much nicer when it’s a two-way street 🙂
Tomato’s here were a fail but I do have carrots, celery and chilli’s which ill take as a win. Evie feels smalls with the beach, she is forever asking beach every time she see’s her sunscreen she has so many words now and is so cute how she says they, daycare tell me that soon I will wish she never spoke as they have a feeling I will not be able to keep her quiet. My book pile is high (recipe books, toddler activity books, gentle parenting books and the book club book), my crochet is growing slower than I hoped, I have been craving chocolate chip oat cookies for days now, I seem to have substantially less time than I once had, Im guessing in years to come I will miss the business that having a toddler, working and the daily grind bring but I will keep plodding on and hopefully find time to make the cookies tomorrow
Yeah you’re really in the thick of it aren’t you! I think you’ll find that every stage of parenting and working will bring its own set of challenges, so I do hope you get the time to chill occasionally. I wish I could come over and bake you biscuits! You know I would <3
Yo! I do love a life update!
We had a rather good crop of cherry tomatoes during the first half of the summer (in Sydney), but we’ve already burned through all the passata we made from them (with two young lads in the house, we make a lot of meatballs around here). We’ve got a small mango tree and a little grove of fig trees, and it’s been a bumper year for both!
We’ve got three chooks, keeping them in their own fenced-off area of the garden. We have fairly hardy plants in that area that the chooks don’t seem interested in eating. Occasionally we let them out onto the grass for a free-range, but they certainly don’t seem to suffer from having a specific area to themselves…
Honestly, I am gagging for real autumnal weather. Summer is not my favourite season – my sleep suffers from heat and humidity! In anticipation of cooler times, I’ve been attempting to make myself a pair of custom-fitted jeans! In that process I have learned that tencel is not an acceptable substitute for proper denim 🙁 Oh well, pretty sure the fit is right now, so hopefully next time’s a goodun’!
You’re making your own jeans?! That’s amazing! Tencel is verrrry 90s, I remember when tencel jeans were all the rage. Who knew they’d be shit to work with these days?!
What I wouldn’t give for a mango tree… there’s plenty of fig around Melbourne but nobody in my family except me eats them! We have some plum trees but sadly they did not survive the early season birds despite my best efforts. Lucky me.
We are absolutely going to have to fence the chickens off, and I have my eye on some movable fencing, seeing as we’re renting. I can’t wait for them to leave my tomatoes and herbs alone! My poor tomatoes, they were still seedlings in the first half of summer, I really couldn’t get it together at all. Looking forward to making some batches of pizza sauce from those san marzanos though, yum!
So excited to say so long to summer – I can’t wait for some cold weather! That said, got visitors over from the UK so I hope the sun shines at least until they head back to the mother country! Well jel of your chickens but I don’t think they’d go so great on my balcony. And that sourdough! I would love to make my own. Will aid Nailed It to the list. Currently crushing on Queer Eye and Lovesick.
We are headed into to spring, glorious spring and trying to sell our house. It has been a flurry of showings, shoving things in the car to hide the never ending mounds of stuff, and so much anxiety. I can say the insta pot and bread machine have made our lives easier over the last few weeks….cooked chickpeas in an hour, perfect hard boiled eggs, and fresh bread. I did get a fancy new job title at job and am super proud of the hard work I have done to get it after being a SAHM for 5.5 years. Who knew I could do more than laundry, be a snack dispenser, and personal chauffeur? 😂