Initially passionate

Weeks and weeks ago Cam scratched Yarrow's initials into one of the passionfuit that are growing higgeldy-piggeldy over the chook yard. It scarred up and kept growing...

And now they're ready, lovely and sweet and tangy,
and Yarrow has his very own one to play with.

Old fashioned Easter for newly-fashioned boy

Oooo, the joy of being a Mum and getting to make special things special! Ro's first Easter, and I found at the bottom of a drawer some dyes and stickers my Oma sent me two years ago to make German Easter eggs with him, like we used to when we were little... 

We used to make Easter nests 4 weeks before, and get one small chocolate egg each Sunday in the lead up... It being autumn in Oz at Easter time rather than spring, we used to make our nests out of curling, crunching leaves - and then on Easter morning - eggs! bunnies! and hard-boiled dyed eggs with the cutest little old-fashioned stickers. 

Dying our chickens' eggs, stickers at the ready...

So lovely!

We used to dye them, all four of us kids together with Mum, in margarine containers with paddle-pop sticks, heaps and heaps of them, and give cartons of Easter colours to friends.   

This is the hole that Jack bit!

Here Ro demonstrates his new bite: his first two teeth came through on our recent premiere wedding anniversaire, and now a top one is peeking through...

On the same day: a top tooth, he crawled, and ate a whole bowl of food! Methinks he is getting so grown up - and there's years and years of this to go! 

The littlest biker of them all

Cam came home tonight with a bike seat for Ro! We all saddled up and rolled on down to the creek, the first time I've ridden a bike in aaaages, was such fun! Ro wasn't very keen on the helmet but he loved zooming along, and peeking at me on my bike from under Dad's arm.



Thank goodness for whoever it was that invented gears, coming back up our very steep and very long driveway!

An Irish native peace tree

We made up the garden for the Southern Cross Permaculture Institute by the river at the Sustainable Living Festival last month, with natives and fruit trees and herbs, a lovely grapefruit tree in its pot bowling over regularly in the wind! Ro was very happy sitting under the tree in the dirt on his Bolivian blanket from Mel and Tobes, laughing with everyone who came to have a rest in the garden, having his naps in his pram in the tent at the back.

A woman from Ireland and her husband came by and bought some of the beautiful natives and donated them to us to plant; they had planned to come to Australia to live but her mother was dying so they were going back to Ireland.

Cam and Ro planted them along the path to the chookhouse, where they’ll become part of the support for the future edible forest garden (fixing nitrogen in the soil, protection from wind etc), and meanwhile just be beautiful in themselves as well.

May our Irish woman and her mother have much peace.

First weekend of PDCs 1 & 2

We began our two parallel Permaculture Design Certificate's from here this weekend - woohoo! Two lovely groups of people, one lot doing the course on Saturdays, and the other on Sundays, over 12 weeks. Here they are all penned in the chookhouse, inspecting the deep litter compost system the ladies have going on for us:

Here are some remains of afternoon tea, a lovely sort of composition of pips and peel and tea bags that took my fancy as I went to clean them up:

Funny potato creature

Look at this funny little fellow:

He looks like a Bert to me!