Citrus trees by week 4

Citrus trees by week 4…

Hello my friends and family (: Here it is another Saturday night, I truly look forward to this time of recording the past week’s joys, observations and lessons learned. It has been a hot week, but it has also rained every couple of days. The rain, I suppose would be the sign that this is really spring. Locals say that the incredible heat and humidity this early in the season is not normal, that’s good to know. We’ve started using the spa in the courtyard to cool off, rough life I know. Jacinta loves splashing around, jumping from bench to bench, blowing bubbles and diving fearlessly across the deep just to keep us on our toes. Jedda, the dog, also loves the spa, especially playing fetch with Jess’ water toys.

It has been a good week. Major milestones include beans and corn that are 6 inches high, 7 new citrus trees in the ground and heavily mulched, a new seedling hut, newly cleared land to extend the compost heap, Matt getting a job after his first interview as a casual (fill-in) bank teller, I’ve started making bread everyday with the breadmaker), Jacinta learning to jump (with help), and saying new words like horse, turkey, noodle (nounou) ,corn (cong), gone (gong)  and puppy. Actually, we can’t tell the difference between rhyming words like cheese, keys, and peas and puppy, poppy, peepee, and poopy. Unfortunately, there are not always sufficient context clues, but it’s ok (:

I visited my first local organic farm, about a 15 minute drive from home, and met a really cool family. We have a bit in common: music, kids, farming (but they know how), interest in whole foods (though they’re much stricter), former cityfolk, and chatty women and more pensive men. I hope to learn a bit from them. Here’s a funny scenario…my friend visits today to drop off my order from the co-op, has a walk around to see what I’ve done so far and comments on my meager efforts in mulching saying, “Oh, that’s your mulch, how cute.”  In other words, I’ll have to do a lot more in that realm. So she happily showed me how to mulch, mulching the lemon tree with me.  Later in the day I spent a few hours cutting branches off of the black wattle tree which Matt and Keith had just cleared from behind the compost and used them to mulch over the shredded paper laid around the trees. I’ll probably volunteer on their farm one day this week to learn some more.

My first major mistake this week was mulching newly planted seedlings with freshly cut grass clippings. Three days later…you can guess…in my newly built no-dig garden bed, I had grass sprouting to life. I PLANTED GRASS!! It didn’t have to find its way in, I put it there, Whoops! Lesson learned: kill grass in black plastic garbage bags in the sun before using as mulch.

I made lunch for two new friends and their sons from playgroup. We had a lovely afternoon here at the house, complete with hiking, visits with the chickens “chooks”, musical instruments, and drawing with Pop. Playgroup was enjoyable once more. It is so nice to sit and watch Jacinta do her thing. In the two hours she plays, she only visits me when she is hungry or thirsty, or if she sees the fruit bowl come out ready to be consumed. I must run to her at times, either to take her clothes off before she climbs in the baby pool, to put them back on when she runs into the craft room soaking wet, or to coax her into putting on her sun hat. Otherwise she tends to play with the older children, soaking up ideas on how to use certain toys and laughing when they do something amusing. She also enjoys playing by herself, her attention span for one activity is getting longer. New discoveries at playgroup: there is a ladies’ night at the hardware store with wine and lessons on machinery, the mom’s have ladies’ nights out, next outing will take place at the local Chinese restaurant. They elect officers each year and run meetings once in a while, whilst the children run around somewhat chaotically.

On the wildlife front, I saw the carpet snake all stretched out for the first time. He was about five or six feet long and was stuck in our seedling hut because he had just swallowed a big lizard and couldn’t get through the chicken wire after his meal. Jess got to see the “Ssssssssss” and was happy to watch Pop coax the him out of our new hut. The turkey continues to act as if there are eggs incubating in the middle of the compost heap, so we can’t use the compost soil yet. It’s been a month now. I’m starting to think that it’s time to give up on that theory and dig in. Just today the kookaburras came close enough for Jess to see and hear them laugh. The mosquitoes are thick and think we are very tasty. We see harmless spiders all the time, this is good for Jess as her favorite song right now is the “Eensie Weensie Spider.” She even starts it on her own, she puts her fingers in a diamond and says, “Ooncie.”

So now our garden has 13 trees, new additions are a late blooming navel orange, lemon, lime, kaffir lime, grapefruit, blood orange, and a mandarin. Hopefully they’ll start giving fruit in 2 or 3 years. Perhaps by then we’ll have a house to host our friends who we miss so much in the States. With 4 types of oranges, we’ll need some help consuming them all so please come see us in a while. Until then, you can sleep on our floor (hee hee), camp out or stay in a nearby B&B, and we’ll just have to buy fruit from the local fruit stands (:  Miss everybody and love hearing from you.