I have been quiet of late, relaxing around our home, not doing a lot except putting the final touches on my work-in-progress eBook.
Holidays are a great time to wind down after a years hard graft, and what better time than during summer.
I have even taken the opportunity to sleep in until 7.00am, which is a welcome respite from the 6.00am awakenings during the working week. Even this extra hour is pleasurable.
So, what have we been doing? Well there is always something to do around here, and this time of the year it is fruit time.
Now for those regular readers, I have a dwarf ANZAC peach tree behind the outdoor clay oven. It was also ripening well, and I picked a couple of peaches on Christmas Eve for Kim and I. However, on Christmas Day, a flock of Rainbow Lorikeets decided that they would enjoy the peaches more than I would, so ate the entire crop! Not a single one left.
To that end, I have put exclusion bags on all of the apples on the dwarf jonathan apple tree that lives next to the peach, and have netted the yellow peach and nectarine trees with Bens help. Big thumbs up! We should have a nice harvest from these two trees in the next few weeks.
Our Christmas Day was a traditional roast. We had a meat day, and had bio dynamic smoked turkey, and bio dynamic honey cured ham.
It was quite a good accompaniment to lashings of home grown roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, home made sage stuffing balls, and steamed vegetables. It was delicious, and all the family enjoyed themselves, dinning al fresco.
Garden maintenance over the break has been routine, with regular liquid fertilizer fortnightly, and watering every other day unless it was over 35C. I do water the pots daily due to the heat, just to keep the herbs alive. Click on the picture and expand the window to view the panorama photo in all its glory. You can see every garden bed in the main patch. Left to right; Sweetcorn, Tomatoes, Zucchini and capsicum and eggplant and sunflowers, cucmber and capsicum, and on the far right, the berry bed now spent of loganberries. I have one empty rainwater tank, and only about 2000 litres in the second. It has not rained for a month, so I will have to keep an eye on the water situation.
Finally, New Years Eve. We had a pizza oven. Yes, I look like a dwarf from the hobbit with a miners light on, but, boy can I cook pizza Kim said I looked like Super Mario!
Pizza cooked in this oven are to die for. Lightly brown on top and dark brown on the bottom. I cooked nine pizza in 1 hour. Nice.
Then we had a few sherbets. Home brew beer for me, and Limoncello daiquiris for Kim. Adult kids being what they are decided to go hell for leather and jumped into the pool at midnight, even though the temperature had dropped down to about 15C by this time. We were all in bed by 1.00am.
Well dear readers, that has been our Xmas/NYE break so far. I still have a week and a half left to go before I return to work.
I hope you are having a similar relaxing time, and are enjoying your journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle. If you haven’t started yet, give it a go. It all starts with a simple, small, first step in the right direction.
Shame about the peaches Gavin. We managed to beat the birds to our apricots, even though some had beak holes in them. Our apricots weren’t big but there were a lot of them yum! We made a big batch of jam and stewed the rest and put in the freezer for later 🙂
Sounds like you had a lovely Christmas and New Year.
There is some hot weather coming your way, we are in the middle of a big heatwave here at the moment. No rain forecast. Our main tank became very low a while back and we had to run some more water in it from one of our other tanks. The rainfall has been pretty grim!
x
Hi Gavin,
I’d gladly swap you some of our rain for some of your sunshine. It feels as though it hasn’t stopped raining for months here in Old Blighty and the ground is sodden and waterlogged. The cat looks ridiculous in wellies and a sou’wester but refused to go out unless we purchased them for her – she hates getting her fur wet.
So here’s looking forward to rain for you and sun for us in 2013 and a happy, healthy and simply joyful new year to you, Kim, Ben and the rest of your family.
Here’s wishing you a Happy and and Productive New Year Gavin from MINUS 27 C in Canada. Your panoramic photo gives a very good impression of your garden and I notice you have a neighbour with solar panels on his roof. Is he a convert from you?
I am amazed that you consider staying in bed til 7 am as having a lie-in. If I got up that early I’d have jet-lag symptoms for the rest of the day! It is no wonder you get so much done – and good for you.
In the old days it was customary to send round small pieces of wedding cake to guests who were invited but couldn’t get to the wedding. Perhaps some samples of your delicious looking cheeses to some of your cheesey readers would revive an old tradition….
David
What a great writeup of your Christmas/New Year period. Gavin, I’m so envious of your apricots. How many years has that tree been in the ground? We planted an Apricot at my place in July which seems to be looking very healthy and I just can’t wait for it to set fruit. Also I love the sunflowers in your garden – I really must grow a few to pretty the place up. Cheers.
A lovely post Gavin, thank you for sharing Christmas and New Year with us. I am so impressed with your parmesan. I am also impressed that you kept your hands off it for two years. What fortitude.
Yep, you do look like Mario. Super, of course.
I am very impressed with your cheese. Beautiful.
Jenny