Easing into 2012…

Well, it’s one day short of a week into the new year and I’m already thinking it’s going fast!

Here at The Quick Unpick we’ve been lazily enjoying just easing into 2012.

Big Little Miss M is 4 1/2 and eagerly awaiting the start of 4 year old kinder (she’s got a few more weeks of holidays.

And Little Little Miss M who is 2 1/2 seems to think she’s off to school this year… unfortunately she misses the cut off for three year old kinder this year by 28 days so she’ll be still home with me (which I’m quietly pretty pleased about – it will be nice to have a couple days a week with my little bubba all to myself… or rather for her to have me all to herself).

The girls and I have FINALLY gotten our act together and put one of the raised garden beds together. Here’s what we have growing…

We have a mixture of bought seedling and some free growing ones that have sprouted from the home compost. Speaking of free growing and seeding, check out these sneaky ones….

These free seeding pumpkins seemed to shoot up overnight… there is so many of them that sadly many are going to have to be pulled up (I think they’re all going to have to come out of this garden bed but a few will be transplanted to a quiet back corner where hopefully they’ll happily take over and produce some nice home-grown pumpkins!).

Now, I’ve never been known for my gardening skills… I’m definitely no green thumb and most plants within  short order succumb to my plant murdering ways.

Take note of the girls once thriving strawberry plants…

Yep, I don’t think these sweet babes can be saved!

We’ve also planted some quick growing pittosporum silver sheen along our back fence line in hopes of growing a nice lush hedge… it’s not looking so good.

We’ve had a week of super hot, dry weather… one day hitting over 41C… so maybe I didn’t pick the right time to put them in (plus the back iron fence I think has assisted in baking them.)

They started looking like this in the pots…

And a mere three days later they are turning into crispy, curly things…

Hmmm… will have to put up some shade screening I think. Hopefully they can be saved!

There are some things that are growing… mostly plants that don’t need too much attention, love or care…

Oh and there’s this lovely potted peach tree. It had so, so many gorgeous looking baby peaches growing… and then one day after my terrorising 2 year old got out there, I discovered that she’d managed to pick EVERY. SINGLE. REACHABLE. not ready to be picked peach… Only one escaped here clutches…

Anyhow, a garden oriented post is a little different from me, but that’s been filling our first week of the new year. The little break from sewing has been nice and felt needed… I think it’s assisted in refocussing and hopefully getting a bit more of a creative mojo going on – I’m hankering for a refashioning tutorial!

We’ve done a lot of cloud gazing too… it reminds me of childhood and I think one day it will for my girls too – we all just lay on the trampoline and marvel at the sky and the pretty colours and nature…

So, I hope you are all getting some time to just ease into the year and laze about sky gazing and marvelling at the wonder of this place!

Till next time…