Feather your Nest Friday. 29th September, 2023.

I hope you had a good feathering your nest week.  Do you notice just how many ways there are to build up your home?   The wise woman builds her home!   Sometimes a lot of opportunities come our way.   Many of these come with "attachments" like extra work in the kitchen or garden or in some other way!   A lot of times lately I have needed to find short cuts and easier ways to get things done.   Mainly though keeping at it,  a little each day,  gets me there.   That is not to say sometimes I don't fall in a heap.    Wednesday and Thursday afternoons I felt so tired.   I was wondering if I needed an iron transfusion or some other intervention!   But drinking more and two really huge sleeps sorted me out! 

So... some of the ways we got ahead this week were:

We had sunny days and every day I did the rounds and watered all of my garden and all of my seedlings.   I can see growth!   I fertilised the fruit trees.

I planted a tray of lettuce seeds.  These are for Chloe if they come up.   She is getting a stacky planter like mine.  

A set of pots full of capsicum seeds have not come up in a whole month.  I was ready to re use the pots for something else and suddenly 14 capsicum have sprouted!  

Mum came for afternoon tea.  She brought me Lavender and Rosemary fresh from her garden.

I decided to try freeze dry the Lavender.  It turned out beautifully!   I have kept it in sealed jars because the scent is lovely and I thought I might make sachets.   Things come out of the freeze drier smelling fresh just as they went in. 

In the supermarket they had four bunches of really droopy roses.   They had already marked down the prices but I could see these were destined for the bin.  I hunted down a young man from the fruit and veggie department and asked if he would consider (and be allowed to) mark them down some more.  He was very nice.  He asked me what do I need half dead roses for?  haha.  So I told him they are to dry and preserve.  He said ok I can mark them down by 80% that is the maximum they let me.    And so I got four bunches of roses for $2 per bunch.   I told him he is a legend and thanked him very much.  😊

As soon as I got home I got the freeze drier going.   

This has me thinking about road side flower like wattle... suddenly there are so many possibilities!

For Mum's visit I made scones (GF) then another tray of regular scones for Chloe.   Wow, did they look good... I am used to using gf flour but they looked so much better as regular scones with regular flour!

I made GF Gingerbread for Mum as well.

One of my big cook ups was a huge Impossible Pie.   This was mainly because I am collecting a dozen eggs a day.

Another cook up was a double batch of Hilde's Chicken Pasta.

I took eggs to the swap table and got a whole box of bottles and a bunch of curly leaf Parsley.  That also went into the freeze drier.

I had a bag of potatoes that had grown shoots.   I kept them as I had hopes of finding a few pots and being able to plant them up.   Everything that could possibly hold dirt around here is already full!   At Chloe's she asked me if I would like a large grow bag that a fruit tree had come in and two pots!  What timing!     So my potatoes got planted! 

One of our Pear trees is so covered in blossoms!  

Some of my smaller fruit trees have fruit forming. 

We still had compost.  I also had more Zucchini seeds come up.  So we made another spot of good soil in the orchard for a Zucchini patch.  I planted three and have three more almost ready to put out.

I totally ran out of things to cover them with so I used my Kmart frying basket!  😊

I went to town and was able to go to the nursery.  I got another 12 tomato plants, 6 oregano and six silverbeet.   I found spots to add them in.   

My outdoor cupboard is being filled with paper supplies and things that are not sensitive to heat and cold.   This week I stocked it with rolls of baking paper,  alfoil, foil trays,  garbage bags and so on.  It is a huge cupboard but this will give me a lot of extra supplies.

We have a lot of really big gum trees down the bottom of our garden.   Andy put up another swing over a big sturdy branch using a tyre and a long rope.  It looks great and the kids will love it.   Good timing as I am picking up Harper and Scarlett tomorrow!  Tomorrow is shaping up to be a whopper... five hours driving to start with and a long list before we come home tomorrow night.   I may not be able to post on Monday.   I will take lots of photos of what we are doing though as we are going to be working on Christmas! 

I moved chicks out of the house last week.  These are the orphan chicks now,  they are going into a much bigger hen house to live.  Look how big they are! 

I had a serious summer and electricity talk with one of my daughters.  I pointed out that when the wheels fall off there will not be a generator to buy.     This happened after we had a state wide blackout.  People rushed to buy generators,  cans to carry fuel... and to get fuel.  Even funnels sold out.   You couldn't buy a generator in our state easily for almost two years.   And people who did this... they went to the service station (gas station) to get fuel for the generator and of course there was none as the pumps don't pump without electricity.    So in the crisis it is way way too late to do this kind of stuff.  With these facts my daughter and husband decided to get ready now and get a generator and other steps set up.   Well, I am very happy about that.   

I also decided to put together heatwave kits.  In our freezers I keep a lot of bottles of water and some fruit juice.  Also all the other ingredients for homemade electrolytes.  This week I added water spray bottles and hand held fans.   I am going to get some full sized,  battery operated fans as well.  We have them. They are fantastic.  They could be a really life saver for someone elderly or ill that is really struggling in a power outage.

How did you feather your nest this week?   Maybe you were preparing for winter while I am getting ready for summer!  Either way it is good to get ahead!  Have a lovely weekend! xxx