Life on the Pickle Farm | picklebums.com

September 1, 2010 | Filed in: Life on the Pickle Farm

Hello September!
I have no idea where August went but I’m quite happy to welcome September, the start of spring! So in line with the lovely Stoecel.com I am posting my monthly review today –

Things I learnt in August….

I learnt that reading out loud the school notice about book week projects will lead to an explanation of the word ‘diorama’ and then making one!

I learnt that getting the baby to smile is so much easier than catching one of those smiles with the camera.

I learnt that it does rain here occasionally…. and rain… and rain… and oh yes, it’s still raining! I am trying hard not to complain but hey weather, didn’t you get the memo? It’s spring today so could ease up on the freezing cold rainy days and through in a few more sunshiny ones, please.

I learnt that reading can be dangerous, that Man Flu isn’t as contagious as I thought and that I really do have a good bag of parenting tricks, even when I am tired.

I was reminded of how much infant reflux sucks…. and I am constantly reminded of that fact, especially when I get home from the post office only to discover I have a huge baby spew all down my back that no one told me about.

‘We Played’ fairy stories, pretend cooking, tiny treasures, tying laces , and cooking pita chips.

I learnt how much I hate ‘Show and Tell’ at school…. and how much my girls adore it.

I learnt that my girls possibly have a problem with hypochondria…
Zoe – “I have a line on my foot that might, possibly, one day maybe, if I cut it, become a sore… so I need a band aid.”

And I learnt how annoyed I would get with someone who just didn’t bother to vote… despite the fact that almost two weeks later we still don’t have a new government.

What did you learn in August?

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I remember many things from our family holidays. All jumbled together and mixed up. I remember good things and bad things, funny things and crazy things. I remember things that have since become family legends, stories that have been retold so many times I can’t remember if these memories are my own or someone else’s.

We are working in our own memories. I hope that my kids have wonderful, random, mixed up, holiday memories too.

What is your favourite family holiday memory?

The wonderful people over at KidSpot put me in their Top 50 Bloggers list! I do have to wonder what on earth they were thinking when they included me among 49 other amazing Australian Women bloggers, but hey I’ll take that moment of insanity on their part and say thank you! Todays post enters me to win a family holiday to Dunk Island!! You can vote for me and help me win if you like, or you could check out some of the other awesome bloggers and vote for them. There is no sign ups, and you can vote once for as many bloggers as you like, just click and vote. So go check out the list and I’m sure you can find someone on there that you know really needs a holiday!

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It is definitely still winter here, but August tricks me with it’s sunny days. The sunny days confuse my brain into thinking spring has already come. It makes me want to put on shorts and go outside to dig in the garden. But if I were actually silly enough to break out the shorts and rush outside I’d quickly find that the sun is just a tease… it is still bitterly cold out there.

Still it is a sign that spring will eventually come. It’s is a sign that I should stop being envious of all the summer photos of lush green grass and tall sunflowers on northern hemisphere blogs and start working towards our own summer garden.

So here I am, lusting after summer, wading through seed catalogues and dreaming up grand plans for our garden. The thing is… this spring/summer finding the time and the muscle to garden might be a little tough.

You see we finally got our building permits and are all set to start the renovations. That means the Baldy Boy will be more than a little busy tearing down the back of our house and building a new bit. It also means that we are going to be living without a kitchen and bathroom at various times over the course of the building, which is going to make life a little more difficult to manage. Oh yes… and there is also the smallest boy who tends to take up a fair bit of my time at present.

As I was pondering my grand plans and how on earth I was even going to manage to plant a single zucchini I was reminded of the question the Planning Queen asked me a while back…

“I would like to know how you juggle the outside stuff like veggie patch, the animals, with the inside stuff of the house? “

The short answer is, I don’t!

Gardening is very seasonal here on the Pickle Farm.

Spring planting is very labour intensive and we all spend way too much time in the garden, neglecting almost everything else, to get things prepared or planted in time.

Then there is the magical ‘growing phase’ where I feel like I have it almost perfectly balanced, spending time in the garden maintaining and encouraging but not to the detriment of everything else.

After that will come short bursts of manic activity when things fruit and we try to pick, eat, give away or preserve it all before it goes to waste.

Autumn comes late here and is lazy. Summer crops have produced and died back and we really should be spending time cleaning them up and preparing for next year, not to mention planing out a few winter crops, but we often don’t.

We barely touch the garden in winter. I don’t like the cold so I refuse to go out and garden in it. So anything we plant out in winter has to pretty much survive on it’s own or not!

I’m sure if I could find that magical balance and if I spent more consistent time in the garden all year round the whole growing stuff gig would work better and spring prep would be a lot less insane… but it’s just not the way it works around here at the moment.

I’ve learnt not to be too precious about the garden over the five years we’ve been attempting it. I can read all the books I like but I am never going to keep all that knowledge in my head, let alone have the time to plant those carrot seeds on the day of the April full moon. I’m just not… and that is ok. I can be a haphazard gardener and still grow plenty of great stuff and more importantly, enjoy it.

So here I am… on a sunny afternoon in August. We planted our green manure crops today. Oats, clover, peas and broad beans. Ok so we planted them all at totally the wrong time, but I’m reasonably confident they’ll still grow and still help improve our compacted soil. And despite the fact that I’ll be minus one tractor driver and man with the muscle and plus one small body strapped to my back I’m still making grand plans, even if they never come to fruition.

So who else is with me? Who is making grand garden plans for spring? What will you grow and what garden blogs inspire you or make you green with envy?

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