ouch

My poor aching arms.
We had another working bee here today wiht the neighbours.
We weeded and dug the entire side of the house (see previous pictures from older post to see how weedy it was)
This is where the potatoes will be grown. (between the tank and fence)

Huge job here, dug and turned all of the soil, removed all the weeds and transplanted all the self seeded seedlings to the bed in the back.
Still more work to do but definitely getting there!
My sprouted snow peas out the fornt.

The transplanted lettuces from the part where we dug the 2 new beds.
The silverbeet will most likely go to seed now which is a good hting.
I am so so sore. and I still have a game of netball to go play!

Market day.

Yesterday was market day. We live near the Dandenong market and we try to get there each week on a Tuesday to stock up on fruit and veg for the week. It saves so much money when we do this as prices are quite competitive. We usually try to go an hour or so before closing as prices drop even more.

They do have an organic section but lately prices have been insane in that area and unfortunately my budget doesn't stretch to accomodate me there. I do head there first though and pick up what I can.

Some good bargains from the rest of the market though were
$1.99 kg broccoli
5 avocados for $1
apples and pears for $1-1.49 kg
big large head of cauli for $2
big bag of baby carrots $1
Bananas a bag for $2

and much more for good prices.

With 3 kids we go through a heap of fruit anf veg each week, we always have to shop 2 times each week for them. Its great that we eat such variety but without the market we wouldnt be able to afford it some weeks.

Yesterday I also took the bagged up lettuce to school, in all I gave away 6 decent bags of lettuce and still left myself with 2 bags. the mums were most appreciative!

I also checked out my local fishing store again and this time they had red worms in so i grabbed a punnet and brought them home and added them to the worm farm.
The worm farm is going well. We haven't been feeding them a lot yet as they establish. But they are starting to eat there way through what I give them.

I'm heading out this afternoon to get osme plastic to cover my mini greenhouse/seed protector :) Will post photos once I am done!

Neighbours

When we were looking to buy a house a few years ago we never imagined we would live in a street like we do now. Actually when we I first found this house Joey didnt want to come look at it as it is a weatherboard. I convinced him to come look and we both fell in love with the place straight off!

We live in a court (or cul-de-sac) and we live down the bottom in the bowl. I remember in the early days of living here a few of the neighbours came by and said hello, they all introduced themselves if they saw us in the street. In quite a short time we soon knew everyone in the bottom half of the court and had met the rest of the street also.

In the 3 years that we have been here we have made wonderful relationships with our neighbours.
I have made 2 wonderful female friends, our kids play and we get along fantastic. We have street parties and bbq's at each others places, dinners and drinks and lots of plays with the kids. We have babysitters that we very much lacked before moving here (a godsend for us especially as both mine and Joeys mums are no longer with us).
People help out, they help with the house, the garden, fixing things etc, with the kids and more!
We dont just live in a court, we live ina community, it really is great!

So back to today
Today we had a working bee at the neighbours house. My sister was over for the day so she helped too as did another neighbour up the street.
We worked on extending her vegie patch. The men built the fence (it has to be fully closed in as they have 2 large dogs who would love to dig it up!) and we weeded and dug out all of the beds and added compost and manure and dug it through. We also painted the lot and dug out a dead tree form the front and planted a new tree. Took most of the day but it feels nice to be working outdoors and even nicer working together with others.

After the days working everycame to our place for tea. There was heaps of salad in the vegie beds sprouted form ones gone to seed last season so the kids had salad and sausage rolls and i cooked up a lentil shepherds pie for the adults which we too had salad with.
(my neighbour said her husband wouldnt eat it as it had no meat and so many vegies in it, I told her that we wouldnt tell him til after he ate it that it wasnt meat, we just said it was shepherds pie, he ate 2 platefuls and shocked when we told him it had no meat in it! LOL)
I have 5 bags of salad to distribute at school tomorrow morning to the mums (they were all complaining of the price of it today and there was such a surplus even after each neighbour taking some for themselves, that is seems only fair to take some and share it round.)

Then after dinner i went for a jog, yes a jog!!! with another neighbour, just in our street which is hard enough as the court starts at the top of a hill and we live at the bottom so we jogged up and down!

A good day!

Well thats another rambling post :)