Meet the Bellas

Our most exciting news this post is that we have some new members of the family! Meet the two Bellas. Clarabella and Annabella our Braford heifers. They were bought from Loo's neighbour John and transported on the back of Pat's ute in a cage. They are so gorgeous and very tame. We are feeding them some dairy meal once a day to entice them to the fence so we can pat them and get them used to being near us. They are very good and after a week they are already coming over when we call them. We got them to keep the grass down in the paddocks as slashing with the tractor is too annoying.

We are also preparing to bring home some laying hens so Paul and I did some stable renovations! he he he We converted the old stable into a chook pen with a big run for them. We should have them soon.

My Vegie patch was thriving and I even managed to mulch it. But THEN.... the birds came and started feasting on my seedlings so up went the fruit nets Loo had given me. They are doing their job well for now. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to build a more permanent green house with netting to protect future plantings.

The fruit trees are all composted, fed and mulched and the banana trees cut back. Unfortunately we were a bit over zealous with the banana trees and accidently cut down one of the fruiting trees :( Hopefully the baby bananas will ripen and won't go to waste.

On the family front the girls are doing really well. Hannah loves her new school now and asks me almost everyday if today is school day. She so loves her kitty kat and treats her like a baby. Most of all she loves going to the beach in the late afternoons and running through the shore and getting totally soaked and full of sand.

Ailey is just a little cutie. She is really starting to talk more and can now dob on Hannah. he he he She can say things like "mine, push, no, Hannah" mostly all in relation to some fight they have had. It's very funny to watch Hannah's horrified expression when she realises she can't be sneaky anymore! But they are playing well together mostly and they like looking at books together in their rooms, playing with their dolly prams, playing picnics outside or just generally running and jumping around outside. Ailey thinks Hannah is hilarious most of the time and Hannah loves the adoration.

They both also are getting on very well with their cousins up here. Hannah and Annaleah go off in their own little world and play nicely most of the time although Hannah is so bossy that it nevertheless ends up in tears! Ailey LOVES Korey and Korey LOVES Ailey. They are so drawn to each other and spend most of their time together playing with the dog or the cat as they both also LOVE animals.

Finally here is one of our little tree friends who sits on our citrus trees. There are quite a few of them about and they are about an inch long. Very cute!

Garden Progress

Well it's been 5 weeks and in that time we have finally managed to produce some seedlings in our vegie patch. One of the beds has been prepared with cow manure and mushroom compost and planted with tomatoes (nasturtiums as companion plants), snow peas, peas, brocolli and cauliflower (also with nasturtiums as companions), pak choi, beetroot, silverbeet, garlic, onions, coriander, parsley, chives, marigolds, and petunias for colour. Our seeds are starting to germinate already after less than a week in the ground!

Paul has bought a diesel pump to pump water out of the dam upto the vegie patch. At the moment it gets pumped into a small 120L drum and then a small electric pump gets this into a hose to water the garden. We have ordered a 9000L Duraplas tank which should arrive in a couple of weeks. This will be filled with dam water and used to water the vegie patch and the fruit trees. Here's the temporary setup.

This last week has been mainly spent pruning the fruit trees. Our large lemon tree is very sick. It has some scaley sappy disease and is therefore covered in ants. There is lots of bark damage and broken branches. I have pruned it back as hard as I dare and gave it a good spray with pest oil. It will get some mushy compost and fertiliser this weekend. Hope it pulls through.

This scaley disease seems to have also spread to the smaller citrus trees but to a lesser degree. There are two orange trees, a mandarine tree and another lemon tree. They are all quite small but have fruit on them. They have been pruned and sprayed also.

There are three trees which look to be either peaches or nectarines. Two are quite large and one is small. They were quite scraggly so I have pruned them and tried to open them up a bit.

There are two trees which I think are either pears or plums. Not too sure they look quite leggy and I've trimmed them back a bit too. And two other trees which again may be pears or apples? These are more dense in the leaves and again they were trimmed back a bit to let in some light.

Next to all these fruit trees is the stand of banana trees which is in desperate need of tidying up. I really need Paul's help with this as it is a huge job. I was snooping around the other day and noticed that three of the banana trees are bearing fruit! So far the bananas are looking very cute. Need to check out what to do to ensure the birds etc don't eat them before we can pick them.

Out in the front paddock there is a mango tree which was looking pretty wild. I really got stuck into that one and it looks much better now. Hope we get something out of that next summer. YUM!





Also in the front paddock is a beautiful big shady tree. I walked upto it to check out the potential for a nice picnic spot. I was thinking of mowing under it and putting a table there as it is a nice shady spot near the dam. So I'm under the tree and at close range notice the fruit! I think it's an apple tree! What!! It is pretty overgrown and wild looking so I need to get stuck into that as well... need a ladder for this one though.

Can't wait to eat some of this stuff!

We also bought a whole heap of native shrubs to plant along the back fence for a bit of extra privacy from the back neighbours. It took us both all day to plant about 16 of them!

I also bought a fig tree and a grape vine.

Sooooo much to do, sooooo little time!!!

We had a bit of a tragedy when we went down to Sydney last fortnight. All our ducks were killed while we were away. The two new muscovies and even our old Ducko :( We think a fox got to them. Paul was so devastated especially about poor ducko we've had him for 8 years! Later while scoping the edge of the dam he found a duck egg which the muscovy must have laid. So sad, we could have had baby ducks :(

On a lighter note, Paul has got the remote control go-cart going again. Hannah is really good at steering it now and Paul controls the speed with his controller. Today he built a little passenger trailer out of our old recycling crate and Ailey can sit in it and be dragged along behind. She loved it! How hilarious! Check it out on You Tube.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z51qksQktpA