Blog post 13, my favourite number.

One of my sisters has 3 as her favourite number, and 9 is extra special to her as it is 3 x 3. 13 is my favourite number, if one is superstitious it is considered unlucky, but for me it represents so many good things. Sure there are horror movies out there like the 13th floor, or the Friday the 13th series, but come on, what about a bakers dozen? Isn't that a lucky thing if you get to eat the delicious spare? Or how about the 13 full moons we admire each year? Does not the age thirteen signify a celebrated point in ones youth? What about a packet of playing cards, how it's 13 cards from ace to king each suit? My oldest daughter was born on the 13th, yesterday my youngest son turned 13 years old,  all good things, 13 can't be as ominous as it has been made out to be. 

These are my 3 crazy sons Micheal, Brendan, and Kayleb, posing for a picture with me, my poor sister was trying to get a nice picture but the oldest spawn wouldn't cooperate, I dont mind, when the spawn get together it's always fun crazy times! Add my little sister in to the mix, and this is exactly the kind of fun insanity you get, we are nuts and I love my family. We had a great night with pancakes for dinner, lots of laughter, and our 13th birthday tradition, a horror movie. Well, a tame and funny horror movie, for the most part I keep the M15+ movies as exactly that, and my spawn think I'm evil. My youngest turns eleven this year, so it won't be too long until I'm sharing all my favourite scream fest movies with them. 

In the garden things are continuing to wither and die in their own version of a horror movie, the mildew is back attacking the zucchini plants, the pumpkins still refuse to open their flowers, and the tomatoes are just managing to cling to life. The mystery melon has not brought on fruit to any sort of maturity, even though I self pollinated some of them. 

The zucchini and pumpkin/melon patch.

The greenhouse is coming along nicely though. 

These cherry tomatoes have taken off rather quickly, less than two weeks growth.

 

The growth difference in these comparison shots is a little less than two weeks. Not much on the rocket, but the perpetual spinach is growing well. 

And the capsicums are flowering after all, I don't know if I'll get any fruit, but it's exciting see anyway. I'll be doing another post soon asking for tomato advice.

I did finish Mass Effect 3, and can't tell you what I think without spoiling it, I can say I have mixed feelings and hope that the indoctrination theories are true. 

Right now I'm taking my two girls to the doctors, and tonight I'll be with my 19yo Micheal spawn, who will be designated driver for my little sisters meet the new boyfriend dinner, she's gathering her closest friends together and it's going to be hilarious fun, and I've already met him and deemed him a great fit. Plus, if he can handle my personal crazy, he'll definitely survive the group insanity. 

Bek.

Happy Birthday My Justin...

Today is my partners birthday and it is, in part, his fault I have started this blog. In my quest for self sufficiency, I have been reading other people's experiences on blogs such as this, all of the advice and information has been invaluable. Not that I am in anyway experienced, but I am learning. Justins thought was that I should be sharing our veggie venture, creating a sort of online journal, so that I can look back and see how it started, having a good measure for the progress we make. I love that he is enthusiastic in his encouragement of my humble beginnings in our Veggie patch. And although I don't want my blog to be predominantly about the growing of vegetables, this post is for him.

The veggie patch was a little inspired by Hugh, that infectiously enthusiastic chap from the river cottage series, oh the seed had been planted long ago, but he definitely made sure that seed germinated, and grew! As a vegetarian I can't enjoy all he does, but I respect when he slaughters an animal, he respects the animal enough to waste nothing. With this new idea of growing my own food, high on information overload gleaned from two months of non stop internet research, I went to Justin and rambled and ranted and raved about all things permaculture, and growing our own veg. Poor Justin, for all he had to listen to, watch, and read.

The first thing I did was plant pumpkin, right next to my ashamedly unused greenhouse.

 There are 3 Kent pumpkins and one melon of some sort, but that's a tale for another day. I am amazed at how fast they've grown in less than a month! We also have 2 raised garden beds and are hoping to make use of every part of the garden we can for food.

My veggies planted just before the end of the year.

The same bed this morning!

We are currently growing cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cucumber, pumpkin, some sort of melon, leeks, celery, strawberries, zucchini, and butter beans. There are also various seedlings we have grown from seed, I can't wait to plant them, watch them grow and eat them.

I still have a lot of work to do, and there is so much more I will share over the coming weeks, but it's a fair start, and for Justin's dinner, tonight we ate something I'd grown, some delicious home grown Basil on some home-made pizza's.

Happy Birthday my Justin.
Bek.