Mulching

I should've mulched before we went away for New Years (whanau hui at Waikaremoana). Found bales of hay going for $5 each in Rolleston so picked one up.

Took the boys fishing off Brighton Pier last weekend. Bruno is right into it, Whiti wandered into the library first!

It was cold, the nor-easter nobody's friend. Most of our confreres   are Pasifika or Asian, crabbing with small hooped nets weighed down with some cheap offal.

We caught six herring, Bruno taking five of them. Wee ones all, and two foul hooked! But I thought they'd be good for the cat, and Billy (who was Milly) did scoff one...

Purple beans, all through my brain...

Our purple beans are now cropping, perhaps not quite as heavy as the standard Scarlet Runners. When cooked, they turn a dark green.

I've trained ours up a small tree I whacked the guts out of last year...

Rhubarb now producing big heavy stalks. I take it on me weetbix( just 2 or 3), microwaved for 1 minute ten with soy milk, maybe some yoghurt. Oh I cook it with a local brew by Golden Eagle Brewery, South Island Pale Ale...

The garden really looking good at the moment but needing a lot of water.

Ragged tomatoes top left, Bruno's strawberries in front, then (l-r) cauliflower, tutaekuri...

...Swift potatoes, rhubarb in the back, new celery and capsicum, marigolds, silverbeet, bantam corn. Sunflowers in the background with grapes from the neighbours

The sunflowers - seeds sourced from a grower at Kaiwhaiki - have struggled but have big happy faces to the world.

Prostrate kowhai

... just a lovely combination of words...

At Prebbleton's Nature Park.