Spring in the Mandala Garden

there have not been entries lately due to....well, THIS! Spring is so inspiring and I just want to be soaking in it the entire day...weeding, mulching, sowing, tranplanting, mowing, sitting, smelling and EATING the fresh food we gather.
Soon, I'll post a detailed written update for the several people who are interested in our experiences using the Permaculture Mandala Garden design - I've made contact with someone else who is using it and has also set up a two-mandala system, just the same.
Tonight - here are a few pics in the meantime. In the foreground of the one directly above, is a strawberry bed and the topmost shot shows a very lush spurt of new growth on the Comfrey we are using to surround our garden.
I'll also post an update on the Chook Dome - we had a major re-build on our hands after a particularly bad storm and now have a new, stronger, better version, thanks to Aaron's hard work and excellent ideas!

Chook update

please say a warm hello to Miss Gina, our latest chook in the dome. She appears to be a Minorca-cross, with an enormous, highly coloured comb and wattles. She definitely stands out amongst the rest of the flock. Apparently, she will lay a very, very large white egg every 3-4 days...she began today.
And these little characters are a small hatching of 5 Andalusian chickens, which hatched 12 days ago. Although this pic is blurry (gee, they move quickly!!), I had to post it - the one of the broody's back is just so fun!!! Of course, they are proving a massive temptation for Phoebe - all she wants is to be able to love them up like she was able when we had some which were incubated for us last year - of course it is a very different story when there is a "Mother" fiercly protecting HER BABIES who will not let either of us get very close at all. A couple of days ago, I twigged to what Phoebe was up to - she was creating a gap in their run, hiding around a corner and waiting for a chick to wander out, whereby she'd then scoop it up for a sneaky cuddle while 'rescuing' it....only the Mother wasn't very happy with this AT ALL!!

Friday, Baking Day

We've moved into a bit more of a weekly rythym, Miss Phoebe and I, heading towards a homeschool rythym that we can achieve in keeping with our Rudolf Steiner Education philosophies and meet the requirements of the MOE - once she is 6.
With that in mind, Friday is baking day at the moment, measuring, thinking about shapes and sizes, what happens if it is a bit wet or a bit too dry, etc...lots of science in there...and yummy fun!

beginnings of a Food Forest

We've been rather busy over the last few weeks with lots of planting in our orchard, filling in the gaps and hoping to create an edible forest - a Permaculture Food Forest is our aim. There is still far too much grass for our likeing and we will soon be fixing that. As well as another bunch of beautiful heirloom varieties, we have been adding in Kowhai, a native with a very attractive yellow flower and the very useful attribute of being a nitrogen-fixing, slender, lacy tree (will still let in lots of light) and are about to add small tagasaste(tree lucerne) plants, which also fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. Even more amazingly as we found out this effect is increased as we 'chop and drop' the trimmings/prunings where they fall as mulch, as the plants then release nitrogen from their root systems to compensate for being pruned! Cool! Clever Mother Nature - we love her! For our lower layer we've ordered loads of kumara plants, which will grow as a thick ground cover and we have an excess of tiny strawberry plants - they may like to ramble around under the trees?

thinking about house colours...what do you think?

there's something so happy and honest about simple colours singing out. And living in the countryside echoes of barns and hardworking farm buildings feels like a comfortable colour fit.

An organic make

With an overflowing box of yarns and lots of small balls of different pinks I have had a lot of fun this Winter putting together this cardi for Phoebe from all the bits and pieces I already had, rather than buying new. Phoebe seemed to really like giving me instructions about which colour to knit next and what the pockets needed to have on them, etc. Next time, however, I would buy a pattern!

Iced Strawberries

I don't seem to be able to escape the fact that nearly every photo lately has a very cool 'bloom' to it - we really do see the change of season here. Hoping our strawberries are still happy to be getting so chilled and well watered as well.