Letters from Wetville

The poultry palace is graced once again with five princesses. Favourite Handyman cooked brocolli, sausages and potatoes for dinner. Brighid ate all of her dinner without a single complaint. Fionn got a voucher at league for doing a fabulous tackle and a big wound on his knee at the aftermatch function when he took a leap in the dark and landed on concrete instead of muddy grass. Despite wailing and gnashing his teeth as I cleaned the wound, and requesting bandages, it does appear that his knee will be perfectly fine in a week or so. It was worth it for him anyway, as he got a bottle of coca cola, illicit stuff in our house. Geraldine Brooks' novel, March , is fantastic. Gripping, rivetting, etc. The local garden nursery has little plants of snowdrops. It's hard to get these as bulbs, so buying them this more expensive way is better than missing out entirely. I bought and planted one today, and may well sneak back for more this week. It has been a wonderful fortnight, full ...

Good things: apple & feijoa cider from Old Mout Cider . I grew up just down the road from where this stuff is made. Indeed, Brownies was held in the old school next door to what was the Noslen winery, makers of blackberry nip, which was another cheap and drinkable tipple, though I think the cider is better again. Anyways, it's on special at New World at the moment, and it comes in a plastic bottle. $9 a litre! Who can complain, certainly not me. There was a magical moment at the vehicle testing station this afternoon, when it appeared that all I needed was a new headlamp bulb and then I had a warrant of fitness for our elderly car for six more months. Unfortunately, changing the bulb revealed that it's a bigger problem, and when they gave me the sheet to get it fixed, there was a warning on the bottom about a rusty crossmount bar on the radiator. Or something like that. Something ominous. Ominously expensive. Still. I have had worse warrant reports. Considerably...

Best day ever! Not bad, considering it's holidays and I've been having lots of great days recently. I spent almost all day in the garden, coming inside only for the rained out bits. I have weeded along the outside of the kitchen and transplanted all the strawberries to this garden bed. Where the strawberries used to be are now free of weeds and covered in chook run fertiliser, seaweed and peastraw. The kids and Favourite Handyman raked out the chook run and poured five wheelbarrow loads of wonderful fertiliser/compost on various parts of the garden. We've been putting wood shavings and sawdust in the chook run for the last two years and the chooks have been doing their bit by pooing endlessly. I've also cleaned out the coop and the pooey straw (the last couple of months they'd been sleeping in there instead of on the roost - not sure why) and put that on the garden. That was the morning project. In the afternoon I got stuck into the front garden, ...

After five nights without the children, in which we had a marvellous time, firstly at the wonderful hot pools at Maruia Springs and later at home, we are now our full complement again and it's great to have Brighid and Fionn back. I miss the chooks too, much more than I had thought I would, so I'm looking forward to collecting our new chooks this Saturday. Stopping of at Reefton for a pie this afternoon, I was impressed with the retro theme at the tearooms. The painting isn't so much retro but I included it anyway as it is of local brass band players. Those two display cabinets are entirely filled with novelty salt and pepper shakers. At Maruia Springs we tried a new-to-us traditional Japanese dish called yose-nobe. It was a soy based broth with prawns, salmon, chicken balls, mussels, scallops and vegetables in it. They brought a gas ring to our table and then placed the large dish on the burner and left us with ladles and bowls to serve ourselves. It was delici...

The two people who taught me about gardening as a child were my Dad and my maternal Grandma. Grandma is still alive and enjoying looking at her garden and gardening magazines, but she has to rely on other people to do the gardening for her now. I think of her when I see aquilegias, remembering when we went to the Royal Show in Christchurch about 20 years ago. Grandma and Grandad also bred pedigree jersey cattle, and we wandered around looking at many breeds of cattle I'd never ever seen before, and then moved on to the garden stalls. Kings Seeds have many different type of aquilegias, also known as grannys bonnets. I considered the aquilegia yellow star (photo below) for my yellow theme, but as I only have one garden bed which really needs the yellow theme, when I saw the aquilegia shady garden scatter (top photo), I thought of it for the front garden, which is south facing in and need of special treatment. This is the area which needs the work. Underneath the closest window a...

My first Kings Seeds catalogue list came to $83. Several culls ahead. But I am going to get cowslip, or primroses (above), in keeping with my Enid Blyton English wood nostalgia theme. The theme has been in my head and reading to the children so far, but time to take it out into the garden and let it flourish. I fancy this Californian plant, meadowfoam (above) as well. Also known as fried eggs. I'm gearing up for a summer of yellow flowers. More on my garden list tomorrow.

We've had visitors and lots of fun the last couple of days. Much more fun than listening to some of the economic news, and that damn Phil O'Reilly on why workers should not get pay rises which respond to the sharp inflation rate. From the Blackball Museum of working class history: Without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. A shot of the kids. Both photos from our talented visiting photographer. Tomorrow we take the children to my parents to stay and then FH and I are going on a mini holiday all of our own, complete with hot pools, and possibly even snow. None of that over the top expensive broccoli for us. Here we are eating swede. And kale of course. I made smoked fish and potato stew the other night, with kale in it, and I cooked grated swede and 8/9 people liked it. Brighid, of course, was the unpleasable. If you are hanging off the edge of your computer, desperate to know my recipe secrets so that you too can serve swede which people have second helpi...