Summer at The Good Life

This summer has gone so quickly, I barely recall there being a January and we're already half way through February.

Mr 1 is looking like a toddler now, not the little baby we moved to the Waikato with.  Mr 3 is making friends and has settled into his new life in a new house, a new daycare and playgroup.  My garden has been left to do it's own thing with only a good soak every 3 days to keep it happy - no weeding at all really due to the lack of space to get in between the giant brassicas and beans that are breaking out of the 3x4m central vege patch.

A vege wilderness

The garden is providing enough vegetables so that I only need to buy onions and potatoes at the green grocer each week along with fruit.  The house is constantly filled with the aroma of sweet peas.  The tomatoes have improved slightly with addition of tomato food (applied only once after Christmas and the dreaded blossom rot was discovered).  I really should feed the tomatoes every few days but my boys are my biggest priority at the moment so feeding and weeding can wait till next season when the boys are bigger and can even give Mumma a hand.

There has been a time a sadness, I've shed more than a few tears over the loss of my lovely mother hen Emmy Lou.  After a nasty illness she now rests under a lime tree in our garden.  She was a beautiful girl, she would happily sit in my arms cooing and clucking and she was a delite to watch raising her babies and just going about her everyday hen business.  I miss her, rest in peace my girl.

We have had some new additions to our laying flock.  Our original 6 never seemed to lay enough eggs for our demand - and even less when they went clucky or started malting - so we've increased our flock to 8.  After we lost Emmy Lou we brought 2 more shavers that will start laying the the next couple of weeks.  The 8th hen was picked from the 8 chicks Emmy Lou raised, so in a small (adopted) way a bit of Emmy Lou remains.  The new hens are Penny, Bernadette and Amy (we watch a lot of The Big Bang Theory).

Bernadette, Amy and Penny.

Peggy is also a proud new mum.  Her and I have had a few choice words over the last few months about her going broody all the time, but I gave in and delivered her a clutch of 12 eggs to raise.  Unfortunately the new arrival Amy took to climbing into the nest with her a night and crushing eggs.  Only 4 survived the 21 day incubation period and then only 2 hatched.  Peggy doesn't seem to mind, I have never heard any of my hens purr so much.  Did you know hens purr when they are happy?

Over all it has been an amazing first summer in our new home.  Highlights have been watching my sons delite in the big hay tractors in the paddock over our back fence, sampling our first home raised roster, Christmas holidays with family at the beach and more recently a entire week at the beach with Pappa Bear and my Baby Bears.  Very simple pleasures for a simple life.  Bliss.