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This isn’t an appetising photo, but if you have the chance to grow your own strawberries, then I hope you give it a go.
Our’s seem to like living in part shade under an outdoor table, and while they don’t look as big as the shop-bought variety, and they are a bit juicy, these strawberries have an amazingly sweet taste that does burst in your mouth.
Get in touch with your inner hibiscus, from my garden. I like these flowers so much. They start out as a tight pink bundle of petals and change to white as the flower unfolds.
After a quick stroll down to the letterbox and back, to make the dogs happy, and check on the flowers down there, and generally enjoy the new crispness to our wintery evening air; I dashed inside to collect the plane, to see if we could make a success of the flying side of it’s creation.
My attempts created a widly dramatic flight, full of height but short of distance and direction. I have no arm for it, and the plane rockets high into the sky, with a quick swoop, and then plunges headlong into the ground.
But “The Bulldozer” is of course a natural and could get the plane airbourne and trim, so it could power it’s flight with kinetic (rubber band) energy. We were even (though briefly) playing frisbee with it as I’m much better at catching the plane mid flight, than I am at launching the crazy thing.
I’m thrilled with my two photos though, as I was drastically low on battery power and only managed these two. But I think they’re cool. “The Bulldozer” reckons the top one looks like a B52 in-flight over the Pacific in WWII, banking steeply to avoid enemy fire. And the lower photo - well, with the batteries being so low I knew there’d be big delay when the camera took the shot, so as I clicked the shutter button I made an arch with my arm to try and follow the path of the plane above me, and I’m thrilled by the way the plane is in focus while the rest is all blurry.
I feel like such a big kid, because I had an opportunity to briefly wonder around the shops this afternoon and what catches my attention? A dart board and model aeroplanes. Its not very grown up, but its alot of fun.
I’ve been thinking about getting a dart board for a while, and couldn’t pass this one up at $6 a pop, with two sets of darts included. I’m completely doomed against the eagle-eye of ‘The Bulldozer’, but we’ll have some spirited contests all the same.
But, forget all about that now, and focus on the Series one: Super Contest Airplane resting radiantly on the couch. The Power Eagle: Rubber Band powered plane, which only cost $2. And which I successfully constructed myself, and am now proudly showing off.
The instructions were terribly daunting, and there was one very painful mishap when attaching the rubber band. But the little plane was airborne after an hour’s construction, and I think that’s pretty good going. I tried to fly it down the hallway, but that wasn’t working well. I’ll have another go tomorrow, outside, where my dog will probably chew it up in a fit of jealousy, but that doesn’t matter because I also bought one for ‘The Bulldozer’, so I have a spare.
Veggie patch: with much help from ‘The Bulldozer’ , I started a veggie patch just before the beginning of this year, which may be doomed now that it seems we’ll have to move house, at some later date.
Anyway, its the very best veggie patch, in the history of all patches. It has big pinetree log-posts, rammed into the ground, a shade-cloth roof, two gazebos out the front, tables, trestles, mini greenhouses, even little side annexes for future expansion.
Inside there are bathtubs filled with fertile earth and any rooster booster that we managed to keep away from the dogs (isn’t Rooster Booster the best name for chicken-poo based fertiliser? I love it – rooster booster !). I don’t know why the dogs love to eat it, but its certainly responsible for the visible growth spurt of my young dog, Taj.
I’ve been growing tomatoes, lettuce, peas, capsicums, pumpkins, zucchinis, cucumbers, cabbage and lots of flowers.
The above photo is an image of the delicate pretty capsicum flower, and to the left of the bloom is a developing capsicum globe – perhaps you call them bell peppers?
I had only seen yellow, orange, green and red capsicums in the shops, and so I was excited to find purple capsicum seedlings in the local gardening centre.
I planted them all in an attractive sliver washtub that was meant for bathing the dogs, but they would have none of it. So, I punctured the base and filled it with earth, planted the capsicums seedlings, and sprinkled marigold seeds on the remaining surface.
Here was the result:
And just yesterday afternoon I picked my second batch of purple capsicums to put into the evening meal – but, actually, I couldn’t add it to the meal, as they’re too peppery, and too sharp (I think the capsicum plant originates from the chili pepper plant from South America).
Oh well, I still think they’re pretty.
