Halloween preparations

 

This week I spent an enjoyable time preparing for Halloween. I made decorations and bought treats for my nephew and for our community Fright Night. 

I made the Halloween pop-up-card in the photo above, for my nephew using a free template from the Canon Creative Park website. It uses quite a bit of printer ink, but luckily I had plenty.

The design is quite intricate with a lot of pieces to cut out, arrange and glue down. It took me a day and a half to make. I tested the pop-up-ability of the components after glueing each part together, and the card worked very well! There was also a template for a spooky envelope to put the card in.

I filled 3 little printed packages with Halloween sweets. I made the paper for the packages using templates from the same website as the pop-up-card. These were put in a box with the card and some origami bats that I also made, and then couriered them to my nephew. The package arrived the next day and was liked very much which made my day.

Our community Fright Night is going to be held on the Saturday after Halloween this year, rather than on the 31st of October which is a school night. This will give me plenty of time to set up the decorations in the morning.

I made more paper decorations to add to last years collection. All the templates were free to print from the internet, making crafting so much easier and cheaper. I made spiral paper ghosts, a Halloween banner and more 3D paper pumpkins.

These spiral paper ghosts are almost finished. I just need to add small weights to the ends of the tails to open up the spirals. Then I will add some string to hang the ghosts by. I printed them using photopaper to make them stronger.

This Shabby-chic Halloween banner was really easy to make. Just print, cut out and glue onto some string.

These are the small paper Jack-o'-lanterns that I am going to hang on the plant by the front door.

I will be putting plastic spiders around the front door mat like last year. Nothing too scary as I have registered our house as a safe house again this year. We could choose whether to be a safe house or a scare house so that the younger children don't get frightened. The teenagers prefer the scary houses, but still come to the safe houses for treats lol.

I have filled a large basket with Halloween-themed sweets. The Fright Night organisers are also going to share out sweets to safe houses which have been donated by the Fright Night sponsors, so there will be plenty of goodies for the children.

We are hoping for dry weather for the event in just a week. It was perfect last year 🎃🦇👻

Will you be doing anything for Halloween this year?

 

See you again soon. 

Hugs, Rose x

Spring is here!

Today is the first day of Spring and it has turned out to be gloriously sunny. It was a big surprise to see such a quick change in the weather after the terrific thunderstorm and lashings of rain we had last night.

I woke to hear the dawn chorus from the many blackbirds, thrushes and tuis that visit our garden. 

I managed to photograph a tui in our neighbour's pink blossom tree which leans over our fence. The blossom looks like bunches of dangling bells and is full of nectar which the tuis drink. Tuis are lovely birds with a little plume of white feathers at their throat. Their song is amazing to hear, it is very long and cheerful with a very wide range of notes. 

I wandered around the garden with my camera and Otto followed as usual. I found many flowers just starting to open including a dainty forget-me-not, which I enlarged in the photo above, and discovered a tiny ant drinking nectar from one of the flowers.

I noticed a few flowers on the yet-to-be-named blackberry/boysenberry bush. We didn't have any luck with the fruit on it last year. The fruit all dried up for some reason, despite the amount of rain we had. This season I need to get advice on how to look after them and identify what sort of berry they are.

The pretty, mauve-flowered bush above fell over and split its trunk during the Winter storms. It managed to layer one branch, which survived, and this is flowering now. We had to remove all the rest of the dead branches. It used to be quite a large bush.  

The white arum lilies are flowering now and stand out brightly in the shade under the trees.

The Meyer lemons are ripening nicely. I picked one yesterday to use in a chicken and leek in white wine sauce recipe. The lemon was juicy and full of flavour and added just the right amount of zinginess to the dish.

The hellebores are still flowering since the beginning of Winter, and there are more buds forming. I don't deadhead the hellebores, they are left to self-seed under the trees.

This Spring we are lucky with the little blood orange tree. It has produced quite a lot of fruit for its size. Now it is just a matter of judging when they have ripened fully and picking them before the birds and slugs get to them.

A few of the anemone bulbs which were planted last Autumn are flowering. I was lucky to find this one which hadn't been munched on by snails.  

This fucshia managed to survive the Winter outdoors and today I discovered flower buds on it. When we bought it last Autumn it was in full flower. I took a cutting of it just in case it didn't survive, and the cutting has been successfully growing in the garage on a shelf by the window. I need to find somewhere to plant it out now.

The bad storms this past Winter blew the tree in our lawn over sideways even more, and it is now on a great lean towards our neighbour's property. We might need to contact an arborist for advice about it. If it needs to be removed we will need to get permission from the council who will come and inspect it. 

Our Alder tree was also blown sideways and lost many branches due to the hurricane. It is such a shame as it is a large old tree. It will be awful if we lose it.

On a brighter note, the Chinese primulas have grown well. They like the partial shade that they were planted in. And the flowers are in varying shades of pink and white. These should self-seed under the trees and bushes and make an even better display next year :o)

In the next week dad and I are planning to go to the garden centre to buy compost and vegetable seedlings. We will also be looking for flowering perennials and shrubs and maybe a couple of dessert grape vines. I'm not sure what time of year they sell different plants, but I enjoy looking anyway.

I hope this post finds you well and I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Hugs, 

Rose xxx

Enjoying a day of Winter sunshine

 

The weather cleared up nicely on Saturday after many days of rain. The night had been very cold with no clouds, resulting in a heavy morning frost. We had glorious blue skies and the temperature rose to 18 degrees Celcius. Just perfect for me.

Frosts, where I live, are usually gone by mid-morning after the sun has warmed everything up. 

It was warm and dry enough for me to put the cushions on the outdoor furniture. I sat outside on the deck with Otto for a few hours, relaxing and enjoying the dappled shade cast from the surrounding trees and bushes and listening to the birds singing.

I treated myself to a cup of tea with some biscuits and happily read a back issue of the New Zealand Life and Leisure magazine. Then I visited some blogs using my iPad. I had a lovely time catching up on what everyone has been doing.

Afterwards I walked around the garden with Otto and took a few photos of the flowering quince that has grown over the fence from our neighbour's garden. The last time I photographed it in flower was in November last year, which was late Spring. I hope they continue to flower that long this year.

The golden arctotis, at the front of the house, has also started flowering and there are plenty of buds coming up. It seems earlier this year too, it used to start flowering around September at our last house. Maybe it's because they are in a sunnier spot here, rather than under trees.

The orange tree is laden with fruit which is almost ready to pick. Otto is helping me by keeping a close eye on the oranges as they ripen :o)

I hope that you are enjoying your week.

Hugs, Rose x

A third of the way through Winter!

 

I am sitting here at my desk, on a very wet rainy Winter afternoon, going through my list of Hygge activities that I can do to brighten up the day.

I had forgotten about my Hygge list, created 4 years ago, until I went through my old Winter blog posts. It was just what I needed 😊. So, I picked a few activities to do and set to work.

My first activity was to bake an "Easy lime and coconut cake." I found the recipe online on the Taste AU recipe website and luckily had all the ingredients needed to make it. This is the third time I have used my oven to bake something. It turned out nicely despite there being no temperature markings on the oven temperature dial! 

While the cake was cooling and waiting to be iced, I set about doing my second task which was to clean and rearrange my desk. I added one of the miniature cyclamen plants, which I bought a few days ago, for some cheerful colour.

My next Hygge activity was to dig out my favourite Gien filets bleu tea-set and make a large cup of Twining's English Breakfast tea with a slice of lemon in. The tea went perfectly with a slice of the cake I made. A bonus is that the cake was also liked by mum and dad.

As I had my afternoon tea I watched an episode of Gardener's World, which I really enjoy. And then I watched the latest Chateau Diaries vlog post on YouTube. It was lovely seeing the English Summer flowers and also the happenings at the French chateaux de LaLande.

As I looked out of my bedroom window, at the pouring rain, I felt happy and cosy inside and actually enjoyed watching the rain splashing on the deck outside. My cat Otto sat on my knee for ages cuddling and purring. Bliss. Otto then curled up and fell asleep on a chair by my side.

I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to start a jigsaw puzzle...

...But Otto was only pretending to be asleep. As soon as he realised that I was opening a jigsaw puzzle box he was there in an instant to help me!

Supervising me was quite exhausting work for Otto, and after deciding that I was capable of doing the puzzle by myself, he finally found a comfortable place to have a nap.

The last Hygge activity that I chose to do was to use the photos I took yesterday, of the new indoor cyclamen plants we recently bought, to create this blog post. Another thing that I love doing.

We chose a variety of miniature and large cyclamens in different colours, to brighten the house up for Winter. Our old cyclamens are dormant at the moment and are living in the potting shed.

I had a very lovely, relaxing time today. The Hygge things that I chose to do have left me feeling happy and cosy on a cold and wet Winter-day. 

Tomorrow morning I will plan what to do for the rest of the weekend. It is a long 3-day weekend. Matariki, the Maori New Year, is being celebrated here in New Zealand at the moment.

It is now time for me to have a warming cup of hot chocolate before bed.

I hope that this post finds you well and enjoying the season you are in.

Lots of hugs, 

Rose x

The last week of Autumn in my garden

 

It is the end of Autumn here in New Zealand. The weather has been glorious for the past few days, so I have been out in the garden with my camera. 

I took some photos to show you what is flowering and fruiting now, and also the beginnings of a new flower bed prepared by my dad.  

The tree in the photo above is Cassia corymbosa "John Ball" which is commonly known as the buttercup tree. Its flowers are a lovely buttercup yellow. The tree is unusual in that it folds its leaves up at night and when the weather is very dry. 

Our buttercup tree has been flowering all Autumn and should carry on flowering throughout Winter. Last year there weren't many flowers on the tree, so dad gave it a good pruning and feeding which resulted in the production of more lovely flowers.

The white camellia bushes in front of the house are in full bloom. 

Each flower lasts a few days then drops its petals like confetti all over the place. It looks like it has been snowing!

Some of the roses are still flowering, but I expect not for much longer as the weather is getting cooler.

The lavender has put on a lot of new growth since it was pruned back. There are lots of perfumed flowers for the bees to enjoy.

Some magnolia flowers are opening. This is an unusual tree to me because it flowers all year round, just a few flowers at a time.

I need to discover how to revive the red hibiscus. It hasn't got many leaves and has only got one flower so far. I suppose it is better than last year when it was only twigs!

The new flower bed in progress. 

This corner of the garden looks like it was a dumping ground for concrete rubble, large stones and sand. Dad took out all the rubble and stones and removed the quince tree which the arborist told us had died. Then we bought bags of compost to dig in.

The yellow abutillon bush is in place with supporting stakes. Its branches are very thin and brittle. Here's hoping that it can stand up to the windy Winter weather ahead.

I love the lantern-shaped flowers so much that we decided to buy more abutillon plants. One red and one orange.

The grevillia ground cover has been flowering for a few weeks now. It is a strange plant with very small flowers. It keeps getting covered over with falling Autumn leaves.

Foxglove and aqueligia plants have seeded themselves in the garden. I can't wait to see what colours the flowers will be.

We managed to harvest some delicious feijoas from our tree this year. 

After watering the tree well, pruning it and giving it a feed, we managed to get a couple of bowls full of fruit. 

The yellow cherry guava tree still has lots of fruit on it. The fruit has stopped ripening now that the weather is cooler. The blackbirds are happily eating what is left, which I don't mind. I harvested plenty this year.

And lastly here is a photo of our silverbeet (chard) that is growing in the veggie patch. We also have perpetual spinach and flat leaf parsley growing in the patch, but they aren't very photogenic at the moment 😁

I hope this post finds you well and enjoying the season in your part of the world. I'm looking forward to visiting your blogs to catch up on what has been happening.

Hugs, Rose x