Spring has sprung!

Looks like spring might be just around the corner! We have a tree just starting to blossom, not sure yet but it might be a plum. Just need to get onto pruning the apple tree, probably should have done it by now but time has been limiting.

We have a few shoots from the previously mentioned potatoes just poking their heads up. The only other change is the fast growing paddock...maybe we should get a lamb?

Taters

Today the kids and I planted some early potatoes in the patch - Moonshine, from the bag of the kitchen as the seed potatoes in the shed haven't sprouted yet. We'll see how that goes.

Lemonade

We picked some of the lemons from the tree you can see in the header - some to take to a friend's later, and some for the eldest daughter to make lemonade. It's a bit sour, but very refreshing on an unexpectedly calm and sunny winter day.

Archaeology

We've been in the house a few weeks now, and haven't done much to the garden bar mowing the lawn - a bit of a mission as it's been so wet!

This is how things stood this morning, from the back deck just outside our living/dining room doors. The first project of the day was removing the top part of the awful trellis around the deck, visible on the lower part of this photo. The second project was more exciting. Jules had bought a couple of bags of seed potatoes, so I decided to dig a bed for them and get started with this vegetable thing. I picked the top right corner of the pic, up past the washing line where there were a group of mounds - saving the flatter parts of the lawn for soccer purposes.

The first few turns of the fork brought up nice friable topsoil, but pretty soon I began to encounter metal. I ended up digging up a metal box, in pieces, containing a a heap of old railway related ironmongery and other rubbish. This is a railway cottage after all!

The end result - one potato patch and one pile of rubbish.

Garden blogs

I've looked around at a few other garden blogs, and there are definitely inspirational people around the place. It looks like there's a good community thing going on in Moera - see Moera.org.nz, for a community garden project, among other stuff.

I can't wait to get moving! We'll be in our new garden for the middle of winter - plenty of time for some planning before we do much, I suppose.

Oliver's introduction

A quick intro to us, me, and this blog:

We're a family of 5, and have bought our first house and garden in Moera, Lower Hutt after many years of renting. We have lots of plans for the place, intending to have a vege garden, fruit trees, chickens, and all sorts of lovely garden developments! This blog will be a place to put up some photos and stories of our progress with the garden and maybe some house projects as well.

We're not moving in for a couple of months - settlement day is at the end of June.