A pretty spot of normal and calm amongst the chaos

Hi All,

Well, the last few weeks have been positively insane.  What with bubs threatening to come early, then changing his mind on a near daily basis and suddenly finding out one of our kids has Type 1 Diabetes, life has been utter turmoil.  Most of a week full of having our boy in hospital, learning about diabetes and then managing dietitian and nurse appointments, along with working out dietary changes...  Utter insanity!

But then, over the past few days, Papa Sam and I managed to regroup and get back into some of what we love and haven't been able to do much of yet at this new house - gardening!

So a few weeks back, Papa Sam built three of the planned 4 raised beds in front of our house, but they sat empty until this past week, when we finally organised soil and plants.

3 sisters

The closest to the house has been filled with the 3 sisters (beans, corn and zucchini), as well as some errant parsley seeds that were in the envelope of bean seeds from our old house.  It looks a little sparse due to the fact that a lot of it is filled with seed, not just plants.

Brassicas and celery

Next to the garage is a mix of cauliflower, celery, broccoli, red cabbage and celeriac, with a fair amount of herb seeds scattered in between.

Onions, carrots, tomatoes, chard and capsicums

And the middle bed has onion seedlings (what a pain to plant!), interspersed with carrot seeds, and surrounded by tomato seedlings, basil seeds, capsicum and chard seedlings, and a few other herb seeds to boot.

The rhubarb patch

It's raining and getting darker at the moment, so I'm not going outside to take a picture of the gorgeous Dublin Bay rose climbing up the frame at the back of this garden bed, but I weeded and composted the rhubarb patch, and removed the flower heads from my poor starved rhubarb plant.  Eventually we'll remove the other plant from this bed and fill it with more rhubarb and garlic plants.

And finally, the garden our youngest will be the most excited to see.  Under his bedroom window, I've weeded, composted and planted out strawberry plants.  Soon I'll add more strawberries, a few raspberries along the back, and mulch the garden with straw, but it was already raining by the time I'd finished.

Absolutely loving the feeling of having been out working in the garden again.  As the blog title says, it's been my spot of calm and normal.  Now just to wait and see how long bubs is going to take to come, so I can be even more mobile and go back to planting trees and digging holes!

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Cushions and a quick baby quilt for a gift

Hi All,

I'm still hard at work quilting and crocheting, so this is an update of the past couple of days.

As mentioned previously, I was given two completed quilt blocks from the quilt that Papa Sam's aunts had made for us, which I was using as a pattern for my baby quilt, and reserving for something a bit more special.

These two quilt blocks are now gracing cushions on my bed, after having some black microfibre borders and backing added, from an old pair of pillowcases we never liked having on the bed

The first cushion, almost complete (just needs the domes added)

Looking gorgeous on the bed :)

 I also made a quick baby quilt (either for in a cot, or as a playmat on the floor) for my aunty, who is also expecting.  Although the cute baby fabric was my main intention as the front of the quilt, I tried to make it reversible, with some tartan I'd picked up a few years ago, always intending to make something interesting out of, as the backing fabric.  I learned a lot making this one - it's definitely interesting trying a different style of quilting, and now I desperately want a walking foor and a better way to measure my hems, etc.  I also learned that while the cutting, basting and quilting might only take you an hour or so, the hand stitching still takes FOREVER!

Front of the quick quilt

And the back of the same quilt

Anyway, that's today's update!  Taking a bit of a break from the machine today, but I've bought the last of the supplies for my cot quilt, so hopefully I'll post up progress reports soon!

Love to all,
Mama Fern