A simple preschool flower game

I cut out flower pictures for Big Bro from a Tesselaar catalogue and drew different coloured boxes on a sheet of paper. He loved pasting the flowers into the correspondingly coloured boxes.

Making the inedible edible, part 2: olives.

Following on from my success in the quince jelly department, another friend gave us these fresh black olives from her tree- about 8 cups. Fresh off the tree, they're incredibly bitter, as Little Bro discovered when he thought they were grapes... :-P

My friend hadn't manage to turn her olives into anything edible (they went mouldy or were too salty) so we were left to our own devices as to what to do. A quick google took me to the Olives Australia website which has heaps of recipes. With an authoritative name like that, I put my faith in OA and put most of my olives into their "favourite method", in which the olives are soaked in 1:20 vol:vol brine (10 cups water + 1/2 cup salt) for two weeks, changing the brine daily and then matured in 1:10 brine in jars. That's where we're up to I'll report back in a couple of months about how they go!

Out of respect for Gardening Australia I saved a cupful of olives for their factsheet recipe, where olives are salted in a perforated container for a week, then rinsed free of the excess salt and frozen until use.

Snails-be-gone!

With damp week, it's time to refresh the snail deterrents around the seedlings. This one is a two-in-one mix: crushed eggshells and coffee grounds.

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Are you lurking? Remember that every comment posted in June is an entry for the Callistemon seed giveaway!

Praying Mantis

Apropos of nothing:

Completely out of left field

Big Bro (while eating breakfast): why can't you build a house with your mouth?

Liquidambar autumn leaves

We have a huge deciduous tree in our front garden which puts on a great show in autumn. I had been wrongly calling it a maple until tonight (oops!), when a quick bit of confirmational Googling and this easy tree identification key identified it as a Liquidambar (American Sweetgum). Not that it diminishes the appearance of the leaves in the thin autumn sunlight.

Happy First Blogiversary! And a delurking giveaway!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday dear blo-og!

Happy birthday to you!

Yes, on 1st June 2009, This Growing Life came out of my head and into the blogosphere. And we're still here. And I'm still having fun!

Some facts from Blogger and Statcounter (see the counter at the bottom of the page?)

- in the first year there have been 4740 visits, from all around the world (but mostly Australia and USA)

- I have 14 faithful followers (ok, admittedly one is my mum...)

- the most popular single post (and most searched for) is The Cardboard Box Kitchen, with the (now finished) Frankston Sand Sculptures, Consuming Passions' Bean Feast, and two posts about earwigs and earwig traps also consistently bringing in new visitors

- my most commented on post was Lazarus of the Garden, with 6 comments, from 6 different people (5 of whom weren't me!)

I enjoy posting, but what I really enjoy is when I know someone has read my post- like you!

Now that I've been around for a year, I'd love to meet some more of you.

So I'm declaring June to be Delurking Month! That's right, pop out of the shadows and click on the comments box. As a delurking incentive, This Growing Life will be having a birthday giveaway...

... this handy, *postable* packet of seeds, sponsored by Yarra Trams. (No, we don't have a big budget for prizes here at This Growing Life...)

Inside are 10 cardboard seedsticks with Weeping Bottlebrush (Callistemon viminalis), a "small weeping Australian native growing to a height of around 5m. Flowering with masses of bird-attracting red brushes in spring."

So the deal is, every comment left in TGL in June will be entered into a draw, and I will post the seeds to the winning comment writer.

(Each comment will be given a number based on its order, and Random.Org will randomly select one)

So you have to be in it to win it: start those comments!!

And I'm looking forward to another year of This Growing Life!