Christmas Cactus

Of course it is winter here in New Zealand, so all our winter flowering plants are now in full bloom.
I have a Christmas Cactus (Schlumbergera) that I got from the plant shop a couple of years ago and it loves being indoors.

A little section of it got broken off 2 years ago! Kids fault.
I re-potted it and left it outside, then moved it into the garage over last winter. This summer I placed it on the deck at the front of the house and it is loving it there.
It has heaps of buds on it but no flower just yet, however when it does finally bloom I will get a quick snap of it and show you all.

Spring Time

I just love this time of year, when all the flowers are stretching themselves skywards and showing us their true colours.

Bird of Paradise

Hide 'n' Seek

Whilst at mum's house a few weeks ago, we got to enjoy the wondrous sunshine that suddenly decided to hit New Zealand.

We got to sit outside in her courtyard area and have some lunch.
She has a lovely large flower box in the middle of the area

can you spot the cat?

And it seems like her cat, Chivers, has decided that this is his space, despite the fact there is no space for him!

Chivers enjoying the daffodils as much, if not more than we are!

At least he is showing who owns what around the house!!

G is for Garden

Even though our garden is a continuous work in progress we do still try and make the parts that are sorted look good.
We seem to have mastered a few spring / summer veggies to grow and these are part of our annual plan now.
Last year we planted some potatoes, first time of growing them, we were really successful and although we didn't plant too many, we enjoyed the fruits of our labour, although like all things we are already trying to better enhance the system to make it better.

Steve actually did as someone recommended and cut the plants when they died back and left the pots in the ground, we dug them up and they were still perfect, this has now given me loads of ideas as to what I could do with potatoes!

We have never been big on autumn / winter growing veggies, although each year we do try to find something to grow. This year we are getting sorted with plenty of time so we have planted leeks, onions (brown and red), spring onions and carrots, oh and a little spinach to add to the mix.
Not sure how it will all go but if we don't try we can't learn from it.
Will keep you posted on how we are doing and the fruits of our labour in a few months time.

We have one flower bed out the front that is the first thing you see when you come on to our property, so for me this needs to always look nice as otherwise the place looks so bare!
In the spring / summer time we plant sunflowers. these have done so very well in the last 2 years. This last summer we grew tall ones and at one stage they were up to the roof. It gave us a lovely natural curtain to block the road view from the living room. In fact at one stage we opened the french window in the living room and watched the world go by but no one could see us!

When these came down it left the bed looking very bare, so we planted some winter colour.
I also slipped in a few daffodil bulbs so as the colour is dying back we will get the odd shoot coming through giving us more colour until we plant some more sunflowers.

The boys also wanted a swan plant each, so we have to work out where to place these and then maybe we will see some lovely butterflies in the garden after we have watched the caterpillars change.

Sunflowers

I mentioned in a previous post about having to sort out the sunflowers that needed tying up so they didn't fall over in the wind and rain we have been having.
I also mentioned that I would show you a picture of the 1 or 2 that have been successful in growing...

End of Year for School

This year has been a fabulous one for my 2 boys at school.
Even though they are both just 6 & 8 yrs old, they have worked hard and made us very proud.
Not sure if this is a good thing to be happening so early because then it leaves a lasting impression of what they need to continue to achieve in the following years to come!!

However we are very proud and have had an awesome year at school with them.
In the week before the end of term Alex had a Grandparent's Day and Flower Show. So mum kindly came over for lunch at the school with Alex and to view all the pretty flower displays they had been working hard on for the day or so before the presentation.
We also got treated to a lovely little singing show as well.
So here are some pictures of the wonderful displays that Alex created this year.

Ben this year has had a young male teacher (22 yrs old) and he has been fabulous. He has created a wonderful class of children who have all been very eager to learn and participate.
This has shown in all the testing the children were put through throughout the year and the wonderful results everyone got.
So sadly we had to say goodbye this term as Ben is moving to another class. The teacher is still going to remain at the school but end of year so next year new grade, class and teacher.
The kids wanted to do something for their teacher to say "Thank you for an awesome year" so a few of the mothers came into the class one day when the teacher was away and asked the children what made him such a great teacher?
Then all their answers were put together on a poster and this was given to him at a class morning tea in the last week of term.

Well, how to make a young male teacher cry, thank him for being awesome and tell him the kids will miss him.
He was so overcome, you could see his heart growing with care and proudness.
He has been an amazing teacher and it has been a privilege to have him as our son's teacher this last year.

The mother's were so impressed with his teaching style and wanted to encourage him to stay with it, that they nominated him for the "New Zealand Impressive Teacher's Award". There was 1 overall winner and 29 others recognised. He was awarded one of the 29 recognised.
I was there in assembly when it got announced and to say he was shell shocked was an understatement. He was speechless, gobsmacked and generally unable to comprehend or understand exactly what he had just been nominated for?
He, as most people do, couldn't understand what he had done so differently from anyone else to deserve being awarded something like this?
But let me tell you, he got quiet ones to come out of their shell, he got noisy ones to calm and listen, he got inactive ones to have a go and he got ones with wariness to believe in themselves and realise they can conquer the world if their hearts desire it.

He shall be missed as our class teacher this next year, but here's hoping he is still around when Alex gets to that school grade.

Roses in Bloom

Didn't have to wait very long at all before the roses started to come out in bloom

They smell so sweet too. There are several buds waiting for their big moment as well

However yesterday they didn't look quite like this after a day of rain lashed down on them. Heads were drooping but still there. Hopefully they will dry and rise again.

Flower Show

Towards the end of last term at school, the boys came home with a notice to annouce that the Junior School were putting on a Flower Show.
Oh help thought I?

It got a little confusing towards the end, with regards to exactly what they needed to take to school, unfortunately our 2 are not the biggest on giving you much warning about when things need to be there and usually inform me like this "Mummy, I need to take X Y & Z to school tomorrow please" usually at 6pm when everything is now shut apart from the supermarket!

However, we did manage to round up a fair amount of flowers, from a garden that is void of most flowers! We even stole some off the street!

The boys had to do several projects throughout the day.
Ben choose to do the following:-

A small collection

An aqua jar, which in fact turned out really well. He received a placing for it but I can't remember what!

A sand saucer presentation (think this was last minute decision)

Alex decided to do the following projects:-

A Sandsaucer

A fruit / vegetable Creation. It is a snowman in case you were wondering!

A Buttonhole

A Lid Presentation (think this was a last minute decision as well)

They both did really well and from what I can gather they both enjoyed it. Although earlier in the day Alex had annouced that he wasn't going to school that day as what they were doing was silly and boring. He said he had already done something like this at Kindy earlier in the year.
I gave the teacher full permission to push him into it with no holds bard. She happily agreed and then said later that he was all enthusiastic and loved doing it!

Sunflower Competition Update

Back in October, we started our family Sunflower competition.
In November they had started to grow quite significantly and we had already awarded the first prize "person to have the first shot appear", lucky for me it was one of mine that appeared first, yea!

So having come home from our little holiday away, this is what we found waiting for us....

The flowers have gone mental, they are over 1 1/2 metres tall and even though they seem to have small flower heads, some of them are at least 21cm wide.

Currently I am winning with the tallest flower at 161cm
And Alex is winning with the largest flower head at 21cm
Alex is also winning the shortest flower prize as well.

We are not sure when to end the competition, so are recording heights and size regularly until such time as we deem the competition over. Then we will look back at the recorded measurements and decide who indeed had the tallest flower and who had the largest flower head.

The prize for the "tallest flower" is either Ten Pin Bowling or Mini Golf, now which one am I the best at.....?

Sunflower Competition

We have had the sunflower seeds planted for about 3 weeks now and we have had some results already.


Green shoots at the back are my seeds through, lots of them!

My seeds won the first step of the competition, which was to have the first shoot through, although Steve says that mine came through first because I didn't plant them very deep!
He thinks his will be the tallest because he says he planted them deeper and so they will be stronger?
We will see.

Garden Wedding

Our back garden seems to have been turned into a something out of a wedding!

The neighbours have this awesome tree in their garden and it is full of blossom.

And with the wind we have swirling around today, there is confetti petals floating all over the place.

In the vegetable patch

All in the lawn

All we need know is the bride and groom!

Competition

When Steve and I got married 2 years ago, we gave people a packet of sunflower seeds as a wedding favour.

They went down really well, especially as it was the right time of year to plant them as well. We gained several pictures over the following months from people who had attended the wedding and then actually planted the seeds. Several family members had sunflower growing competitions to see who could grow the tallest!

We, would you believe, never actually got round to planting any of the seeds, although we had several packets left over.

So this year we decided to have a little family competition. We are using seeds that we had left over (yes I know they are 2 yrs old but they have remained sealed and at a good temperature, so we will see!) and we have brought 1 packet just in case nothing happens.

We have laid out some rules for our little competition:

1. Everyone will do the same thing, so we all planted together in the same way
2. There will be a small prize (mini chocolate bar) for the person who has the 1st shoot through in the next few weeks
3. We will measure the growing plants every 2 weeks
4. The winner of the tallest sunflower will get to choose whether we play Mini Golf or go Bowling
5. The winner of the largest sunflower head will get to choose where we go for lunch
6. The person with the shortest sunflower will win a chocolate bar

Everyone is in agreeance and the seeds have been planted.

1st we all helped prepare the soil

Well almost everyone was helpful!

Then we each chose which section of the flower bed we wanted.
We then each took it in turn to plant our seeds. Because the sunflowers are going to grow tall, we have also planted so summer colour in the front part of the bed to make it all look pretty.

So our competition has begun, just wish the uploading and adding pictures to this post had been as easy!!