Catching Up On Life

I don't know where the days are going right now. It seems they are just whizzing by in a blur of washing taking forever to dry, wearing lots of layers of clothes, and vacuum cleaning. So much vacuum cleaning. My almost-16-month-old is pretty much obsessed with the vacuum cleaner right now. It's not bad really, every morning he demands that the vacuum cleaner be brought out from the laundry into the house, and we play vacuum, which invariably involves me doing some actual vacuuming (under instruction, of course). So the floor is staying fairly clean! And toddlers. How awesome are toddlers! I had no idea. I was sort of dreading the toddler stage, fearing it would be tantrum after tantrum. There are a few of those, granted, but on the whole, I just love this stage of parenting. Apart form the fact that my little boy is growing up way too fast. Where is the pause button?

Our little chookies are laying eggs again. We are back to having just two chickens, after a high of eight for a while there. We brought two across with us when we moved back into town. Then one died, I'm not sure what of but it may have involved a cat. So we had only one. Then we got two more little bantams at the market. Then our original hen got broody, again (this was all back in summer). So we got a dozen eggs for her to sit on. Then five chicks hatched. Of those, two were boys and three were girls. That was our eight chickens. Then we re-homed the boys. Then one of the bantams from the market flew over into next door's yard and their dog got her. So we were down to five. Then we realised that our small town backyard couldn't really support five chickens, two dogs, two cats, a toddler and two adults. So all the baby girls got re-homed too. Anyway one of the baby chickens was an Isa Brown, and all the rest of the flock were bantams, but this big girl started to peck the older chickens about quite a bit. And they stopped laying. And now finally, in the middle of winter, we're getting 1-2 eggs daily again. The tricky part now is trying to convince a toddler to hand over the eggs.

A little pram blanket is being crocheted and is not far off finished. It's only a small thing, my first go at granny squares (only eight years after I started to crochet..). I'm discovering the joy of weaving in lots and lots of ends. I started this months ago too. Things move slowly around here (slow living at it's best). I've been on somewhat of a mission to finish it this past week as I'm itching to start something new. A nice big heavy blanket for our bed. We already have one that I made years ago, which is still my favourite, but in years to come we'll need more than one big woollen blanket for beds in the house. Given how long it seems to take me, I'd better start now. I'm trying to branch out from my usual colour combination of olive green/mustard/orange into something else. It's hard! I'm very much a 'stick to my favourite colours and nothing else' kind of a person, so I'm learning.

I'm loving this winter season. Probably because I'm dressing more appropriately for cold weather these days, which makes all the difference. Eating warming foods, particularly for breakfast and lunch (dahl, with lots of yummy warming spices for breakfast - amazing). I love the rainy days. We woke up to a crisp, sunny morning a few days ago and I commented to my husband 'it's a pity it's not raining'. He looked at me like I had two heads. I'm just loving the grey rainy days at the moment, it's so wintery. And now we're halfway through the winter season already and I'm starting to remember that it will get hot again. Part of me looks forward to it, and to not having to wear so many layers, but part of me just doesn't want the winter to end. It's such a beautiful season.

And I'm so excited to be moving into a new house in a few weeks with a new garden to work in. First thing to go into the ground will be seed potatoes in mid-August. We'll have plenty of space to work with, possibly more space than I can handle right now. But I have dreams of so very many potatoes… Especially after last year when I planted out all my homegrown seed potatoes, watched them all come up and grow beautifully and then - move house and not get any. Well, I ended up planting more at our our current place and getting a reasonable harvest, but you know. Not the same. It will be nice to have a bit more space to stretch out again. 

I think I'm all caught up now. Blogging has been as slow as granny-square-blanket making lately. What's been happening in your life these days?