Saturday Chore Day

 Saturdays are usually quite busy for me. I not only go to a class at the gym at 8.15 but try and get all my chores done around the house and garden so that Sunday can be a more leisurely day. I go to Plus Fitness in Beerwah. The crew there are so friendly and helpful and have become like another family. 

 From the gym I went to the community gardens and weeded then gave them a really good water. I picked salad leaves and dug up a sweet potato that gave up its hiding spot by sprouting shoots.  I picked a few beans too and think I'll pull them out now as they really haven't done that well and don't have any more flowers coming on them.



As you can see from the photo above, which I took while stopped at the traffic lights on my way home just after 10 am, it was already 32 degrees. Yikes and I still had the lawns to mow and garden to weed at home.  As soon as I got home, I took a rolled pork shoulder out of the freezer and put it in the slow cooker with fresh sage, thyme and fennel to cook slowly all day. Then it was chopping up vegetables and putting them in the oven to roast, enough to last me a few days with the pork.

I picked three different types of lettuce leaves, spinach, rainbow silverbeet, beetroot leaves and some young tender bean leaves to use as salad greens. I also picked a couple of zucchini and a beetroot..




Once everything was either in the oven, slow cooker or soaking in cold water in the sink, I quickly ran the little vacuum cleaner over the kitchen floor and then gave it a mop, before heading outside to the lawns and garden.  I love my little vacuum cleaner as it is so handy for just spot cleaning. When I'm doing the whole house, I drag the big vacuum out of the hall cupboard.  The little fella just sits plugged in, in the main entrance way (not the best spot for it, but so handy for the kitchen) and it reminds the kids to use it, which is a real bonus.

I had to get my stepson to move our motorbike for me, as it was blocking the lawn mower in the shed and I didn't want to attempt to move the bike, too big and heavy for me.  Unfortunately, he didn't offer to do the lawns - oh well, dreams are free :) As you can see the lawn is rather dead, so I was really mowing off the seed heads and giving it a tidy up, as opposed to mowing grass.

I picked the last of the beefsteak type tomatoes and all the cherry type that were ripe or nearly ripe. There are lots more of them to come. Then I cut back the beefsteak in the tub, leaving the new shoots that are coming up from low on the main stem and shifted the tub back into the shade. I might get another crop off them, if I give them a good feed, some extra compost and mulch. Worth a try.

I picked the first of the banana passion fruit to ripen. I wasn't as big or as sweet as I remember them from my childhood. I think that is probably because the "soil" the plant is growing in is subsoil and we have had no rain to speak of for nearly 3 months. Still, I did enjoy it. 

I did a bit of work on my worm farm. I noticed piles of worms in the bucket that sits under the tap, so I tipped them and the bucket content back into the farm and turned the food scraps and worms over a bit. The mixture was very wet, so I added some of the shredded paper from work through it. Then I decided to lift the top level off and take the next level off as well and swap them around. I want all the worms to move out of what is now the top level - the first level I used when I started the farm, so I can use all the castings. That level is very wet too, so I won't be watering it for a while and I'll leave the lid off during the day, to encourage them to move down into level two. 

Then I went around to see my grand-daughters and have a bit of down time before starting the next round of meal prep for tomorrow. Little Tamara has improved so much over the past week, after being so sick. She is nearly back to her cheeky self. She is pulling herself up on everything. The neonatal pediatricians want her to crawl as long as possible, but it doesn't look like that will be happening. Annika was inside in the air conditioning and came out every now and again to see what we were up to and play "shops" with me. I had to be the shop keeper and sell her her toys for invisible money which she very seriously counted out into my hand. Gotta love kids imagination. 

Back home and took the pork out of the slow cooker and pulled it to bits with two forks, making 'pulled pork', of which I had some with 3 cups of the roast vegetables. I made a salad to take with me tomorrow from all my "leaves" from the community garden, and cut up cucumber and capsicum, 'strung' a handful of snow peas and put some of my cherry toms in containers. I'll add 90 gms of pork to the salad tomorrow morning when it's cooled down and also take 45 gm of smoked salmon for a snack - but more about that tomorrow. 

How can I not love this beautiful little face? 

1 comment family, Fitness, Gardening