The Accidental Gardeners

We’re absent gardeners, forgetful with water and not much is safe around our two toddlers. Yet somehow in the space of a few short months, we have managed to grow ourselves a vegie garden.

A real one.

This year we’ve harvested half a dozen zucchinis, a bunch of baby carrots, a couple of heads of lettuce, a punnet’s worth of cherry tomatoes, a dozen green beans, bucket loads of wildly out-of-control rocket and a crop of 1-metre high basil to keep us in pesto for a year. Our passionfruit vine grew like Jack’s beanstalk and is covered in little green golf ball shaped fruit. In pots we have lemongrass, rosemary, oregano, thyme, parsley, mint, chilli, a bay leaf and kaffir lime tree.

It’s incredibly satisfying to have an edible garden. Forget Fischer Price, our garden provides endless entertainment for the kids. Watering, mulching, caterpiller capturing and handling little yellow lady beetles. The kids have taken to chewing on basil leaves and can identify herbs from their smell and taste.  Given the size of our backyard, I can’t imagine us ever living sustainably, but we can keep ourselves in herbs and teach our kids where food comes from.

In terms of sharing a garden with toddlers, I can’t recommend enough the Birdies raised garden bed, which provides a little protection for our green friends and puts the vegies at a lovely height for our backs. The kids have a little foot stool each which they happily ferry between compost bins and vegie patch. We had our garden bed filled with beautiful soil from Flower Power…which was a fabulous event all on its own (see below).

I don’t know if it’s our Sydney climate, but I’ve come to the view that if we can garden…anyone can.

A Simple Elegant Salad

A Simple Elegant Salad

• Baby spinach
• Thinly sliced apple
• Sliced red onion
• Walnuts
• Broken up blue cheese
• Red wine vinegar and olive oil

Make to your desired proportions and dress with the vinegar and oil.

10 things I’ve learned since becoming a mum

1. Why those pelvic floor muscle exercises might have come in handy.
2. Of all the toys you can tread on barefoot in the night, the small die-cast airplane is the most painful.
3. The extraordinary capacity of a human being to function without sleep.
4. Supervising small children is a lot like herding cats.
5. How to hide carrots in anything.
6. To read the books, but parent with intuition.
7. Time-out is not just for kids.
8. Cuddles are like crack for mummies.
9. Sometimes your kids do strange things. Don’t sweat it, just photograph it.
10. Parenting is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but also the most joyful.

Happy Mothers Day xo

On Strength

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. Unknown

In many years time I might look back on this year as one of the most intense periods of my life. I returned to work part time after my second child, my husband began commuting interstate weekly for a work project and at times I was struggling to manage the children and the household. I was grateful to have my mum fly over from South Australia to help me child-wrangle for a little while. We had some joyful times starting a vegetable garden and have been ironing out all the little creases from moving house, including dealing with a horrible pre-existing cockroach problem.

Then in March the unspeakable happened. My beautiful mum, a healthy and active 56 year old, was diagnosed with Cholangiocarcinoma, an aggressive cancer of the bile duct that had spread to many other organs.

Within two weeks she had passed away.

Through mum’s diagnosis and her passing and funeral service, we have been living out of a suitcase interstate in hospital corridors and cafeterias. I’m grateful that between her six children, she didn’t have to spend a night alone in the hospital. I was able to spend two nights with her sleeping on a chair next to her bedside, and we were all with her, holding her and loving her as she passed away from us.

We have now returned to Sydney and back to our ‘normal life’. It is like I have been reborn seeing the world anew wearing ‘cancer goggles’. Most people I speak to seem to know someone dear to them that has been affected by or is affected by this wretched disease. My GP said 30% of people die from cancer. I have also found that losing someone gives you membership to a strange club where you find yourself connected to other people who have experienced loss. I know there’s supposed to be five stages of grief but my stages seem to be flying around all over the place like clothes in a tumble dryer. Flying in and out of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In such a time of loss I have been grateful for my two beautiful children. Kids have a way of making you get up in the morning. They just keep dragging you into the present when you want to hide in the past. They are big electromagnetic bundles of energy that keep you rooted in the moment. There’s nothing like bathing a wilful 20-month old or wiping Weet-bix from the walls to help keep your perspective.

I truly thought my mum would live to 86.  She was at the birth of my children, the first person I rang in any dilemma or crisis, the person I compared op-shop finds with and got excited about crafting pursuits with. She was the matriarch of the family, a mother of six and grandmother of 11. It’s hard to imagine another Christmas without her mediating the chaos and doting on our children.  I miss her fiercely and it’s near impossible to imagine a future without her. She lived an extraordinary life.

Rest in peace beautiful mother.

New Year’s Pledge

Crafting for a Bloke

This month I was inspired by the beautiful little creations over at Life Outside Mainstream to try some Iron-On Transfer craft for my husband’s birthday. He has a fondness for retro/defunct logos and I was able to source this Kodak logo to iron onto a grey T-shirt. It was very easy to do. The t-shirt has already had one wash in the machine and is showing a bit of wear on the transfer. I think it adds to to the ‘vintage’ look, but we’ll see how this goes over time. To create a unique t-shirt, all you need is good quality iron-on transfer paper (for dark clothing) and a colour inkjet printer. Instructions are on the pack. 

The $5 Feed

You can feed a family of four a satisfying meal for $5 in less than 15 minutes. It’s not sexy, it’s not fancy and you may not want to serve it at a dinner party…but it is:

1. Healthy

2. Cheap

3. Filling

4. Quick to prepare.

5. Easy to conceal vegies.

5. Passes the trifecta baby/toddler/adult tastebud test.

Tuna Pasta is our ‘go-to’ meal. The quickest, easiest, mid-week meal in my cooking repertoire. It’s the meal I go to if I’m considering ordering take-away, as the ingredients are always in my pantry. Works just as well with any vegies!

Tuna Pasta

Ingredients

1 x 700g jar homebrand pasta sauce

1 x 400g tin homebrand diced tomatoes

1 x 185g tin homebrand tuna, drained

1 packet of homebrand thin spaghetti

1 brown onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small zucchini, grated or blitzed in food processor

1 small carrot, grated or blitzed in food processor

Cheese to serve

Instructions

1. Cook 3/4 packet of pasta in a large pot of boiling water.

2. Brown onion and garlic in a large saucepan.

3. Add sauce, diced tomatoes, vegies and tuna. Simmer while pasta cooks.

4. Serve with cheese.