On the Future of this Blog

This space has been at the back of my mind for a while now. I have left it to dwindle, shrink in the shadow of the rest of my life. Perhaps I lost the drive since the focus of the content was so broad. A record of my life in New Zealand just doesn't seem all that interesting either.

I have been working on a new blog, with a much more focused directive. Will I maintain this one? Not in it's current state, that's for sure. I'm toying around with using this space as an electronic window into my sketchbook. We'll see.

South Island part 1

I'm going to start at the end, swimming with the dolphins in Kaikoura.

Mom and I got up super early our last day on the South Island to take a tour with Encounter Kaikoura. These folks know their stuff, I highly recommend them. It was probably one of the best tours I've ever been on, definitely worth getting up at 4:30am for.

You know when a tour advertises swimming with dolphins and you picture your arse freezing in the ocean while you bob around, squinting at the occasional fin breaking the surface 100 metres away? Well, this was unbelievably better than that. There were times when I was surrounded by half a dozen dolphins swimming circles around me within arms reach.

There's a chill in the air!

It's starting to get cooler in Wellington, which doesn't say much since the summer highs barely pushed past the mid 20s, and I'm in mourning for my tomatoes. It's unlikely that the green globes hanging from the wind stooped plants will ever ripen. I knew this was going to happen, but I needed to see for myself if there was even a smidgen of hope that I could grow tomatoes out of doors around here. Next year there will be a greenhouse. In the meantime I'm hunting for green tomato recipes.

Editing...

Hello, how's it going? Sorry for the long absence. I've promised a few of you new pix, and they're coming, but I'm still editing. Editing... the bane of an artist's existence. That final step when I come face to face with the plethora of rubbish I've produced and now have to polish to simulate the jewel it ain't.

On the bright side, if all artists spat out pure perfection with each shutter click, each stroke of a brush, each punch of a key, the horde of analytical desk jockeys turning the cogs of empires such as Adobe would be out of work. Right?

In the meantime I've added a few new sketches in my doodles page.

Oscars Weta Style

Apes & Tintin were up for a couple of Oscars, so Weta threw a party. The fact that we didn't win this year wasn't enough to dampen our spirits. It kind of helped that the booze was free. ;)

Un P'tit Tour

J'ai loue un char pour le weekend pis on a fait un petit tour de la region nord de Wellington. Voila l'evidence!

Of Tomatoes and Gypsies

Wellington is windy and not very hot during the summer, not the best conditions for growing tomatoes outside. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a shot. The poor plants, grown from seed by the way, have been tossed around in gale force winds, and have bent themselves to grow close to the ground.

At first I didn't create a shelter for them because I ran out of free time. Then I decided to experiment and see what I would get if I left the tomato plants as is, thinking that next year I'll build a mini green house.

Needless to say I was a bit surprised when I found these guys hiding while I was weeding a week ago. Ain't they cute, all nestled and shy?

Miramar is a sleepy neighbourhood where not much out of the ordinary (read: exciting) happens. But guess what rolled onto my street a couple of nights ago? Gypsies!

When I saw this bus I got a sharp pain of longing for my Westy and a strong urge to hit the road again. Fortunately Mom and I are leaving for a 2 week road trip of the South Island soon.

Sketches

I like to draw, my work notebooks are filled with doodles. I thought it would be nice to share some of them. So, I'm going to add another page to the blog for my drawings. Warning: I plan on including sketches from my figure drawing book, which means nudity.

Here's a sketch to get started:

1001 ways to preserve fruit

Yikes! Ca fait deux semaines dejas? Hmm, qu'est ce que je peux vous raconter de mes dernieres deux semaines?

J'ai acheter un coupon, tu sais les 'groupons'? Les sites qui vendent un deal a chaque jour, souvent deux repas pour un, ou un manicure a motie le prix. Cette fois ci, j'ai paye $19 pour 10 kilos de fruit. Wow, exciting, right? Vieve bought a coupon for fruit. But wait, there's more!

Now, I was thinking, 'What a deal! 10 pounds of fruit for only $19!' It wasn't until the boxes showed up on my door step that I realized my error and cursed Canada's bipolar measurement system. I was staring at 10 *KGs* of fruit. I read 10 kilos when I decided to buy the coupon, but my screwed up mind visualized 10 pounds. Il y a une grande difference entre 10 livres pis 10 kilos.

Alors, qu'est ce que je fais avec mon temp libre maintenant? De la confiture! There is no way I would be able to eat 22 lbs of fresh fruit before it rotted, so jam it is. Jam and chutney and fruit vodka... oh my! Des photos bien tot.

It often amazes me how quickly some veggies grow. I planted radish seeds about 3 weeks ago and now have big, beautiful, yummy, organic radishes I can just pull out of the ground and munch on whenever I want. If you have a small space and want the biggest bang for your square centimetre, radishes are a must. And there are so many kinds to choose from!

On the other hand, I started the broccoli from seed, inside, 3 months ago and am just now starting to harvest. Definitely worth the wait, tho. Last night my supper consisted of a head of steamed broccoli and cheese sauce. Nom nom nom nom.

It's my first experience growing broccoli, and for the longest time that part of the garden just looked like a jungle of big, green leaves. One day Mr R was poking around the veggie patch and exclaimed that he saw broccoli heads. Sure enough, the bastards were hiding! All cutely tucked into their forest of vegetation. It must have been awfully traumatic when I unceremoniously cut them from their stalks. Watch out brassicas of the world! Vieve the veggie hunter is on the loose with her opinel garden knife. Mwahahaha!

Windy Wellington!

 Il y a un vent malade a Wellington aujourd'hui pis les oiseaux s'amusent. J'ai pris ces photos pendant mon lunch. C'est une des plages sur Oriental Bay. Je m'inquiete un peut des plantes dans mon jardin, le vent est si fort.

Strawberries!

First strawberries of the season! Nom nom nom.

What is X-Mas?

It's kind of a funny word, one that I use instead of Christmas. I guess 'X-Mas' is a way for me to comfortably participate in the secular aspects of a Christian holiday.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks. For the first time in my entire life I'm separated from all but one person with whom I spend time around December 25th. While I don't adhere to the belief systems that celebrate the birth of Jesus, others in my usual crowd of family and close friends do to one degree or another. This got me to questioning myself while I was out shopping for that one, non-religious person left from my inner circle. Does this mean all I really am is a consumer whore who's been hiding behind the skirts of the believers all these years?

It's hard to face the idea that all I am is a member of the mindless horde combing the stores for stuff, regardless of how thoughtful and/or useful the gifts are, in order to justify time off work for a statutory holiday that has nothing to do with my beliefs. But after some soul searching I can answer the above question with a wobbly, 'no.' The following are the reasons why.

I love giving. Truly and honestly love giving. The receiving isn't bad either, but for me it's about spending a lot of time thinking about what I can make or find for that other person. While I didn't do so well making gifts this year, I generally craft up to 75% of what I give. I think it's understandable that that percentage is a big, fat, round 0 this year. I've been a bit more than busy. Those gifts I do buy tend to be in support of smaller, local businesses that often don't have the large pull bigger, international stores do. Yes, that part is definitely consumerism, but it's also a way for me to support an economy I believe in. (Didn't do so well with that aspect this year, either, sigh.)

Then there are the socks. You know what I'm talking about. The wild and crazy socks I've been knitting over the past decade or so. If you haven't received a pair yet it's just a matter of time. Now those, I do for myself. Yup, I'll admit it, the socks are a bit of a selfish gift. I love making them so much I usually have a massive smile plastered on my face from the time I start hunting for the wacky yarn to the moment I finish tucking in the last of the ends. Does it help make it seem less selfish if I say that I'm smiling because I'm imagining the grin on your face every time you pull on your handmade, rainbow-striped, fuzzy socks?

Ok, so I'm a thoughtful gift-giver. It kind of justifies the gift part of the holiday. But I'm not sure it's really necessary to find a reason to support giving gifts. So what's left? 

I think the key element is quality time with the people I love. Family is a big part of the meaning behind x-mas for me. And I don't mean just my bio-family, I'm including an extended set of chosen family in this definition. If the government is going to give me time off with pay so that I can spend hours cooking, eating, debating, laughing and all the other things I do with the people who are most important to me, then I'm going to say, 'thank you!' and leave it at that. Which makes X-Mas another date on the calender reserved for my family, along with Thanksgiving and Easter.

Reading over this I'm realizing that I've stated the obvious. It was even obvious to me in the past (I guess the change of scenery has sparked a re-evaluation of my habits). I'm happily molding someone else's religious day to suite my own needs. Isn't that what the Christians did when they moved Jesus's birthday to it's current date? If they can justify rearranging their calendar to blend better with another culture, then I sure as pie don't need to worry about ramifications for my adaptation of Christmas.

After all that, I just want to let my family know I'm thinking about them. I'll have to send out the socks later, tho. It's hard to motivate the little knitter inside when it's summer in December.

And now for photos!

Some more pix of my garden in bloom. 

 

  The neighbourhood in bloom, bumblebees hard at work.

 

On my way to work.

 

 Ahead is work.

Behind is the way home.

Plants That Love Each Other

I've mentioned before that I'm an enthusiastic researcher. Others might call it pathological, but let's not split hairs. One of my favourite topics to google about is companion planting, especially around this time of year. (K, this time of year is relative to what side of the equator you're standing on, so when you wonder what the H vieve's doing reading up about gardening in December, keep in mind that I'm currently in the southern hemisphere.)

Some folks like to study the behaviour of people, I'm more into finding out what plants are up to. How do tomatoes feel? What's a zucchini's eating habits? What kind of 'hair cut' do blueberry bushes prefer? Why? I'm going to pretend you asked. Aside from the zen-like state I achieve in my garden, I think it's mostly because I don't have to talk to plants to excel at gardening. I'm not much into words, and often find myself at a loss to vocalize the intricate web of ideas bouncing around in my head. I know, I know, you're thinking, "But, vieve! Aren't you supposed to talk to your plants to make them happy?"  Only if you want to come across as bat-ass-crazy!

There's reams of material out there on gardening and how to do it on a small scale and get the biggest bang for your square centimetre, whether all you've got is one window sill or an entire yard. It helps that container and apartment-sized gardening has become trendy. Everybody and their cat has pasted bits of dirt wisdom onto the internet. There are some seriously innovative folks out there who have married the 3 Rs with small scale gardening. This is just one example from the Mother Nature Network :


Companion planting is crucial to a healthy and productive small garden, and it's been around for as long as life has existed on the Earth. Mother Nature is the original master gardener. In her infinite wisdom she places plants together that make each other happy, no couples counseling required. The astute gardener observes what is already there, and draws conclusions from their own experiments, much like a scientist (hmm, gardeners are scientists, gnosh on that thought for a while). Over time we've amassed a wealth of tips such as plant strawberries and spinach together, don't plant tomatoes and potatoes within grub crawling distance of each other, and you can never have enough marigolds.

This chart covers just about everything you might want to plant in your veggie patch:

(You can find the original, larger guide here.)

A couple of books I've found useful are "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise Riotte, and "Companion Planting in New Zealand" by Brenda Little. Charts like the one above are useful, but the books help to explain the whys behind keeping climbing beans separate from sunflowers.

So, have I bored you yet?

Un Bon Depart

Et voila, les photos de mon jardin. C'est un commencement, il m'en reste beaucoup a faire.

 

A gauche: work in progress   Au centre: des capucines   A droite: les salades, brocolis, choux de brussels, onions, poireaux, radis, basilic, aneth, coriandre, tomates + des pot soucis

A gauche: raisins, tomates, basilic, ail, poivrons, pot soucis   A droite: rhubarbe, fraises, epinard, cassis, grosseille a maquereau, bleuets, marjolaine, cape berries, feves

L'arriere-cour! Le compost est deja a motie plein, lol. RB m'a aider d'arranger les carreaux, j'aimerai mettre une petite table pis chaise la. C'est la seulle place privee dans le jardin. Il y a d'origan, thym pis basilic qui poussent entre les carreaux.

Terrarium!

I had so much fun making these last night! Here are some pix of the process and the results:

List of supplies: glass and rock pebbles, sphagnum moss, cactus and succulent dirt mix (from what I've read you can use regular potting mix as well), used glass containers from the thrift store, a bunch of baby succulent plants, one gorgeous pitcher plant.

In goes about an inch of rinsed glass pebbles.

Then enough moss to create a barrier between the dirt and pebbles.

Now the dirt. Usually the activated charcoal would go between the dirt and moss, but the garden shop didn't have any. Since this is going to be an open terrarium with a certain amount of air circulation I should be fine without, the charcoal is more crucial to a closed terrarium. I understand that pet stores with aquarium supplies will have the needed charcoal. Something to keep in mind is that there will be a bunch of dirt around the roots of your plants already, so try to guess how much extra height will be added with the roots and dirt of the plant.
Now for the plants. Keep them away from the glass (too much touching will increase the condensation on the inside of the terrarium), work from one side until you're happy with the way it looks, then turn the container and make little adjustments until the arrangement is perfect from every angle. Add some decoration like shells, beach glass or mini statuary. Have fun!

Two mini terrariums in old liquor glasses. These were super fast to make. Because they are so small I broke off single branches of the succulents and planted those (they will root themselves into the soil as long as you take a clipping just bellow a node - where a branch or leaf grows from - and cover the node with soil).

Care instructions:
Don't over water! Everything I've read has said it's best to err on the dry side. I'll probably only give a shot glass full of water to the first, larger terrarium once every 4 weeks. The little guys will probably only get a misting once every couple of weeks.

Also, no need to fertilize. I don't want these guys growing quickly, otherwise I'll have to prune or put them in larger containers. Plus, the pitcher plant should be getting all the nutrients it needs from the occasional fruit fly (it's going on the window sill next to my fruit basked and compost bucket).

Well, I'm addicted. I'm sure I'll be making another trip to the thrift stores to find funky glass containers soon.

Bonus: These make *great* gifts! They need less care than the average house plant and would be good for that friend who seems to kill everything. I spent a total of $50nz on all 3 together, and I still have enough supplies to make a dozen more.

Obsessions

Ces jours-ci j'obsede avec mon jardin. J'ai de la misere a dormir les nuits parce que je pense au croquis que j'ai fait de ma cour, aux graines que j'ai seme, aux plantes qui poussent deja. Il y a un magasin de jardin en face d'ou je travail. C'est tout ce que je peux faire de n'y pas aller a chaque midi. Enfin, apres 2 ans dans un appartement sombre, j'ai une cour bien ensoleillee! J'en suis certain que mon obsession va se calmer avec du temps, mais pour le moment je vais m'amuser en esperant que mon compte bancaire ne s'asseche pas (bonne chose que Weta m'a donner un emploi plus tot que j'ai prevu). Je vous promets des photos de mon jardin bien tot.

J'ai une autre obession toute nouvelle: les terrariums. C'est comme avoir un petit jardin dans la maison! Quelle idee merveilleuse!! Pourqoui je ne l'ai pas fait avant aujourd'hui, je ne sais pas. Voila la photo qui m'a commencer sur ce chemin:


Trop cute!! Bien sur que je me suis dise, "J'en veux!" Alors, comme toujours, j'ai commencer ma recherche. J'adore google image search. =) Quelques de mes preferes:


C'est super simple de creer un terrarium, regard:

Ca peut etre ouvert ou ferme. Alors, hier j'ai visiter un thrift store (on en a aussi juste a cote de travail, super pratique!), pis j'ai trouver des pots en verre pour cheap. Aujourd'hui je suis aller au magasin de jardin pour le rest. Devinez de quoi je fais ce soir? Encore, je vous promets des photos. =)


Photo credits, in order of appearance:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/87711046/hanging-glass-globe-diy-moss-terrarium?ref=pr_faveitems

http://www.thegrowspot.com/know/f5/terrarium-inspiration-indoor-winter-gardening-53930.html

http://www.designerscall.com/blog/2010/06/01/table-top-terrariums/

http://www.steezemachine.com/?p=345

http://craziestgadgets.com/2010/04/26/light-bulb-terrarium/

http://gardenheights.com/blog/?p=827