School Holidays Already

Wow, it seems as though the school year had just begun and its end of term one already! The girls spent the first week in vacation care and didn't get up to much exciting, Karren has the second week of the holidays off work and they will spend plenty of girl time together up until I get a break over Easter.

We have just finished decorating the girls rooms, paint and paint and some more paint, plus some stickers and a new desk and book case were the order of the day.

Rosie's room with her new desk freshly painted in Fuchsia Falls

Feature wall in Fuchsia Falls

Toy box and Book case in Fuchsia Falls

Milly's room painted in Minted with new desk and book cases.

Owls feature prominently, bed repainted in white.

Very green but Emily is very happy with the result.

 When uploading photos to the laptop I found some photos of Emily's badge presentation ceremony. Due to health and safety concerns only parents were allowed to pin the badges onto the kids! We really are producing a generation of risk averse, mollycoddled, cotton wool wrapped kids! I try my hardest to encourage the kids to take risks, have a crack at things and take risks when appropriate. They are not allowed to run at school on concreted areas!! How do they play Basketball and Netball? Gee imagine if they fell and grazed a knee or even worse broke a bone? Don't even mention climbing trees.

Walker House Sport Captain.

Emily turns 11 next week, I can't believe how quickly those 11 years has flown by, scary really.

We spent some more time in the garden yesterday planting some grasses, more Cordylines and Bromeliads. This afternoon we took a heap of cuttings and then replanted them, heaps of Cordylines and Rhoeos planted to fill some more gaps. Rosie's veggie garden is progressing nicely, the lettuce, pumpkin and herbs are flourishing, the carrots and beetroot have just sprouted. The pumpkins are apparently giants, all we need to do is remove all but one pumpkin from each plant and they will become enormous. Time will tell!

Some  more Fountain grass planted down the driveway.

Planting more Cordylines and Bromeliads at dusk.

 I have really found a soft spot for Bromeliads and I am starting my own little Brom garden out the front, I only have six so far and I am trying to get sun tolerant ones to plant in clumps.

Bromeliads

We bought a couple of Elephant ear succulents a while ago, one didn't last but the other has thrived, we took two suckers off the main plant and replanted them today, again trying to clump them up.

Elephant ears with suckers replanted.

These Cordylines are incredible plants, we have managed to get more than twenty plants from two original plants. We simply take cuttings, whack the stems in the ground and wait for them to establish them selves again then take more cuttings. It is amazing what will eventually sprout as stand alone plants. A simple cutting of no more than a stick has sprouted. Even a couple of chunks of the root mass, no more than 30mm square have sprouted as well. Brilliant!

Cordyline cutting taking off.

The above photo shows a stick that was just shoved in the dirt. It has taken off nicely, you can see the growth at the bottom of the stick. Makes it pretty cheap to fill up and establish heaps of plants in a garden. It's not too difficult if I can do it!