Chicks and keets

 We've got baby birds! With the chicken themed party for Lily, I decided it would be perfect to get her some chicks... and then I got some guinea fowl keets instead.

Originally I was looking at silkie or belgian d'uccle chicks, but we've had quite a few eastern brown snakes around the house, so we picked up the keets in the hopes they'll help deter snakes when they're older. 

Turns out Lily doesn't really like them as they are very flighty even though they were hatched in an incubator. So a week later we got some silkies, because they're supposed to make great pets for kids...

And they're almost as crazy as the guineas since they were raised by their mums for the first week. 

They're about 2 months old now (I should get updated photos) and altogether in a chicken tractor next to the house, although I think the silkies have had enough of the guineas who run and fly around all day. Luckily we're building their big coop so the guineas will move into that once it's finished, and get them used to the older girls who they'll be living with eventually.

The plan is to build garden beds for the tractor to sit on, that way the silkies can fill them up using the deep litter method, and clean up any garden beds that need a refresh in the future. These little fluff balls will have an important job as well as being pets. Now we just have to wait and find out the gender ratio to decide who we're keeping - it currently looks like I've got three boys and three girls with no favourites to tip the scale.

Birthday bunting

 I quite enjoyed making this Christmas bunting and mentioned that I would like to make birthday bunting and I finally did, with the help of my mum.

Originally my thought was that I could just cut some stencils and paint the letters on, but mum said she could do the letters on her fancy embroidery machine.

The fabric is all from Spotlight with the triangles being poplin with a white cotton drill for the backing, and the trim is another poplin. The font I chose for the embroidery letters is Jared.

It was quite the process in the end and would have been far easier to buy a printed panel like the Christmas one was, but this is special and one of a kind. And just like the tablecloth I shared last week, I hope that it will be used for many birthdays to come!

Rainbow tablecloth

 I decided for Lily's party this year that I would make a bright rainbow tablecloth instead of buying yet another one of those plastic "reusable" ones, that haven't actually survived their first use.

I nearly didn't finish it, turns out I don't like slippery satin. It's impossible to cut straight and equally impossible to press the hems. While I did roll the whole lot up and throw it in a box, I ended up getting it out and finishing it. The worst part of it all was that I was hoping I would enjoy sewing satin because it was supposed to be my practice run for sewing a dress with it... obviously not happening anytime soon!

The rainbow satin is from Spotlight and the trim is from Temu. Here's hoping it will suit many birthday party themes over the years, and save us from needing anymore of those "reusable tablecloths".

Watermelons

 Whenever I go to Bunnings I obviously look at the plants, and I found a multipack of melons - honeydew, rockmelon and watermelon. We ended up growing them on a trellis made of fencing wire and conduit. Which was fine until the watermelons started getting big and heavy!

We successfully harvested these two once the caterpillars destroyed the leaves and started to munch on the watermelon skins - at least they didn't make it inside like they did with the honeydews and the only rockmelon. Luckily the chickens like bug infested fruit so they didn't go to waste.

I'll definitely grow watermelons again since Lily loves them (as do the chickens) but it won't be up the trellis again. And these were too big for our little family so something like Sugarbaby might be a better size.

I always find it funny how excited I get when I harvest something from our garden, but it's nothing compared to watching the excitement of a three year old when it comes to harvesting and eating the produce from our garden - or produce that my mum or our neighbours have shared from their gardens!

Bottle tree planted

 Exciting news, Ray got the post hole digger out so I could plant this bottle tree! Well exciting for me, especially after planting my blueberry in what is the hardest ground I've found so far.

This lucky tree even got a rock edge from the fire pit I've been disassembling. The mulberry tree that you can see in the background, just behind the trampoline hasn't been too happy so it will need to be moved, but I'll wait for it to go dormant in winter. Things just do not grow very fast here, the weather and the soil aren't ideal.

Fingers crossed it will be happy in this spot and will give some shade when it's bigger, I feel like everything I plant here is an experiment!