Flowers

I've always been a staunch fan of native gardens.

Unfortunately I'd be kidding myself if I were to say that I enjoy the act of gardening. I really don't gain any satisfaction from bending over a patch of soil, picking weeds, taking the time to prepare, fertilise and nurture a garden. I never have.

I recall with satisfaction (my sisters with wrath!) the days spent weeding the garden in my youth. My entire family gathered around the beds, hunched down, dirty and sweaty... Me looking down at their progress from the kitchen window.

Well... someone had to make the lunch and prepare the icy cold drinks to soothe those weary bodies! Fortunately I was always the one who was quickest to take this task to hand.

I always did prefer to work in the kitchen! My older sister still hasn't forgiven me for shirking the hard work and yet getting all the praise (those lunches were always delicious!).

Hence my love of natives. With minimal effort required to have a colourful, flourishing and often spectacular garden, who wouldn't be a fan?

I love the angular shapes of the Kangaroo paws with their bright colours and strappy green leaves. The grasses wave about in the wind and their various colours catch the light in different ways. Eucalypts look spectacular when set against a stormy backdrop of heavy grey clouds and lit from the front with a dusty yellow light from the fading sun. Bottle brush and Grevillia's attract the birds year round, while native Lily's are always green and lush in foliage.
Mostly I love that native gardens are largely low maintenance and look good year round.

In fact I'd never even entertained the idea of growing non-native ornamental flowers. Vegetables are different - they have a purpose, but flowers... just to look pretty... who could be bothered with that?

But then I met my friend Morning. She always has flowers. Planted along her drive, across an arch to her front steps, over her railings and surrounding her porch. Then there's the ones inside... showy displays at the entrance, scented bouquets on the table, delicate posies in the bathroom, a single stem by the couch. They smell beautiful and have all sorts of wonderful and exotic names.
So I began to grow some of my own. I started with some bulbs. I love their showy colours and bold shapes. Mixed seeds have been thrown into some pots. I've also ventured into planting some purchased pots of already flowering sweet peas and pansies (I couldn't wait - next year I'll grow everything from seed, I promise).
Chookie loves them... So do I.

Google doesn't always get it right!

Meet Fuzz.

We purchased Fuzz from a local pet shop, just before the new year.

Such a cute little duckling at only a few days old and a delight for the children to play with.

Of course I never bothered to ask about gender when buying Fuzz, so we've been wondering ever since.

Until around a week ago, that is.

About 2 weeks ago I was collecting the two older kids from their pre-school when Noodles stopped to admire their resident duck, Donald.

Donald is all white, with a larger beak than Fuzz and sports quite a loud and obvious Quack.

"Ooh" I said, "our duck doesn't quack like that".

"Maybe it's a male" replied the lovely Lauren (childcare worker and guardian of Donald). "Male ducks don't quack"

So I got to thinking that Fuzz was likely to be a male. After all, the two ducks were the same age and Donald had begun to lay an egg each day about a month ago.

There was nothing left to do but 'google' it... So I did.

Googling it indeed confirmed that males don't quack. This came from various believable sources. I can't reference sites for you, I wasn't organised/motivated enough to note them down. But then I deduced that Fuzz was most likely a Muscovy duck (Lavender perhaps?) and one site mentioned that Muscovy's don't really quack and although I can't remember how it described the noises the two genders make, I do recall thinking that Fuzz was possibly leaning more to that of the female. Hmmmm???

Then, however, I read that male Muscovy ducks will wag their tail when spoken to and often raise their feathers above their head. This is Fuzz all over. Never so fast have I seen a ducks tail wag, as that of our Fuzz.

Furthermore, while some sites stated quite clearly that Muscovy ducks have had their flight ability bred out of them, others stated them as notorious escape artists through the mechanism of flight.

Oh the conundrum!

What of our duck - male, female or sterile hybrid?

We took all the information on board and decided that Fuzz was most likely a male.

Then what to do?

Buy a female duck and raise some chicks?

Cook Fuzz up for dinner?

We wanted a female duck for eggs. We'd never tried duck eggs before, but we wanted some sort of reward for putting up with the duck poo all over the back door step.

Then, within the week, an egg.

An egg a day.

In the words of Chookie... "Fuzz is not a roast duck anymore".

Problem solved... Google doesn't always get it right.

What to do with duck eggs?

I'd never eaten/cooked with/stored duck eggs before!
What did I do?
'Googled' it - of course!

Protecting the upholstery

Now that we've moved into our new extension, we're using a nice big dining setting so that we can have family dinners and all the time together and conversation that is afforded by that lovely tradition.

Our dining chairs are upholstered though. Not unusual by any means, but rather unfortunate when little children like to make a mess of their hands and then rest them (or perhaps clean them) on the seat that is cushioning their little bottoms.

We figure that we can get them re-upholstered some day in the distant future if they become too dirty. We'd rather they stay nice for a while though, so preventative measures had to be taken.

First step - Send the kids off to their Aunts place to do some cooking.

Enter one pile of fabric - rescued from the depths of an op-shop remnants box.

Create a newspaper template and then spend a little time on the sewing machine (fingers crossed - of course!). Add a little time for some reverse sewing - as termed by Donna at Casa Famiglia.

And here you go - Protective seat covers.

Just in time for the kids to return with some chocolate cake.

Lucky the covers are elasticised, so they are easy to remove and throw into the machine for washing.