Summer holidays

Forgive me, gentle readers, for abandoning you for this past month. Since we last spoke, our family has been visiting the past (the fabulous dinosaur exhibit at the Australian Museum in Sydney), the future (the Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum), and the extended families in Sydney and Grafton & surrounds.

We've had lunch on the banks of the Macleay River, and dinner on an island, overlooking sugar cane fields and the South Arm of the Clarence. We've sweltered at the Big Banana, laid flowers on a grave at Beresfield near Newcastle, and been disappointed to find a milk factory shop remembered from childhood supplanted by yet another Hungry Jacks. We've had major gearbox problems, and had people go out of their way to help us get back on the road (big thanks to Cullen Autos of Taree & NRMA Premium Care!).

And now we're back.

It's still school holidays, but I'm back at work and in the thick of it already. So just a few quick updates, and hopefully I'll post a little more regularly from now.

Earthboxes



Three weeks on their own, with no attention, some very hot weather, and a little rain, and they survived! Mostly. The snowpeas and capsicums did well, but the peas and spinach succumbed to less than ideal conditions. The kids stripped the snowpeas and ate them before they got anywhere near the kitchen, but there are more coming on. With a little TLC, I think they would produce a pretty good crop.



The second box has three very healthy looking capsicum plants, plenty of flowers, and a couple of baby capsicums.



The apple and pear trees are loaded with small fruit, but despite good intentions we didn't get around to spraying them (or treating them in any other way) so we'll lose a lot to codling moth. This winter we're planning to prune them back hard and treat them properly, and hopefully go a long way to dealing with the problem. At least the birds are having a good time in the trees!