Spring cleaning

I can feel spring in the air and feel the urge to get things organized.

I have spent most of today on the computer but have been getting the last 6 years worth of photos backed up onto DVD. It is great knowing that I have everything safely stored.

I went swimming last night and attempted butterfly for the first time. It was a fairly hilarious session last thing before the class ended ... but I will have a chance to practice during the next week on my own.

I have been concentrating on looking down and getting the correct body position in the water. I have also tried to focus on what my arms are doing ... and trying to adjust my breathing now that my head is lower down in the water.

In previous weeks I was feeling confident with breathing, but was throwing my head up high out of the water ... now that I am keeping my head lower in the water I often end up with a mouthful of water when I breathe.

Jenni suggested I concentrate more on slowly expelling water out of my mouth as I turn my head to the side, then take a breath when my mouth clears the water.

I wonder if maybe I am keeping my mouth open too long and so when my head re-enters the water I get a mouthful of water. I will have to try and see what my mouth is doing (as well as my arms, head, legs, body .... LOL!!!)

I have been swimming now for about a month and I am very pleased with myself. The people in the night class are familiar to me now (by sight more than anything else) and I have become a recognized member of the group! It still is nowhere near as social as bellydancing is ... and I think I like that. Not much time to chat while you are trying to swim.

I think by the end of next week I will be finished the first coat of paint on the long side fence. Then I imagine if I work steadily on a second coat ... I should be completely finished the fence by the end of the year.

Uni joked that some people paint their fence every year! Hmmmphhh we will not be one of those types of people ... since it takes me more than a year to do it the first time!!!!

Yesterday we emptied the lower tray of the worm farm together, for the second time. We were both pretty impressed by the "soil" we found. This time around we left it for a full three months and it had a lot less worms left in it and was in a much more "finished" condition.

I think from now on we will empty the tray at the beginning of each season. I put the worm castings into the garden and in the next few days will plant some flower seeds for spring and then mulch the entire front garden.

I will also plant some paw paw seeds for someone!

There is a rogue tomato growing out of my compost ... will be interested to find out if it is a cherry tomato or not ... at the moment it is looking very healthy and has heaps of little tomatoes on it!

worm farm

I am frustrated by how much time I am spending on the computer. This is not helped by the fact that it is so sloooooooow. We have just about filled up its memory completely ... poor thing.

I am trying to wean myself off the facebook farmtown game. I like how you can interact with others and negotiate and build wealth and buy things. I like how you can garden without getting hot or bitten by mossies ... and how everything always grows without fail ... including your bank balance.

Meanwhile my house is still untidy and there are mounds of washing to put away and iron. There are dishes to wash and dry .... a job much more difficult without a dishwasher.

I was sick yesterday .... I think i got KT's tummy bug ... although it hit me a week later than it hit her. I spent the whole day either sleeping or running to the toilet. J drove me down to the school to watch KT compete in the cross country and then I went back home to bed ... and the toilet. Lucky I have a large stockpile of toilet paper!!

I still feel tired and slow today but at least my appetite has returned and I can actually stand up for longer than a few minutes.

I have been meaning to put the legs of my worm farm into tubs of water/oil or vinegar to prevent ants from climbing up them and into the farm. I decided to wait until the bottom tray of the worm farm was ready to be emptied so that I could combine the two jobs and do them while Justin was available to help with the lifting (each layer gets pretty heavy).

I was going to wait until mid April but right out of the blue the ants have invaded ... after pretty much leaving the worms alone for the last 3 months. Arthur had to put the legs into tubs almost immediately.

When J got ready to empty the tray of worm castings into a foam box (which I will turn into a raised herb garden) he discovered that there were still heaps of worms in amongst the castings even though they are theoretically meant to move up into the higher trays where there is more food.

I didn't want to put the worms into the foam box partly because I didn't want to lose any food scrap eating power and partly because I thought the worms would get too hot out in the front garden and without any way of escaping they might die.

So I went back to my can of worms instruction book to see what they had to say about the situation.

We had done the right thing by putting the tray on top of the others, leaving it uncovered to expose the worms to sunlight and make them want to burrow downwards ... but unfortunately they weren't going down far enough to get to the next tray.

The next part of the instructions said to sift through the worm castings by hand ... separating out the worms ... hmmmpfff I must have skimmed over that part of the instructions previously.

So then I spent the next hour or perhaps hour and a half sorting the worms from the castings, wearing my gardening gloves. I'm pretty sure I got most of them. They are fairly easy to spot and the castings crumble away around them.

Note to self ...perhaps next time (when my worm population is bigger) I will empty the castings directly into the garden and put mulch over them ... so it doesn't matter if a few worms end up in there.

I think next time I will be prepared too and will know what to expect ... and I have this handy set of notes to refer back to!