Never touch a caterpillar. I know from personal experience that this is a bad thing. We went for a walk around the block and I must have brushed against a tree and got a caterpillar on my shirt. While walking along I was brushing my arm against my shirt and therefore the caterpillar, and ended up with a lovely, incredibly itchy, lumpy, red rash. And it is still a little itchy nearly two days later.


We have had a few foggy mornings in the last week, and it looks very Christmasy, even though it is not Christmas and we live in the tropics and so would not get snow or anything. But with the fog and all the dew on everything, all the grass and trees look white and shiny.


There are spiderwebs everywhere on the grass.


And spiderwebs all through the trees.


I guess at least I can see them so I don't walk through them. Not that it actually stopped me from walking through them mindlessly.

My partner in crime and life has finally come home from Tamworth but may be going away again soon. So this week I am going to try and have a normal week, try not to be too busy just getting on with the stuff I need to do without having extra stuff going on.

Last week mum went home on Tuesday, I spent a lovely whole day with girlfriends on Wednesday, Tai Chi on Thursday, Friday I picked up my partner in crime and life from the airport then we talked all afternoon. All day Saturday was spent in town as our number one and only son plays war games, and Sunday was at home resting a little, and finishing the gaps in the boundary fence that hadn't been done.

So this week I just want to write, wash, garden, do Tai Chi classes, mow, cook and do some planning of stuff. Not too much really :)

Haven't blogged in about ten days as my mum has been visiting and I realised that I have to blog in private. Don't know why, I just have to. So now she has reassured herself that we are not living in a tent and knows that we go to bed early, get up in the dark and have a snake living in the roof, she has gone home.


While here mum got me an early birthday present of a Carombola tree, a trailer load of dirt, chives, marigolds and when we went to the markets, a dwarf mulberry tree. So we have done some gardening :)


While at the markets I also bought some strawberry plants, six for ten dollars so I got six. They have survived so far, I have not had a lot of success with them before, but they are in pots and I am determined they with thrive.


The other thing I got at the markets was chokos, already sprouted and ready for planting, four of them. We planted them on the fence of the house yard, I have never grown these before so I am going to be doing some research. It also nearly killed me digging the holes for the chokos, the ground is hard and there are also some rocks, so they had better do really well :p

The rest of the garden is going well, some seeds haven't popped up so I am going to put some more in and do some fertilising and hopefully the blank spots will fill. I am hoping to build another garden bed in the next few weeks and get some more stuff in. For now, I am off to research chokos :)

The dog woke me before the crack of dawn again his morning, and again I refused to get up until it at least got light. Not too cool this morning which is good, but I guess it will consistently get colder as we move further into the dry season. The little sprinkle of rain that we have had hasn't put any water into the tanks.

My mum is arriving this afternoon for a visit, I still think she is just coming to make sure we aren't living in a tent. She will however have to sleep in the lounge room as there is nowhere else.

Of course, because we are having a visitor, there is a dead mouse in the kitchen. We had one in the bedroom and I couldn't find it, so it must be behind the wardrobe which I can't move. The one in the kitchen must be under a cupboard as I can't find it either, and of course you can't move kitchen cupboards. Though I am sure we will one day find their little mummified bodies :)

We are just about ready to move forward with building our number one and only son his own room so he doesn't have to sleep in the corner of the shed. We just have a few things to organise and decide where exactly the windows and doors should be, a bit of disagreement there but I am sure that my partner in crime and life will see that I am right :p


I am hoping when I go out to the garden this morning that some more of my seeds will have come up, it really is the slow way to grow things but it is the cheap way. It is just that there is not a lot of greenery out there yet.


We have decided to put up trellis, probably in the form of short fences, to grow passionfruit and granadilla on. We will put these up behind the garden, having been motivated (and we always were going to do this but really want to do it right now) by one of my friends from Tai Chi who brought in these lovely passionfruit. They are so full and just taste gorgeous YUMMO :)

The men have come back from their weekend away and while they enjoyed it, our number one and only son got sick. He already had a cough but then we think he got a bit of food poisoning and is still sick in the stomach. So unfortunately he is off for the rest of the week and missing a lot of school but it can't be helped, at least he is doing a little school work quietly until he needs to lay down.

So they got back late on Tuesday afternoon and as soon as they walked in the door my partner in crime was repacking to go to Tamworth for work. They booked him on a flight at 6.15am the next morning, which meant we were back up before the crack of dawn. Of course the headlights in the car blew, so we had to take the truck which I then had to drive back home in the dark up the mountain. Not what I call fun, driving an unfamiliar vehicle in the dark up a mountain, but I didn't fall of the mountain so obviously I am not too bad a driver :)

The v on the keyboard keeps sticking so every time there is a word with v in it, I have to keep going back and pressing really hard to make it work. Stupid thing.


The dog woke me up early this morning and I thought she just wanted to go out for a wee, but no, she didn't want to do a wee, she wanted to go for a walk. It took me a while to figure this out as it was about 5.15am, so I laid in bed a bit trying to go back to sleep. However, I was obviously meant to go for a walk as I couldn't get back to sleep, so at 6am (which is quite early enough) I got up and took her for a walk.


So coming back from my walk the sunrise looked like this.


It also looked like this, quite pretty isn't it?

I have decided to leave my washing trolley outside the house yard. I am not big on leaving things outside, I do like them away, but it is living outside anyway so it may as well be in convenient place. So now I don’t have to drag it in and out the gate all the time, and it is not as if anyone is going to steal a washing trolley out here, but I think I will bring in the peg basket.


I have pulled out my yam beans at long last and am going to eat them. I had them planted at the other house and they were going so well that I couldn’t leave them. If they taste any good I will plant more.

There is not a lot of information about the yam bean, not in my books anyway. The only book I have it in is my “Tropical Food Gardens” book, which is a really good book to have in the collection. It is about growing fruit, herbs and veges in the tropics and sub-tropics.


So, a yam bean is not really a yam, and you eat the bulb, apparently it tastes like an apple when raw and a water chestnut when cooked. You can use it in Asian dishes as a substitute for water chestnut and bamboo shoots; you can also eat it raw with dip.


The seeds and leaves are poisonous, and the flowers are lovely, they are a vine and I had one of the pots near the outdoor shower and it climbed up that. I have grown mine by seed but apparently you can also use pieces of the tuber, I have more seeds so will just run with that.


So, I made a stir fry and added in the yam beans, they do taste apple like when raw. Of course I made too much as I am used to cooking for three, therefore I couldn't eat it all but it was yum.

I had home grown yam beans, of course, home grown kang kong, betel leaf and abika. Locally grown zucchini and homemade mango sauce from home grown mangoes (from the other house), all this with free range chicken and brown rice. There were other things in it but not home grown or locally grown or home made :) The yam beans where the highlight and today I am going to find space in the small garden and plant more, if I can. Gotta try new things or life gets too boring :p