Thursday, February 24, 2011

Tree Pumpkins

We found a note on our doorstep yesterday when we got home from work.


The pumpkin vine had been trained to grow up a tree (that's another story) as we ran out of room on the ground.
The tree grows out over the neighbour's driveway.


We harvested two at the weekend as Phil was getting paranoid about the pumpkins falling on the neighbour's cars as the drove in or out - the picture above was taken on Weds evening after we found the note, we didn't even realise there was one growing there when we took the others off at the weekend, everything grows so fast here!

The thing is, it's still a really young pumpkin and is nowhere near ready, hopefully the next ones can grow somewhere where they aren't a danger to passing cars!  We have now pulled the vine back in over the garden and will just have to visit it each day to make sure its behaving.

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Chooks

Or 'Chickens' for those of you outside NZ.

If you've been keeping up with happenings at the Payne house you will know that we have been working on getting chickens in for a little while now. Ever since we explored the end of the garden at our new house (moved in just over a year ago) and found a bit at the end we didn't know we had.
'Ooh we can have chickens!' said Phil. We put out budding architect (Ryan) to work, to design and build a chicken house, Phil built retaining walls, and they both got stuck in & put up fences. All of a sudden we had a chicken house and run at the end of the vegetable garden.
None of this would have been possible without the constant nagging of a friend and colleague @peteinakl , support and inspiration from another friend and ex colleague @ianhowarth

Here is a video of the historic moment when our trio of Brown Shavers after having been confined to their house for most of yesterday were let out nto their new home.
They are point of lay pullets, which means that they are under a year old and will hopefully start laying eggs in the next few days (or at least in the next week or so). they are as yet unnamed but as we get to know them and their characteristics then I'm sure they wont stay nameless for long.
So if you can spare 5 mins of your life then feel free to groove on down to a bit of Diana Ross and click away....



The Hotel California

Savusavu was chosen as our arrival port because it has a relatively easy entrance, is yacht friendly and we had heard great th...