Gardening with a twist

One of our favourite garden nurseries is Pender Pines located about half an hour north of Wilmington. It has a fantastic range of plants including bottlebrushes. But what makes this nursery really great is that it also has a lovely garden walk, a duck pond (with food to feed them) and believe it or not, 2 emus. Admittedly emu is pronounced 'e-moo' over here but they are genuine emus nicknamed Rhett and Scarlett. Lucy loves feeding the ducks but she especially loves seeing the emus when we visit here. Although she constantly denies that she is Australian there must still be some Aussie in there somewhere!

Product of the week - Lindt (and other) lambs

Our theme for this Easter week is 'lambs'. All of the shops are promoting Easter with chickens, rabbits, and eggs but if you look carefully it is possible to find a very small amount of lamb related items! These chocolate lambs from Lindt are very cute, four white sheep and one black sheep! I'm sure they taste good but I won't be able to tell you until Sunday! We are also putting in Lucy's basket a lamb soft toy and a 'grow farm' lamb that grows to four times its original size when put in water (it will shrink back down when dry and can be used many times)


Continuing on our lamb theme yesterday Lucy and I made pictures of lambs with cotton balls, paper and glue. We put one lamb on each placemat at the dinner table as decoration!

WILD DOGS KILL CHICKENS!

Yes our fresh egg source is sadly no more! Whilst we have an egg supply for this week the poor chickens (about 12 of the 18) were killed by dogs on Saturday night.

Apart from the sensation above we had a very quiet weekend. We did some planning for the front garden, talked to the neighbours, slept, and went to church. Jenny, Joe, Gabriel and Julian came over for a lamb roast and then the three of us went out to Cracker Barrel for a pancake dinner (after shopping at Costco).

Susie 2

One of the things we miss about Australia is our fresh eggs! After trudging off to the Wilmington farmers markets every few weeks only to discover that the eggs were sold out we were very happy to find a new (and convenient) source of eggs. Some friends at church have 18 chickens who have recently started laying. They are selling the eggs at $2 per dozen and deliver then to church every Sunday morning. We have reserved our weekly carton!

It's still fishy around here...

We decided to continue our fish theme this week. Today Lucy and I made an 'under the sea' mural with crayons and fish stickers, we ate tuna casserole for lunch and we are playing with a sea creatures jigsaw puzzle. It is such fun!

A fishy weekend

On Saturday morning, Andrew and Lucy headed south to the Aquarium for the 'Daddy and me' program. They had a great time looking at the sharks, turtles and fish as well as playing with the toy eels in the playroom. Lucy had so much fun she fell asleep in the car on the way home but was easily woken up for a pizza lunch.

We went Outback for dinner, dining at the Outback Steakhouse. It's full of kitschy Aussie decor and it even has Fosters on tap. We called ahead for a table but there aren't reservations, just a place on the waiting list. This meant that we only had to wait 35 minutes for a table as opposed to the 75-80 minutes that walk-ins were told. The food was fine with very large portions. Funnily enough they had NZ lamb on the menu instead of Aussie lamb?? Now we've been there and done that. Won't be heading back here if there is such a long wait again.

The weather has turned cold again! We enjoyed the spring weather last week so much as Lucy and I spent a lot of time playing in the backyard, eating ice cream and wearing tshirts. It is just so variable here!

NC Fauna II

Our backyard continues to teem with wildlife. After a heavy rainstorm last week we had a visit from a tortoise - he has very unusual colouring as seen above. We also have bright green lizards (about 8cm long) that run along the deck and bask in the sun. They change their colour into a kind of brown when they run along the house bricks so maybe they are a type of chameleon.

On the bird front we have Eastern blue birds, woodpeckers (with bright red heads and black & white wings) and cardinals (a bright red bird that is the state bird for NC) We also have heaps of butterflies, more than I have ever seen in my life, flittering around looking for flowers.

It is a wonderland for Lucy.

NC Fauna

Jim, our neighbour and one of the few native North Carolinians around here, told me last week that the only inspect/spider/snake to worry about in our local area was a 'walking cane'. He described it as a black stick like insect about 10cm long. The problem with them is that they are predatory and if you disturb them they shoot out a mist of foul liquid into your eyes. Sounds a little freaky but I wasn't too worried as in the 6 months or so we have been here I haven't seen one. 30 minutes after Jim told me about them I encouter a nest of 4 of them (plus babies) on the side of the house where I am pruning bushes! They are mostly hiding under the plastic in the photo but as you can see they look a little scary. I am leaving them in peace and have left the pruning for another day!