Weekend quarantine

Lucy was out of sorts on Friday so she was shipped off to the doctor. 2 and a half hours later she was diagnosed with sand gnat bites and sent home. That afternoon green goo started oozing from her eye. After another 2 hours at the doctor on Saturday morning, with a belly full of Cracker Barrel blueberry pancakes, she was diagnosed with an ear infection and conjunctivitis (hence the quarantine). It is the same ear from the other week so she is on stronger antibiotics than before and has to have eye drops three times a day. It is not fun putting 2 drops in each eye of a 2 year old! Thankfully Lucy has not shown signs of the predicted diarrhea and vomiting but her eye is looking good now.

So we missed gymnastics and strawberry/blueberry/blackberry picking. But we had fun at home and did lots of gardening (ie weeding and mulching) so the main bed out the front is looking ALOT better. We still don't have enough mulch though. We used 11 bags and covered half the bed. We are thinking of getting a truck to deliver a ton to make it more economical to do the rest of the beds.

We also celebrated Fathers Day on Sunday! Andrew got a cup of tea in bed and after a little reluctance from Lucy he was given some presents (various salts including Peruvian pink, a salt mouse to serve the salt and an All Clad saucepan). Andrew and Lucy played in the sandpit together and then cooked lemon ricotta fritters with lemon curd dipping sauce. They were awesome! They are kind of like mini round doughnuts with a lemon zing to them. Lucy had fun sifting the flour and eating the lemon curd.

Now Andrew is in Boston again. It's another crazy week and then we head off on holidays on Friday.

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!

Weekend water fun

To say it is hot is an understatement. Every day over the past week has hit 100F degrees. In fact today it was too hot to go outside and it is only dropping to around 27C degrees over night. The humidity is high. To put this heat in context our grass is scorched from the sun!

With all of this in mind the past few days have seen us doing lots of water related activities. Our neighbours hosted an end of school party which encompassed a very large water slide and a cookout. Lucy went down the slide with Andrew many times and then ate 4 hot dogs. 4 regular sized hot dogs! I was most surprised that she didn't wake up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache! She was very disappointed that the slide had to be returned the next day and has kept asking for 'pool party'. On Saturday we headed over to the beach to enjoy the cool waves and last week we enjoyed a work pool party by the sea (Lucy swam for an hour).

We have a 'frog' pool set up in the yard for Lucy and we are thinking about buying a big blow-up pool for the adults to sit in too. If the heat continues like this (and it only gets worse in July and August) we will definitely be heading in that direction. Or else sitting inside in the air-conditioning!

Home grown produce

We reaped our first crop of basil on the weekend and immediately made pasta with pesto. The pesto came out bright green and it tasted amazing! Whilst pesto doesn't always look the most appetising, especially to toddlers, Lucy didn't even blink when it was served to her and just chowed in. Drop round sometime for a jar of the green stuff!

Garden project 5: Pizza oven

Okay all the other garden projects are completed but this one is still in planning, design and approval. Here is the marked out spot in our yard for the entertaining area (far right corner you can see a couple of orange flags). Dream big and you'll see what we have planned.

Garden project 4: Flower garden

This project unlike the first three is in the front yard. We have 5 large garden beds and whilst most are planted with evergreen shrubs there are quite a few 'holes'. One of the beds (left) was a blank canvas except for the large ornamental pear tree in the middle.

You'll have to wait for late summer for some better photos as there isn't much to see yet (though there is nice promising growth especially with the ice plants at the front flowering) We do have a red hot poker that has grown in another bed and it is gradually changing from green to orange to red.



Here is the planting list:

• black eyed susans


• pink coneflowers


• green rudbeckias


• ice plants


• butterfly bushes


• red hot pokers


• purple liatris


• diamond grass

Rose garden

Continuing the garden theme of last week here is an update on our roses. Our now famous yellow rosebush has yielded 67 roses in just five weeks. We moved into this house in June so we missed this initial crop last year. However the bush blooms until September so we are looking forward to many more sweet smelling flowers. I have given these roses to lots of people and each time people are amazed at their wonderful scent. They also look so perfect that people think they aren't real until they smell them (or a bug flies out).

We also have a couple of other rosebushes including the white ones on the trellises (the technical botanical name), the red one and the pink one (transplanted from the back and doing extremely well). Our dianthus plants bloomed (and died) over the past month with pink and purple flowers which made our garden smell very sweet.

Garden project 3: Shady garden

We have a shady garden along the side of the house where the airconditioning unit is located. Nothing much grew there and we pulled out about 25 roofing tiles that had been dumped and were rotting. In their place we have planted five red 'cardinal' hydrangeas and four 'loyalist' hostas.

I didn't think any of them had grown much until I looked at this original planting photo and compared them to the photo from today. The hydrangeas look great with many more leaves and have flower heads that are beginning to form. The hostas have sprouted their glossy varigated leaves and are beginning to take the form of a plant (having been planted as bare rooted bulbs) This garden is looking surprisingly good for an area receiving no sunlight.

Garden project 2: Herb garden

Our herb garden is very unique. Not only did we design it ourselves but we completed the project from start to finish in 7 days! This is unusual as our projects usually drag on for a long time but Andrew was so motivated he worked on the pavers until 10pm one night. It is fairly large with a 14 foot diameter.

After discovering this lovely bird bath at Stone Garden whilst looking at pizza oven stones I immediately imagined a circular herb garden. One week later I am picking fresh herbs to saute veal in olive oil with crispy sage leaves. The herb garden includes sage, rosemary, coriander (cilantro), parsley, oregano, basil, mint (some regular mint, some chocolate mint), and thyme. Now you know why I was posting earlier about translating herb names into Amlish!

Project construction

25 April - Marked out the circular garden bed

27 April - Dug out the grass and bought the bird bath

29 April - Filled bed with cow manure and soil

30 April - Bought herbs at Pender Pines

2 May - Bought pavers at Adams products, laid pavers

3 May - Planted herbs and a single circle of red dahlias

Someone remarked at Lucy's party that it looks like a pizza which is very ironic as the primary purpose of the herbs is to make great pizza! Photo 1: you can see the orange flags marking out the circle, Photo 2: cow manure and soil in situ, Photo 3: completed herb garden (without mulch)

Garden project 1: White cedar border

We have a very tall 6 foot fence across our backyard. It is not pretty but we are very thankful for the fence given the 'beach' backyard behind us. (Not many houses in Wilmington have fences so most backyards are conjoined and it is not unusual to come face to face with neighbours eating their dinner) So to hide the fence we decided to plant a row of white cedars. We decided on white cedars as 1. they are evergreen, 2. they grow fast to make a great screen and 3. they don't mind boggy soil. Our neighbour Jim told us that they are native to the area so they should do fine. So my lovely husband dug 28 holes during March in anticipation of our trees arriving in April. He then planted them all after clearing out much bamboo and other mess. The trees arrived in large boxes via UPS from MI and so far they seem to be doing well. We are looking forward to a lovely green screen.

Andrew's birthday weekend

The weekend was jam packed with fun activities to celebrate Andrew's birthday and most of them revolved around food. We breakfasted at Cracker Barrel (Kaka bawell) with maple syrup pancakes before heading over to Lewis Farms to pick strawberries. The farm is 3 minutes from our house!! Lucy was strategically dressed in a pink t-shirt and had a ball picking strawberries and eating them. After picking 2 and half buckets worth we headed over to the shop for some home made strawberry icecream. The farm was set up very efficiently and it was surprisingly quick and easy to pick the berries as the plants are on elevated beds covered with black plastic so it is easy to see the ripening fruit. Although there were lots of people around it didn't feel crowded.

Dinner saw us at Marc's on Market (2 minutes away) for a wonderful 3 course meal. Lucy is a true gourmet happily dipping her bread in a fruity olive oil and then eating pizza with chicken, rosemary and olives.

Sunday lunch was a home cooked lamb roast, which was Andrew's first taste of lamb for the weekend! It was followed by a lemon layer cake comprising of 4 layers of cake, 3 layers of lemon curd, swathed in a meringue icing - an awesome Andrew combination.

We finished off the weekend with some yard work. I didn't say gardening because it was mostly digging and pruning. I'll tell you about some of our projects another day.

To finish up Andrew is looking forward to picking out his birthday present - a bbq!

Pollen

With warmer weather comes pollen. And there is ALOT of pollen around Wilmington at the moment. So much so that decks, porches and cars all have a yellow layer across them. Car washes are advertising pollen specials. Our outdoor furniture is yellow except where Lucy has run her fingers along it. Thank goodness for all that rain as it manages to keep the pollen levels down somewhat but does have the disadvantage of concentrating the pollen into the flooded areas of lawn and driveway.

Life in general (with confetti thrown in)

Life is busy. Andrew spent last week in Boston for work whilst in Wilmington we endured a number of thunderstorms which flooded the backyard.
Our family is reunited and blogging has now resumed.

Spring is a wonderful time of year here in Wilmington. Most gardens are planned around this season and as such there are explosions of pink and purple in every garden as the azaleas start to bloom. Next week is the Azalea festival, the biggest social event in Wilmington. Who will be crowned the queen of the festival? I'm holding my breath (well not really) but I am looking forward to visiting the first farmers market for the year.

Whilst we have planted a summer garden out the front we still have a number of azaleas that have surprisingly bloomed red despite their neglect over many years. Our ornamental pear trees have puffed out with white flowers that have given way to green leaves which has created a confetti of petals across the yard. It is very fun to walk through the petals to the mailbox whilst splashing in the puddles as there is quite a lot of it. I think churches should allow confetti regardless of the mess! Despite the beauty of this process the flowers themselves reek of the bog of eternal stench, sorry to any disappointed or delicate readers!

We have a nest of baby birds living in a holly bush. There are three babies so new to the world they have not opened their eyes yet and just continually open and shut their beaks in the hope that a tasty bug or worm will be placed inside. They are so cute and fluffy that the naturally curious Lucy wants to play with them.

On Saturday we had a grill next door with Sam & Sheila and on Sunday we celebrated Julian's second birthday. Juju is one of Lucy's best friends and we attended his birthday party at Ogden park. Happy birthday Tuba!

Weekend update

After our week of travel it was good to spend some time at home.

Friday night saw us at the ACME Art Studio for Gail and Michelle's art exhibition premiere. It was good to see the Silex crew but what was more amazing was seeing other people I knew. We met some more Aussies who live here (including Lucy's signing teacher's husband) and it felt like a really small world! 7 degrees of separation (or only 3 in some cases) is really true.

Saturday we had a sleep in before checking out Carrabas for lunch. This Italian chain resataurant was highly recommended to us (esp. because it has a wood fired pizza oven) but sadly it was over priced and lacking in quality. The pizza base wasn't cooked all the way through, the tomatoes were flavorless and they brought out our mains about 1 minute after our appetisers were served. The service was good but its unlikely we will go back there.

With full bellies we set out into our garden for some pruning and weeding. You can see Lucy was trying to help by putting on my gardening gloves. Our rose bush continues to produce roses, on average producing 10 per week, and still has many more buds on it. It is an amazing plant and our house is constantly full of the perfume of roses. We also cleared out the canna lillies and have replanted them to make way for our fence to be put in this week!!! So exciting!!! Now Lucy can be contained in the backyard without having to worry about her running on the road. It seems a strange thing to Sydneysiders that many backyards have no fences. We have been waiting some months now for the fence and it is finally happening this week. I will post a picture on Friday when it's finished.

Stay tuned for an Asheville post tomorrow.

Weekend roundup

Andrew's parents John and Diane arrived safely in Wilmington on Friday afternoon. On Saturday Andrew and I went to church membership classes whilst the doting grandparents played with Lucy. Then we were all off to Wrightsville beach with Lucy decked out in her new aussie swimming costume (size 3!). After a quick detour to Kohl's frozen custard we were on the sand making sand castles and riding the waves. Sunday saw us at church, home for a lamb roast and then playing in the backyard with Ava. More adventures await...

Labor Day weekend

We hope you had an excellent labor day weekend as we sure did! We got out and about showing Katrina the sights of Wilmington. There is so much to report and some of these items could have their own blog entries but I don't have time to type at the moment so here are the highlights:

• Fort Fisher Memorial Site. A free musuem about the civil war that we've been meaning to visit for a while. Wilmington was the last Confederate port open to blockade runners. Upon surrender of this site the war was almost over. Although the South lost the war Southern people still bear immense pride in their homeland. The museum gives a good overview of the battle at Fort Fisher and we were able to see some of the original battlements even though most of the coastline has since eroded.



• Southport ferry ride, Southport antique shops and The Pharmacy for lunch. The Pharmacy turned out to be a surprise hit with excellent food and service. The site became a pharmacy in 1877 and has only recently converted into a cafe. The original pressed metal ceilings are still on display.



• Oceanic for Katrina's birthday lunch. Dinner seems to be the forte of this restuarant and lunch was a little disappointing esp. given the terrible parking situation. Still, we had a good view of the beach and we ate prawns so it wasn't all bad (though the smoothies that were made with syrup were terrible!)



• A sunny day at Wrightsville beach + Kohl's Frozen custards = excellent time. We tried out the vanilla, chocolate and banana pudding flavours and highly recommend a visit here on the way to or from the beach. WE were a little curious what these custards would be like but it seems that they are just genuine icecream (ie made with eggs) and they certainly taste good. Can't wait for the 15th when the flavour of the day is 'Elephant stomp' which is Reeses peanut butter cups in a chocolate custard.



• A belated housewarming/birthday chocolate cake from Margaret next door was very much enjoyed. Two thumbs up!



• 10 episodes of The Office (American version of course)
  
  

Weekend roundup

Friday night saw us stay at home due to a 5 hour thunderstorm. It was so loud that at 2am Andrew and I were both woken up at the same time by a 5 second rumble of thunder that sounded like the house was being bombed. We are getting together hurricane supplies just in case.

On Saturday morning we headed off to the Wilmington Children's Museum for Mud Day. It is a fantastic place that is not museum-like at all. It is more of a play centre with differently themed rooms like science, grocery store, circus etc. Outside there were pools of mud, slime and a muddy slip and slide. Lucy was plonked in the mud but did not like it! She preferred the clean water pools. We then had a Southern buffet lunch at the Roudabout Cafe nearby.

In the afternoon we headed over to Topsail beach but when we got there it was raining! Lucy still got some bodysurfing in as the water was warm! It was literally like bath water because it had been so hot and sunny during the week. I know I am prone to exaggerating but when I say that it was 100 degrees last week it truly did reach those heights on the farenheit scale. After drying off at the beach we headed over to Rick & Erica's for dinner.

After church on Sunday Nicky & Susan (with Caleb and Rachel) came over for a lamb roast and pavlova. We are doing 'cultural exchange' with these native North Carolinians who are teaching us all things Southern so in return we are teaching them about Australia. Caleb was very excited last week as he thought he was going to Australia for lunch. Unfortunately for him patting some stuffed kangaroos and koalas was the closest he got. Vegemite still not a winner.

Smell the roses

The garden is a place that you feel close to God. It is great to have an established front garden even if there isn't anything around the back. When we moved in things were a little overgrown so I did a LOT of pruning especially on the roses. Unfortunately the first crop of flowers was eaten by Japanese beetles but our second crop is yielding many flowers. Last week I cut 12 roses and yesterday another 7 with more to come. They smell awesome but don't last more than a few days once picked.

Wet weekend

Well it has been a wet few days but it hasn't been raining. Rather we have been swimming every day! Thursday saw us at mom's group for an afternoon swim in the babies pool at Marsh Oaks. Friday we headed over to Leland to visit Mary Lou for lunch and have a swim in her pool (complete with fountains and spa). Saturday we headed to Wrightsville beach to make sand castles and swim in the Atantic which was then followed by a play in the sprinkler with Ava in the afternoon.

On a social front we had a pizza dinner with Darryl & Margaret and a hamburger lunch with Dean & Debbie (with Brianna, Braidyn and Bryn). We also got some gardening done on Friday where we put in some path lights at the front of the house and Andrew worked on the sound desk at church for a few hours. It is the exact same model as the sound desk at Hurstville! We need a rest.

Water fun

Today Lucy and I headed off to 'Fit for Fun' an indoor/outdoor play centre for kids. There was a 'big splash' event on so pretty much everyone I know with kids turned up (mum's group, neighbours, Aussies). Lucy was unsure what to make of all the noise and people at first but she slowly got into the swing of things squirting paint into her mouth and eating food off the ground besides playing with the water toys and balls. We had a great time but it was SO hot. Lucy is asleep now exhausted after so much excitement.