Thursday 2 April 2015

Ghost town

Marcy completely called it.  Yes it has also been a ghost town around here. Parenting an infant takes a lot of time and energy and I have been using what little time I have to myself to do stuff (or sleep) rather than write about stuff.

My IF feed has really slowed.  The fact is that most* of the IF bloggers I started to follow around the time of Poppy's loss have become mothers (congrats!) and I imagine are having the same time/priority conflicts as me.  I miss reading your words, but for me at least, along with less time, I have a diminished need to process my thoughts.

It annoys me about myself a bit, because that is why I found such comfort in this community in the first place - parenthood was so 'normal' and being excluded from it was so isolating.  And now I'm not excluded from it I have less to say (and less time to say it).

So that doesn't make me a very good contributor to the community.  Although I imagine many who are still working on it stopped reading a long time ago.  Like when I got pregnant.  Fair enough.

I still love to read about how things are going for others in the community, but make fewer comments... I'm still managing to find snatches of time to read because there are fewer posts...

Yeah I don't really know where I'm going with this.

*From a completely non-scientific sample of 'IF bloggers trying to conceive that I added to my reader' about the time that I started this blog, only 11.53% are still working on it.

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Here are pics of some of the things I've been spending my time/energy on when not tending to Pickle/trying to catch up on sleep.

Tending my bag-garden.  Rats from the building site next door (shudder) demolished all the tomatoes but I got some great bell and chilli peppers and loads of parsley, oregano, mint, spring onions and eggplants.
Making baby sleep sacks.  The green one with the middle zip is made from one of Pickle's old swaddling cloths.  The white one is lightweight fleece.  Pickle has nearly grown out of both of them now so I need to get to work on some more.



Upcycling onesies.  Pickle has long legs and is slender so her feet would start to get snug while the rest of the onesie fit.  I just sewed a bit of T-shirt collar on the bottom of the top for length rather than hemming.  I can't tell you how much easier it is to button up a top instead of pulling it over a small wriggly person's head.  



Making T-shirt yarn (hence the spare collar material for the onesies).  I'm in the middle of making a rug for Pickle's room.


Monday 12 January 2015

Microblog Mondays: The Birds and No Bees

Despite our rental property having only paved outdoor space, I attempted a garden of sorts this spring.  

I had to leave all my plant containers in the UK (international pest control) and didn't want to spend a lot of money on containers given we plan to buy a property with a decent yard (not that we've found one we can afford in amongst all the infill housing and developer demand for 'luxury apartment' opportunities).

I'd seen patio gardens online where the containers were those re-useable polypropylene shopping bags. They are robust, water permeable, do not rot and ubiquitous in Australia. When I mentioned to a friend I was thinking of planting in them, she implored me to take a bag full off her hands. "They breed in my cupboards," she said.

I now have a mix of healthy plants-in-bags in our wee courtyard. 

My tomatoes are fruiting wonderfully, but my cucumbers are not being pollinated as there are no bees.  The birds on the other hand... so far every one of the tomatoes on each of my three plants has been devoured by birds before ripening.

I am somewhat shocked that I was more successful growing veg in soggy London than in such favourable conditions in Australia.

And it turns out the bags, which make such convenient containers in the UK, break down under the intensity of the Australian sun.
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