A wise person would have done this before buying more seeds. Unfortunately we are not wise people. So many duplicates XD and so many past “sow by/before” dates x_x

A couple of plants started flowering (the bulbs were here when we got here) and I accidentally bought a new one when we went to get painting supplies x_x

Came for replacement heat lamps and an elkhorn fern. Not pictured is the house paint we also needed and several seed packets which we didn’t really. Bunnings (and by extension nurseries) is getting as dangerous as Officeworks.

It began unexpectedly with the paint I’ve been needing (we have some unexpected asbestos walls which need to remain painted and the current coat is peeling and we didn’t get the renos done that I wanted so I told J it had to be done before summer ended, and I’m running out of summer). He was doing a Bunnings run for some stuff to repair leaky taps and asked if I needed anything, I told him to get Cottage or Federation Green paint and pretty much any white that looked like it would go with it (I don’t much care as Cottage Green and white is not my favourite but I’d never gotten around to redoing it in Cottage Red and we’re planning on repainting the inside in greens).

Hatching started yesterday or so! Spotted these two, saw a third later, J says there’s more. At least 3/24. Not our best hatch rate but the two broodies went off brooding for a day after receiving the eggs and then apparently only half of them got sat on x_x

It’s been about an aeon or so since I last did a garden journal (last one tagged any thing to do with the garden was bundled in with a homeschooling post from 2013 as the kids helped J plant some stuff during an unexpected communication outage). Quite a bit has changed since then. First and only very vaguely related because it’s out there, J finally got me a new clothes hoist (the old one is collapsible and the catch to hold it open broke some years back but we were able to make do and it has been collapsing a LOT more frequently recently especially when there was a lot on it). Youngest brought the concrete bags in and had the old one dug out in about ten seconds (only a slight exaggeration), after which he and J erected the new post and left it overnight for the concrete to dry. The following day J got Eldest and I to help put the top on (I didn’t do much) and then he strung it.

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now] Due to stuff (some it was the parents coming up to visit for a couple of weeks, some is that business has picked up dramatically), I haven’t been keeping track of the homeschooly stuff. Also we’ve been finding better things to do than sitting and doing bookwork, so it’s a really good thing that’s not the core of our homeschooling program (I need to write one of those for next year by the way, and also a booklist). So here’s some photos of things it occurred to me to point a camera at.

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now] The skate ramp is skatable! Okay so this is a slightly older picture but it was a good opener :P All but one of the backs are up (the thing that will prevent skaters and skateboards from ending up in the raised bed or in the neighbour’s yard) and the whole thing is now covered in both layers of skin and has been reinforced and all those good things. Now it just needs a paint job (and I know someone who is good at painting that I would like to rope in to help).

First 11 chicklets of the season have hatched. Few more clutches coming. There’s a blue chicklet! This one was smart and set up in The Brooder

Happy Father’s Day to all the people that do Father’s Day! We had JJ’s dad, my uncle and one of my cousins over for lunch. My uncle offered to cook the fish so we pulled 6 trout out of the tanks. I’ve been observing that some of them were pretty big when feeding them, and one of the ones that Tao pulled up was quite large. Big rainbow trout from the aquaponics tank, being held by father in law and patted by 3 year old