happy monkey

Gosh, what a long weekend!  I did manage to do some of the tasks I set for myself last Monday:

• put sheep pellets around the lemon tree
• get some potting mix for the mint plants
• plant out a heap of basil seeds
• pick up bricks from my friends on the way out to Martinborough

I was busy though, just not with the other things I said I'd do...  Mrs Possum and I drove out to Featherston to pick up around 60 bricks which I'm going to use to build in the old bath as a planter.  I'm hoping it'll look quite cool!  I lifted the bricks from the pile, into the car, then rearranged them in the car, then lifted them out of the car last night and this morning lifted them from the front all the way round to the backyard.  I have guns like Popeye now, I tell you.  Awesome!

The best part of the trip was on the way back, I made Mrs Possum pull over before we hit the Rimutaka incline so we could pick blackberries.  It was so much fun, and we got heaps:

A grand total of 1.3kgs worth.  I've picked them through and popped them in the freezer for now.  Some will become jam, some will end up in Mrs Possum's smoothies, some will be sacrificed into fruit pudding.  Either way, I reckon it's about 6 tins worth, a total of $15.  To be fair, I need to subtract the money I spent on buying Mrs Possum a noms on the way over there, so it works out as a $7 saving in the end.  Sigh.
Anyway, I'm feeling quite lovely today.  I picked up another contract which is quite nice.  It's been a long time in the making with a lot of too-ing and fro-ing.  I've signed my copy and returned it to them for countersigning.  I'm not getting toooooo excited until I get my copy back and the funder ticks it off at their end...

4 of the outside lettuces have started to shoot through the dirt, so that's exciting.  Also got two more mint cuttings from my friends the insane home gardeners, so waiting or them to root out in the kitchen.

Anyway, my bread's just finished so I'm about to get that and some soup down me.  I'm very excited about my soup - it was virtually free and made from scraps.  I call it my stalk and stock scrap soup - Mrs Possum doesn't use the stalks from broccoli or spinach, she says they're too "stalky" (so cute) so she saves them for me.  I bung 'em in my freezer and when I have enough I make them into soup.  We'd had a chicken over the weekend, so I made stock from the bones, threw in a cup of leftover pumpkin soup and voila - about 1 and a half litres of soup, made from throw out things.  Got to be $3 worth.

Homemade soda bread to mop it up.... nom.  I reckon it costs less than a dollar to make the bread, so that's got to be a saving too.

All in all, happy monkey.