In the garden - October/November

I realised, belatedly, that the titling of my garden posts was a bit stupid - when I'm writing "in the garden - November" what I actually mean is "it is November now and I'm writing about what happened in the garden in October." And theoretically I was going to be publishing them early in the month, whereas today is the 25th. Oh well. Here is what happened in the garden in October, and for good measure, the bulk of November.

An artichoke happened! "Artichoke", singular so far, but there is another one on there. We had it steamed with some olive oil and vinegar for dipping.

I have far more food memories of my maternal grandmother, Grandma, than my paternal grandmother, Granny, but one thing I associate with Granny is artichokes, as I ate them for the first time with her on holiday one Christmas. I also recall her giving us vanilla icecream sprinkled with Milo, or occasionally a spoonful of jam.

The blueberries have continued to do well - yesterday E took to kindy for morning tea a box of them picked entirely from our own plants. But the main fruit event of the month has been apricots. 24 of them to date! The combination of mesh and paper bags has been a real success this year - I obviously got them on at the right time. They have had a bit of ant/other insect damage and definitely look home grown, but not one so far has been fruit fly ridden.

They look particularly home-grown in this photo - the lighting is a bit funny  -
 they are actually much orange-r than they appear here.

We are saving the stones in the hope that Papa may be able to add a few trees to their collection, although I have read that growing apricots from stones is a bit of a production, requiring a nut cracker to extract the bit you actually plant, and them time in the fridge for them to germinate. We all love them so much it is worth the effort - although 24 is definitely our best haul yet (and there are still more to come on the other half of the graft) it is still few enough that I ration them out for dessert after dinner, one each and no more! C especially loves them and sits chomping away with her one tooth, beautiful orange juice running down her chin.

A sleeping baby

Last week I gave in and called a sleep consultant recommended by a friend. C's day sleeps were varying between intermittent to non-existent, and to get her to sleep was requiring more and more effort. With a recurrence of the lower back/pelvis pain I lived with for most of my pregnancy, patting her to sleep on my shoulder was simply becoming unsustainable.

Stacey came and spent last Sunday with us, from 11am until 7pm. Her method did involve a bit of crying, but also listening to the type of cry to make sure it was angry/frustrated rather than distressed. She also helped us figure out two different schedules, one based on a 5.30am wakeup, one based on a 7.00am wakeup. As C's wakeup time was so variable, and some days have to incorporate kindy pick-ups/drop-offs, I had not been able to figure out a schedule that could incorporate all these things.  My wishlist was for C to wake around 7:00, take at least two day naps, self-settle during the day, and maybe space out her day feeds a little.

All I can say is that Stacey's method works.

For comparison, here is C's day last Friday (pre-Stacey):

4:15am - woke, yelled, had milk
6:30am - up for the day
7:30am - more milk
8:30am - spent 15 minutes in bed before waking, after 20 minutes of patting
9:15am - breakfast (solids)
9:40am - 20 minutes of patting and crying, did not go to sleep
10:40am - milk
12:00pm - lunch (solids)
12:30pm - another 30 minutes of patting and crying, did not go to sleep
2:40pm-  milk
3:15pm - finally had a 45 minute sleep!
5:00pm - dinner (solids)
5:20pm  - bath
5:40pm - milk and bed
6:45pm - awake again grizzling
7:00pm - more milk
7:15pm - asleep

And here her day a couple of days ago (post-Stacey):
7:00am - awake, milk
8:00am - breakfast (solids)
8:30am - 15 minutes settling in cot (talking, grizzling - no crying)
8:45am  - 2 HOUR NAP! (including re-settling herself partway through!)
11:00am - milk
1.30pm - 40 minute nap (in car - also something that never used to happen)
2.30pm - milk
4.00 - 4.25 - unsuccessful attempt to settle (grizzling in cot)
5.45pm - dinner
6.10pm - bath
6.40pm - milk
7.00pm - asleep

Actual day naps! Self-settling! Sleeping 12 hours overnight!

It's not perfect - I haven't yet persuaded C to take a late afternoon nap and she really needs to, as every day since Stacey came she has been up from about 2:00pm until bedtime, but we will work on that. A lot of the time she also seems to want milk more frequently than the every four hours that the schedule calls for, but that is ok.

Crossing all fingers, toes and other random body parts that this continues...