Sunday 5th February 2006 - Weather: bright and breezy

What a busy day, took the kids to the park for an hour, then for a happy meal, home, homework done, and chores sorted so I could get into the conservatory and finally get the plants reorganised.

We repotted the giant bird of paradise yesterday and it looks very handsome in it's new Branhams blue glaze pot, so today I could tackle everything else. Everything has quietly become huge over the winter so I needed to gather all of my big clay and glazed pots from the garden, including the old oak half barrel that we brought for the bananas. I potted all the baby BoP into their groups, so Reginae in one, Nicolii in one and the other, whose name I have totally forgotten, is in the last. That gets rid of a lot of pots on the windowsill. Then the palm that Taxi gave me has been trying to escape upwards out of it's pot since I was given it, so that was treated to a new slightly deeper pot. In fact, one by one, most things were potted into bigger pots, unless of course they were already in big pots, like the clivia and orchids. The bananas were the last job. WOW they are monsters! So, in came the half barrel, on which I cut my arm (!) then in went all the babies. This left the monster Mumma. I cut of the bunch of bananas as they weren't going to develop any more, and that part of the plant seemed to be dying, so when I finally manhandled it out of the pot, I had to use a saw to cut the beast in half. The big lush half fitted nicely into the barrel along with some of hte pups, leaving one last pup who wouldn't fit. Now, I was going to throw this baby in the bin, but of course him indoors cringed, so the baby is now living in a nice pot alongside the mumma. All in all, I used 2 bags of compost and at least 8 big pots, but things are looking great now. The clivia has flowers and lots of buds so it is going to look great in a few weeks time. The orchid looks stunning, even though one of the flower stems snapped clean off and is now in a vase on the mantlepiece! Also, I think there are two different orchid plants in one pot as the other half has 3 flower stems, but the buds are completely different. And the monster Strelizia has at least 5 buds coming, and as each flower last 3 or 4 months, I think she is going ot be in flower for the rest of 2006!

Just thought I would mention the squash collection. As you can see, there are still loads to use and I am running out of ideas! I have just made a lovely big batch of hot and spicy pumpkin chutney which not only used up one of the huge pumpkins, but also used up a load of chillis which have finally ripened on the conservatory! Mum has given me a couple of different recipes which I hope to do over the week, but I think a lot of these are going to end up on the compost heap. Oh well, at least they will go back to putting some goodness in the ground!