Month: October 2017

Hello! Best day of spring so far! I am so sleepy now – soaking up all that sun for a change (Vitamin D Overload)

Our friends left late morning after a lovely couple of days catching up. I was going to take it easy, but… too good of a day to waste!

First step – finishing pruning the raspberries and cutting out the dead canes.

I unstrung the rows and got into cutting out the dead stuff… and an oopsie on cutting off three growing ones accidentally!! Grrrr!!

All cleaned up and restrung – did some weeding too and I have a new anti-favourite weed. It hangs on like the docks, but it is multiple legged – like an octopus and wraps itself around everything and is a shocker to pull out. My hands/wrists are sore tonight! Plus it was kind of slippery-muddy in the ground so all weeds were hard to get proper hold of!

These lines give the canes a bit more stability when the wind gets up. I have also tied bunches together to stop them growing haywire out sideways.

Green manure going ahead in leaps and bounds

Lucky lettuce plants got let out of their milk containers today 🙂

Then it was onto my ’round two’ of planting runner beans

I redug the area and also dug through some mushroom compost

Hopefully this lot will start growing before a new batch of baby millipedes start to snack on them!

Two rows in again, covered and watered.
Still sunshine left… so I trotted off to the duck yard to get the beetroot in

To my delight, I saw a few potato plants poking through the soil! This was despite my husband wantonly trampling all over BOTH patches to catch two naughty chooks that got in there because ‘they might have damaged the garden’  eek
I am banking on the toughness of potatoes!! (and Jeff’s amazing weight loss over the course of this year! haha)

The patch that I intended for the beetroot that I dug up a few weeks ago was full of big clumpy bits, so I got down and crumbled it best I could

Dumped in a bag of mushroom compost –

Worked all that through then planted & watered my beetroot seeds!

Best day I have had in the garden for a while! Very satisfying. Fingers crossed for a few more gorgeous days like this in the near future!

Hope everybody’s Friday is superlative!
Cheers!

Ugh – I hate folding & putting away laundry! I don’t mind washing it, hanging it out or bringing it in. Folding is just one step too far!!
So after a few loads of laundry, the spare bed disappears and it starts becoming annoying to find the clothes you want (and matching socks)
So I had to fold. (And the fact that guests arrive tomorrow so I need the spare bed!)

In among baking & cleaning I slipped outside to attend to my garden.
I thought it was strange the runner beans hadn’t put in an appearance. They don’t usually take so long to germinate.
So I went digging…

Ah! Damn… it appears that baby millipedes really enjoy beans.
All that I dug up were rotten and filled with these little squirlies!

Disappointing but not the end of the world. After all I have tons of saved runner bean seeds. I’ll just dig it all up and start again (and maybe research millipede repellent!)

While I was lamenting my runner beans, Screecher casually arrived in the vegetable garden and helped herself to a snail! ?? I didn’t even see where the cheeky chook got in!

The hothouse is really making progress. The zucchini & pumpkin are both looking good

The butternut pumpkin that I had given up on made an appearance too!

The cucumbers look great

The rocket sat in limbo for weeks looking just the same. However suddenly they look amazing!

The tomatoes are starting to show new leaves!

I have never tried to grow fennel. Fennel is just something that happens without my assistance! No idea how it will work now that I am trying it deliberately!

And lots of lovely chillies still happening!

Well… I have had enough domestic bliss for one day! I just taste tested the banana raspberry loaf and it was pretty good… but now I have seeds stuck in my teeth! Time to get ready for bed.

Oh – before I go – A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Very Favourite Uncle! Hope you have an excellent day! 🙂

Cheers!