Hello!! I was pretty mundane today. Yesterday I took a rest because happily it was raining. Went and saw the doc and got good news, as all my bloods came back spot on!! Yay!! So I can keep steadily doing what I am doing and recheck in three months. Today was another one of those pour one minute, sunshine madly the next days. So I got in and did a bit of housework. A real bright spot in the day was getting a parcel in the mail!! What an awesome book!! My friend, Marty, who I help with moderating his gardening page, sent it to me! I really enjoyed sitting down this afternoon with a hot choc in front of the fire to start browsing through it. See? I’ve already tabbed a few pages!! 🙂
Did I mention dropping into a garage sale in the pouring rain and wind earlier in the week? I picked up these wicker drawer sets for the upstairs room. They aren’t too shabby and were only $10 each. Nice for guests who stay upstairs to have somewhere to put their things.
Pip has spent a vast amount of the day sleeping in toasty towels, getting up for snacks then coming back to irritate me until I provide him with a freshly warmed one.
Imagine if we had kids!!! They’d be impossible haha. That is one spoiled Siamese Cat.
I finished another crochet project – Its only a little blanket. My Texan friends daughter is about to have a baby boy. I thought this would be colourful and cheerful for a little boy.
Anyway, here’s hoping the weather perks up a bit tomorrow. I think we have about two weeks or so before the tree guys return to create another mess. I’d like to get some more gardening done in the meantime! Cheers!!
Hello!! Today we had a scheduled power outage – and it wasn’t raining so I went out into the garden with hopes of planting the garlic, digging up iris and picking up cow poo. Sometimes I over estimate what I can actually do.
I worked on the ‘easy’ patch first. I decided to put the early garlic in this one. I hadn’t yet put the blood and bone and lime into it so I just did the usual trick of shoving everything in at once instead of thoughtfully scheduled!
I don’t mind higgledy – piggledy gardening but I do like my garlic to look ordered.
Lovely! That’s the way gardening should be. All done without a fight. Can’t say as much for the duck yard garden plot!
This is where the white garlic is to live. First I had to sprinkle lime on it. It was about at this point it started to rain.
So… the camera went away – first because it didn’t need to get wet and secondly because to take any photos would mean a 10 minute hand washing exercise! Oh my!! What a nightmare. Sticky sticky clay mud and I had to clear the (insert swear word of choice) twitch out too. My boots gained weight and I gained height. I couldn’t walk on the woodchip path because my boots just picked it up!! 😀 It was pretty awful! BUT I wasn’t going in until I had it all done because I knew I’d just put off returning to it. After a lot of heavy work, the plot was planted. I did two sections of six rows, so basically I can reach each row fairly easily. So happy to have it all in. Approximately 250 cloves got planted all up. Enough??? haha
Little by little I might get this whole yard under control by spring?? Hmmm Needless to say digging up iris and collecting cow poo got cancelled.
The rain brings out the lovely Macrocarpa wood colours –
I hope your day was slightly less muddy, but equally satisfying!! Cheers!
Twitch – that long ropey grass!! Rotten stuff that you can’t get rid of. It sometimes makes me question my love of organic haha Anyway, I was working on the second garlic patch today while the young fellow who took us up on the offer of the free pile of wood came and collected it. He insisted he didn’t need help loading the vehicle – I guess he thought since he was getting free wood he shouldn’t impose on my time! Nice guy. I was going to use the chipper but that would have spat chips all over him so I found another job instead (Its good when you have a solid list to work from!!)
I decided to use this patch as the second garlic bed. The state of the other plot in the Duck Yard Garden put me off – its going to be a lot of work in sticky mud so I took the easier route. (for now)
Looking oodles better. Jeff was pruning the apple trees and saved me these great branches. I’ll do something with them! But the complete Muffin decided to prune the rest of the Guelder-rose (the one I am using for the tension trays and huggle fence?) and threw all the clippings down ‘The Hole’ ‘The Hole’ now has a few feet of water in it so popping a ladder in it to go fetch isn’t an attractive option. Sigh.
Chickens!! I saw the duck yard garden gate swing open in the wind – I hadn’t snicked the bolt home properly. I was busy and then forgot… then thought ‘oops’ – very quiet on the chook-front! Yep… all nine of them in the duck yard garden kicking the last of the bale of hay apart!! Happily they hadn’t gotten into any of the Huggle Monsters! Naturally they raced off in five different directions when I was trying to herd them back out. Little snot-faces!! 🙂
I did eventually get back to the chipper.
This time I decided to start lining the outside of the first garlic patch so I can keep the weeds down. Its a work in progress.
The newspaper should help as well. And I can hear it raining out there so that will start settling it into place.
Little bits of progress. I’ll be interested what it is all going to look like by spring!! (No pressure) 🙂 Cheers!
Hi There! And another beautiful winters day today! Check out my worms!! While I can’t discern a worms expression I get the feeling they are happy.
The last pile is dwindling! I saved and chopped suitable lengths for the chipper and future craft-like projects. The rest went on the fire.
Jeff got out the chainsaw and cut up the long chunky bits into manageable sizes and stacked it.
This pile is the ‘awkward’ pile. We were going to burn it but I put a note on the local facebook noticeboard for anyone who wanted it to collect it – free. That offer was snapped up pretty quick – a lady is coming to get it all (I hope) midday tomorrow.
And now we are about ready to call back the tree-guys!!
The manky-no-thought-put-into-it compost pile has been rediscovered! Smart chook must have had a bit of a lovely feast in there!
I also found this massively tough hydrangea!! Under all that wood and still got little buds! The least I could do was relocate it!
My other goal today was to get a spot cleared for one of the garlic plots. Its really time for them to go in.
Ugh – the ground was heavy to work in and those stakes did NOT want to come up. I broke a few which was annoying considering I was literally digging them out! Took ages to untie the nylons… muttering at myself about tying quick release knots in future. I grabbed a few tomatoes that look like they might ripen and gave the rest to the chooks.
I found a couple of sprouting potatoes which I put in the hothouse to see how they go… Oops… I just remembered I forgot to water them!!
So many big fat worms in here too!!
Anyway, I got it all cleared out and weeded – sort of (twitch eurgh) and covered with a generous dusting of blood and bone. In the next few days I’ll add the lime then will be right to start planting. Will sort a second plot ASAP… as one cannot have too much garlic.
Last night I had a lovely time buying soap supplies!! I got moulds, fragrances and colours. I had to hit ebay though to get the caustic soda. I seriously can’t wait! A few more things to secure before I can have another go myself. I got some really interesting fragrances and I can’t wait to sniff them!! They talk about the scents like they are describing wines so it was pretty entertaining!
Thats all from Tassie for tonight! Hope your weekend is going along splendidly! Cheers…
Our new pets return daily!! I think they will need names soon!
G’day – Friday is done! Jeff got out and started clearing up the last of the branches. He also set fire to the big log which he has been dying to do for ages!! I felt a bit nervous about that!
The wind started out ok, blowing in the right direction… then of course changed its mind. Not so much changed direction as decided to do little swirly vortexes right where we were! No matter where you stood, you got smoked!! In the end it was just no fun and we moved on to other things.
Jeff wanted to recreate a bench seat we saw on one of the gardening shows
Eventually we will finish them off and add some proper macrocarpa timber for the bench part when that gets done – and of course find a place to set it up, make it level etc etc
I decided to prune as I wanted to continue on the woven fence… but then got a bit side-tracked –
A while back a lady on one of my gardening pages posted some tension trays she had made! A bit of youtubing showed me how it was done. I thought I would give it a go this afternoon.
I had to use a little string on the first one as it was threatening to spring out. I’d love to collect some willow for this.
The second one went better!
Three more ‘potentials’ I thought if I make soap for market sales then they would be a lovely tray to present my wares on!
Part way through my industrious homesteading, I heard Little Moo bellowing away and happily destroying a chair in his paddock. I think the poor little chap is lonely and bored.
I called him over and treated him to some dodgy apples! He was very keen!
That tongue!! He is so licky haha
Hope you all have a fabulous weekend planned! Enjoy! Cheers 🙂
Hello!! Quite a slow unproductive start to the day. I had heaps of blood extracted (all sorts of updated tests) I had to fast, so no brekkie. Jeff popped back into the dentist but couldn’t get in until 11am – not worth going home. We looked for a few soap making bits and bobs in op shops then dropped in to see Ruby and Margie and drop off some hay – and I also put the newly collected coffee grounds into her compost. Ruby was having a very tired day – she was dressed up to go to the bank but didn’t have a lot of energy 🙁 Still… she always perks up to chat to us and catch up which is lovely. I finally got home at midday for my breakfast! Was getting a bit titchy by then haha.
My original plan was to finish weeding the garden patch and bung in the tulip bulbs. (Then do more fence weaving) But. I’ve been watching that gardening show and it wasn’t enough.
First things first… the frost didn’t do much for this tomato plant… instead of bringing in the green tomatoes to ripen inside, I just pulled the whole plant up and hung it in the hothouse. I have done this before and often I get ripe tomatoes off them later.
All my iris need to be dug up and replanted. They’ve been swamped by everything else in the gardens so I made an unscheduled start on them to help fill the space. I also thought since I had so much success selling my garlic via a local facebook page, maybe I should try with the iris as I will have way too many. It was a challenge getting them up as they are tangled in themselves and everything else… and under everything else which meant me crawling in under bushes and trees to dig them out!
I had Pip out for a while. He enjoyed himself… and ate a lot of grass so I assume I will be presented with cat-vomit somewhere inconvenient soon.
Little Moo also kept me company… although its his fault I had to have a second shower today… he reached over the fence when I wasn’t paying attention and slobbered all over my hair!! Niiiiice!! Sigh. (Country living at its finest)
Anyway, thought I would plant the iris in clumps according to their colours. I think I knew where the different colours were. I have a rusty brown with yellow throat… that beautiful mauve/purple with the yellow throat and white with a yellow throat. All quite stunning.
Going against my usual ‘chuck ’em in’ nature I have placed them all out first. (Gardening show haha) I have three clumps of the rusty brown, two of the white and the purple down the middle. Then arranged the tulips into circles.
Fingers crossed it looks good in spring. Now have to think what to grow around it all… Alysium? A mix of stuff?? I am not really good at knowing much about flowers. I think I need other stuff to fill the gaps once the flowers are done.
I did want to go and add to the Huggle-Monster fence, but by the time I finished mucking about with the iris and everything, it was four o’clock and getting chilly. I had a few other things to do and Jeff wanted a soup for dinner because of his tooth. (Damn, I was all about leftovers tonight not cooking!)
I made the chooks a warm mash/muesli mix… they were pretty happy about that.
Eventually I got to sit down for a nice hot chocolate – interrupted briefly by noticing that the sky was doing pretty things! Hope you had a great day too (without the blood tests or dentists) Cheers!
Hello! Fabulous day today! I had two goals this year – things just for my own self indulgent interest. (Clearly that tiny goal list doesn’t include all the insane house and yard goals) I’ve been wanting to make soap for years… years and years!! I am so lucky to have a local friend who has been making soap for a long time, who has decided to start running workshops to teach the skill.
Sharon invited me and a couple of other ladies to act as guinea pigs for her first teaching day.
Fresh goats milk right from Sharons farm! Part of the ingredients used. Actually it would have been good to get a photo of her goats which at some points were dancing about on top of the BBQ!! Soap making AND free entertainment!
It was so good to physically go through the process and get taught some background and basics – but we were all itching to get in there and start mixing!
We watched Sharon do a basic batch then we all got to make two batches of our own.
Choosing colours and scents was a really fun part of the proceedings.
I really liked the effects of mixing up colours and making patterns on the soap
In goes the goats milk!
Mixing three colours into the loaf mould. (It will have to be cut into pieces tomorrow morning so I need to try to juggle Jeff’s dentist appointment and getting back out to Sharons place)
I am looking forward to seeing these cut!
Sharon provided us with a beautiful platter of nibblies… including home made goats feta!! Oh my! I need to ask her about the possibility of purchasing this! Soooooo good!!
The laundry was packed with trays of new soap! It was all so colourful and cheerful looking.
I’ve got my own little budget set aside for the ‘me’ things this year so I am rather keen to get online and to op-shops to start shopping for my supplies so I can continue on and have a go making soap myself.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to pick up my selection of soaps and get some snaps of the products out of their moulds. Exciting! Hope your day was great too! Cheers!
Todays weather was as gorgeous as yesterday was dismal!! I thought I could work on the Huggle 🙂 Chopping and shaping more stakes – I quite like this process!
Then off to start pruning the snowball bushes to get some weaving materials.
This was the point where I was wondering how much of a pain this was going to be and mentally putting the blame squarely on Mavis from One Hundred Dollars a Month’s shoulders for putting the idea into my head haha.
Actually, really not too bad. It probably would have helped to google it and watched others do it to get some tips, but I don’t mind learning curves.
For my next one I will put the stakes much closer together to make the weaving easier.
Since I hadn’t disposed of Tentaculars vines I thought I might try to use some of those to see how they went.
Once the leaves fall off, it will add extra mulch and hopefully the vines won’t be too brittle…?? I am now doing a bit of a mix of both materials
Really hoping this doesn’t look completely lame when I am done!!! Once I have it up to a height that I am happy with, I’ll cut all the stakes off to a similar length. You can probably tell I also added a layer of straw to the ever-growing hugelkultur!!
I reckon I’ll be adding a layer of mushroom compost in the spring, but for now, apart from the fence, this Huggle-Monster is free to rest and compost its little heart out over winter! Have a great day! Cheers
Hi there!! Slow Sunday and not much to report! As you can see – it rained. I got up early and put the fire on for Jeff for when he got in (20 wife points) Then went back for a little snooze before getting up properly and popping off to the local market. Barry, my straw man (Straw-Barry??)(Its late and I think I am funny) saved me his last 12 bales. I picked them up as it started drizzling and got them home undercover before the rain started coming down in earnest.
I’ll take a couple over to Ruby and Margie. I was intending to get a lot more but since I procrastinated I’ll just be happy with this lot! Generally early in the season I have such trouble finding affordable mulch and the beach doesn’t always co-operate when I need it to and remains clear of my seaweed! Its nice to know I now have a stash ready for spring!
I dragged some of the half pallets up for them to sit on and draped them in the tarp to keep most of the wet off them. I’ll be using at least a couple to give a final covering to the Huggle-Monsters.
Oh – Jeff found me a rather cool series on Netflix called ‘Big Dreams – Small Spaces’ A UK series – a before and after kind of show where people dramatically change their small gardens. I really like it – I’ve gleaned a good amount of new information and a few ideas I can incorporate here!
Have a lovely day!! Cheers!
I gave up trying to avoid messing up my jeans… they got thrown into the wash 🙂
Trying some laterals to see if I can winter some tomatoes…
Wow! Winter!! How did that happen?? I can’t believe we are in June. There was a knock on the front door mid morning – front door knocking ALWAYS means Jehovah Witnesses. Naturally I was in bed because I am lazyAM-Challenged a night owl.
I wandered out of bed and heard voices at the back door. Jeff had somehow found them and seemed to be in the middle of a long conversation. It showed no sign of stopping so I thought I would put in an appearance and say hi! (yes – still in PJ’s with no shame) Mother and son this time. New faces. Nice people, son (15) very quiet (aren’t most boys that age quiet??) They are 6 months new to Tasmania and this area. Honestly, its a hard way to get to know people as when someone turns up at your door spruking religion, its usually a door slam or a curt “No thank-you, we have our own beliefs” I’ve stopped shying away from telling people that turn up about our non investment in a higher power – at least then we all know where we stand 🙂 I did get the (very serious) young fellow to laugh a few times and even answer a few questions. His mother, sweet but had the tendency to talk for him. Turns out he plays the piano. So I asked if they wanted to buy one!! It was an off the cuff comment, but really, we are babysitting a beautiful old family piano that no-one wants or plays and its a real shame. So… we invited them in (oooo – says Rommy (the Mum) we never get invited in!!) so Roman could have a go as they did seem interested. Oh – he plays beautifully. Played Fur Elise for us and it was a real treat hearing the piano again! (My mother and one of my sisters play and we really enjoy listening) He was pretty thrilled with the sound as he has only played on electronic pianos… this old beauty has soul!! We’ve given them our number and told them to bring gumboots back next time so we can show them what we are doing in the garden as they seem really into this lifestyle change.
After all the religion, piano and garden talk, I had my (by that stage) VERY late breakfast. Jeff went back to bed as he is on nightshift. It was such a beautiful day I couldn’t stay inside – and since the wind was almost non existent I figured to give the chipper another run. I got through most of the stuff we had set aside and dumped it all in the spaces around the gardens. It seems like a lot of work for a small addition to my paths!! Never mind. I enjoyed it.
The afternoon light was warm and rich! I still feel sad knowing these amazing trees will soon be no more.
My Jurassic Rhubarb is winding down. It has a huge footprint and I really need to make it pay for itself a bit better next season. Getting more stuff together to sell at the front and selling it in bundles. I’ve used it but still not in the habit of really making the best use I could of it. (Mind you – I really like it there because it looks impressive and happy!)
I crawled into the cabbage patch and gave it a good weeding. They are all doing so nicely! Next I should treat them with the kelp juice!
Nice solid trunk on the passionfruit! I raked all the remaining leaves and mulched them around the plant. Then I got onto my ‘bucket seedlings’ I had a bucket of random brassicas that I couldn’t fit into the outside plots and a bucket of lettuce that didn’t fit into the straw bale… both lots had been in there for AGES!!! And reasonably happy (ie not dead)
So – into the hothouse. Hopefully everyone will be happy there. I do suspect the lettuce will race to seed, but I am not unduly worried. I’d also like to plant some carrot seeds in here to see if they will germinate at this time of year and also a few potatoes… just for the fun of it!
Look who’s back in the next-door paddock! Little Moo, thats who!! He was so happy to see me!! He came galumphing across the paddock to see me and spent ten minutes slobbering all over me!! (Awwww)
I am in love with the photo below…
Such a crack up!! I fed him a few tomatoes and some silverbeet – all of which he seemed to enjoy along with a good patting and scratching.
Anyway, by this time I had to do the usual end of day stuff… lock chooks up, collect some salad items for dinner, get fire going, prep dinner… wash off cow goo.
I hope your day included someone that was so happy to see you too – perhaps without all the slobber though! Cheers!
