Category: Garden

Well – its been a good weekend -fun and constructive!

I barrelled out of bed this morning (ok – not that early and I did crash into the doorway as I am not good at moving in straight lines until coffee, toast and one hour has gone by) anyway – had to get to the market to buy wheat for the girls before my seller sold out.

PLUS – I knew some friends would be selling man-ferns (or tree ferns as they call them on the mainland) and I was keen to finally get some.

We don’t need the temporary water-storage tanks anymore (yay) and they aren’t so pretty so it was nice to move them out of the way, where they await new homes.

Three of the four pallets we used are in surprisingly good condition! I am sure we will re-purpose them at some point

And hiding in the pallets was a feast for the chickens!

Eventually they will grow up and get nice and leafy and hide the boring tanks a bit!

This is what I am aiming for:

Well… next step was to try to sort out the mess of our path that the flood ruined.

First stop – Compost bin!

Jeff dug me a hole and planted the rose bush that we dug up two years ago and stuck in a barrel of water. It didn’t die!!! Insane!  I finally felt guilted into action to plant the poor thing (ok – Jeff did the planting, I just felt bad!)

Also put in the pigface cuttings to hopefully grow around the rocks

It did rain off and on today – got cold and hot, but it was great out there again being constructive and making plans!!

Hope your weekends were fabulous too!

Cheers

Finally! A super stonkingly gorgeous day here today! So, on with the gardening clothes and into the vegie patch!

We got about 3/4 of the way through before bailing out because it was getting chilly working in the shade

Jeff got to chopping some wood with his new axe! Cousin Jeff showed him a better technique and now we have small wood and kindling all over the place!

We filled the veranda wood box – always a good thing to do when the weather is good!

To warm up we also decided to head down the back paddock to stock up on pine cones! Pallets make a great temp. ladder for barbed wire fences!

Note our filthy grotty gardening clothes!! It may be better to just burn them!!

As usual… we had a bunch of curious followers on our walk back up the paddock

Much to Pip’s disgust, I went and dragged him out of bed, where he was buried under a doona and two blankets, for a refreshing paddock walk

We had a slight ‘Oopsie’ moment when somebody stepped in cow poo…

OK – we stepped in our share too, but we had gumboots on! Poor Pip!!

Hope your day was as fabulous as ours (minus the cow poo)

Cheers!

Glad I moved the strawberry patch – the old area got a bit swamped today!

The new patch of strawberries got a decent drink from the sky all last night and pretty much all today.

A short break in the weather produced a rainbow… I went a bit closer and the chooks were disappointed I had the camera and was not carrying scraps

I am trying not to look too closely at my forlorn vegetable garden! What a neglected mess!  I console myself that within the next month or so it will be all cleaned up and new plants will be put in to start to do their thing

Still… the garden beside the house looks rather nice in the rain – I can’t wait until this area leafs-up and starts producing spring colours!

Pip was in a foul mood today. He wasn’t allowed into the bedroom to sleep with Jeff (who had just come off a night-shift) and was also Mr Mega Whingy Arse because Margie had come to visit and he wasn’t getting my undivided attention!

He FURTHER disgraced himself by hissing at Margie who was trying to be nice to him! (The only other person he tends to hiss at is my mother – charming, I know – but I think its the whole jealously thing)

SO – he got ‘spoken to’ and tossed into his sleeping bag where he remained for the rest of the day!!

Back to my fire and crochet!! The only thing to do on a cold rainy night

Cheers!

It wasn’t the sunniest day, but I was grateful for the continued lack of pouring rain – a chance to go out and finish what we started!

We dug in the bridge so it was stable and relocated a few more rocks to finish the edging before mixing in the super compost we picked up at the nursery yesterday. (Mushroom compost and a fancy super rich compost mix that I can’t remember the name of!)

I am sure there are rules about which strawberry plants to use and not to use. I have never followed them. Something about only using the first runner?? Well… I have Buckley’s or none, chance of sorting out this mess as to which is what – so I just cleaned them up and picked the best

Jeff trotted off next door with his lawn mower to do the neighbours lawn and paddock (way to go Jeff earning some pocket-money) while I cleaned up a lot of strawberry plants!

It was getting quite chilly by this point of the day! I was happy to get inside and jump under a hot shower!

There are over 100 plants in this new plot – so I have high hopes for strawberries this season – that is if I can keep the chooks away!

And I have leftovers! Will have to find homes for all of these!

Hope your weekend is going fantastically!

I say roll on spring! I am seeing the plum blossoms starting to show and I am getting REALLY keen!

Cheers!

We are on a roll here – three nice days in a row!!

We started out today by picking up a load of woodchip to tidy up the side garden

I want to get those grass clumps from the pot to plant at the back here

Best go and see what the compost has to offer…

We spread a barrow load of compost here and will plant the grasses in just as soon as I extract them from their pot!

We have been wanting to do something with the patch of yard out the back for quite some time – always hard to know where to start! But we drew up a couple of possibilities up and actually ‘broke ground’

We thought it was time to move the strawberries to a fresh patch. I was keen to dig them up and tidy them up, but we decided to actually make the new garden first, so I can just transplant them rather than try to keep dug up strawberries alive while I procrastinate about making a new garden!

We are going to leave a small path between the current and new garden.

We have got some rock around the property that we want to edge all these new gardens with & Cousin Jeff reckons he can source us some more rocks to play with! Cool.

Its amazing what you dig up on an old homestead! Glass and pottery abound!

Random pipe unearthed

Heaps of lovely big worms were also everywhere! (Chickens, being on the other side of the yard, missed out big-time today!)

The plot, toward the end of the day was finally taking shape. We think we can find enough rock around the place to finish edging it tomorrow. We will then trot back off to the nursery and get a mix of topsoil and mushroom compost to top up this new garden before moving the strawberries across. Remaining compost mix to be added to the old strawberry patch which I would like to plant with pretty flowering plants.

While looking for more rocks I remembered we had this bridge! So I extracted it from the vines that were tangled around it and brought it around to the new patch

I don’t know if it will look dumb, or work – but I do want a middle gap through these gardens as I like to charge straight off the back veranda to go down the back… so we will experiment and see.

So, not a bad days work! We are totally feeling it tonight every time we stand up! haha – clearly out of intense gardening practice! All this rain has got me used to sitting by the fire!

Hope you have had a fabulous day!

Cheers!

Today was the nicest day we have had since forever!!! I promptly abandoned all my indoor plans, pulled on my gardening clothes and headed out into the sunshine (and yes- threw through two loads of laundry that almost finished drying in the sun and light breeze!)

The side garden was in need of help – we have family coming to stay in about a month and plan to get the winter scruffiness under control so it all looks nice again.

I dug up the struggling lemon tree and plonked it in the ground near the original compost. It can do what it likes now – it certainly wasn’t doing much good where it was!

Pip did the Siamese thing and lounged about – he was happier sleeping on top of some clothes of mine – in this case my gardening top, so ew!

Jeff worked on clearing out the twitch from around the iris as best he could… next season it will need a total dig up and clear out.

This pot of grasses I planned to relocate is completely root bound! I extracted a few pieces and replanted, but will finish the job tomorrow (hopefully without the aid of a sledgehammer!!)

Partway through the afternoon, Cousin Jeff dropped off another load of wood! (sob sob) 🙂 Actually this lot I will leave exactly as you see it! Its mostly under cover and it would be just wasting energy to find a place to stack it.

Pip got even more comfortable…

Seriously – going by the photos it doesn’t look like we did much!   I am sure it will look a million times better when we get the new load of woodchips to cover the area with (tomorrow’s job if the rain doesn’t make a reappearance)

Tomorrow’s main job is the ailing strawberry patch!

I made a start on the strawberries and then got sidetracked by a giant slug!

I will get onto Google tomorrow to read more about them

Hope your day was full of cheerful sunshine too!

Cheers!

Even at the end of the second month of winter, we are still getting small pickings of tomatoes – which is such a treat!

Obviously the secret is a hothouse. I can’t recommend enough if you have the space and can build some kind of structure in glass or plastic covered. There are a million ideas on pinterest for various ways and means that is fun to check out.

We were lucky – we had this dubious looking structure already on the property

Inside was quite ratty – concrete and buried rubbish, with surprisingly nice soil once we dug it all up!

We really really didn’t need a shade cloth covered structure, so we ripped all that off

First side done

The back had some rotting wood in the structure so we did a bit of Dodgy Brothers Handywork and replaced a few bits

It was the end of the first summer season of living in Tasmania when we did this, so at first the hot house housed the last tomatoes as they ripened and we grew a late season crop of lettuce

We have been so happy we did this – our growing season gets extended considerably at both ends of the season.

I start seeds, seedlings, and a few hothouse tomato plants way way earlier than I could by direct outdoor planting. Very handy in a milder climate where you have a shorter summer season

And its wonderful to be getting a few salad vegies in the dead of winter!

One more month of winter to go and I will be waiting eagerly for the first signs of proper spring with the plum trees budding.

In the meantime – its back to the fire and my crochet for me!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

Cheers!

Goodbye Yard – Hello Swamp. Or maybe quagmire. That’s a better word. Welcome to Norwich Quagmire – bring your own gumboots! 😀

I tipped another 112mm of rain out of the gauge today, bringing July’s total rainfall so far to 334mm (A bit over 13 inches!)

Last years TOTAL rainfall was only 679mm (nearly 27 inches)

So far this year we are up to 871mm (34 inches)

After living through droughts I am always resolved not to complain about beautiful rain… but I am VERY keen to see summer back this year! 🙂

Today I turned my woodpile from this –

To this –

Slightly sore arms and shoulders tonight!

In between rainfall I snooped around the yard for signs of spring (yeah – we still have a month of winter to go but I am ever hopeful)

Is it too early for daffodils?

Its great to see the signs of spring this early – I know we have another soggy, gloomy month coming up, so this is encouraging!

Now – what do you reckon? Cabbage or Broccoli? Just not sure which yet… altho upon closer inspection today I am leaning towards cabbage! What do YOU reckon???  😀

Cheers!