Category: Garden

Plenty of rainbows today!
Tassie was doing its typical thing with the on and off rain all day!
Mum and Dad went out visiting, while Jeff and I did some basic domestics – folded and put away clothes. (Am I the only one allergic to this??) Anyway… it was getting silly since I couldn’t find clothing essentials, so I was forced into it.
Also ran about with the vacuum cleaner and other such boring things.
Then I made jam.

My youngest sister, Michelle and her family are involved in Dragon Boat racing and they are having a High Tea fund raiser. Sending these jars over for the scones!

Despite the rain, we decided to get outside and try to continue the raspberry patch. We cut and made up a few more pallets for the wall.

I had to relocate the little plum tree and we had to dig up a lot of canes to get as far as we did.

I’ll relocate the canes into the newly dug row as soon as I can.
I tell you what… that mud today!! Erk.
Sticky sticky sticky!! It was a horror job. The mud just stuck to the shovels and our boots. I think I was walking a couple of inches higher and each foot weighed a few kilos more each!!
The chooks were loving it!! They must have eaten a ton of worms this afternoon!

Thats my boots after ten minutes of being cleaned and scraped.

Snow peas peeking through!

I was working on the Cradle photos then one of our cousins dropped in this evening… so they are still a work in progress!
Hope your day is less muddy!
Cheers!

Hello!
How was your Sunday? Or are you just heading into your Sunday in another part of the world??
We went off to the markets this morning in Penguin. Always a good standby especially if the weather is a bit dodgy.
Jeff and I did a little Christmas shopping (Determined this year not to let the festive season slide by without noticing like the past couple of years haha)
This afternoon Mum and Dad came out into the back paddock with me.
Mum collected a bucket of daffies.

Dad helped me fill and haul three bags of pine cones back up to the house!

We walked down to the little creek just for a sticky-beak as my parents hadn’t been down there before.

I still have my eye on this beauty 🙂

I managed to collect some more eggs! We have so many eggs!! We’ve been selling them on and using lots. I am loving having my supply line back on track! I reckon Mum and Dad will take a few dozen home with them!

I put some of my collected snow pea seeds into the ground. I am using the raised bed where there is a climbing frame for them

Then I moved all those ridiculously heavy sods of grass that I dug out of the raspberry patch for the third and hopefully last time.
Jeff had the idea to put them around the man ferns where the soil and grass is a bit poor

I am sure after a while it will all grow in and look less patchworky.
(if it doesn’t die!!)

The cos lettuce seeds have started making an appearance!
The rocket is really looking good too!

After all that I stocked up on firewood for the back veranda, dropped into the supermarket, made dinner, baked a cake, put on bread to bake and got our gear together as tomorrows plan is a drive up to Cradle!

Ready for bed I reckon!
Cheers!

PS – Thank-you for all Ruby’s well wishes!! When I have a chance I will ring her so I can read out everyones messages from here and facebook! 🙂

Well… it was a gorgeous spring day!
I was dying to get in and plant some seeds!

Got my stuff… some cheap potting mix to be mixed with the mushroom compost… 50-50 and thought I might try growing some seeds in egg cartons since its all over pinterest and trendy sites haha

Actually most of the egg container seeds I am going to aim to be selling out the front so its all my excess stuff

Glad I sorted all my seeds the other night. Made it a lot easier today to get into it.

My little cos lettuce seeds!

This is my start in totally overdoing quantities of butternut pumpkins!
I also have put some in pots to hopefully sell out front

I will direct sow my snow peas, but I also have some in egg cartons for the front.

I also have enough celery seeds to last until – well – forever!

I am going to need more table space! I have started putting pots on the ledges. I will have to tame the passionfruit to get more space. (Or just give in to it and build a second hothouse haha)
So… from memory I think I have planted today: Cos lettuce, celery, snow peas, butternut pumpkins, capsicum and some alyssum. (Flowers)

Somehow the potted silverbeet (chard) in the hothouse is still producing since I planted them as seedlings and never quite got them out of their small pots!!! The chooks enjoy it very much (I am not a fan)(I just like growing it!)

And we are still getting plenty of eggs!

I picked a capsicum… I ate half of it at dinner… not bad, slightly bitter but not too bad overall. (My fault… I haven’t watered the plants in the hothouse so regularly.)

I even found another couple of asparagus spears! Yum. They didn’t even get close to the house!

Hope your Sunday was/is fabulous!

Cheers

 

Hello and welcome to Spring!! (My spring anyway!)
It’s been a relatively quiet couple of days… It rained a lot yesterday (just winter saying a fond farewell I expect) Today was off and on with the rain but mostly sunny.
I got to do some laundry, make up beds for my parents and did some cooking.

I put on a slow cooked curry then squeezed a LOT of lemons and made up a double batch of lemon cordial. I will have to dash in to see Ruby and hand over a couple of bottles since they were her lemons after all!

Not long now and my tiny tulip patch should burst out!

A little way to go before we see the cherry blossoms & liliums

Daffies, big and small everywhere

(Impossible things to photograph!!! 😀 )

My little rhododendron is past its best, but there is one more bloom to come out.

The other plum trees are also blooming.
The chooks are now providing us with minimum 6 eggs daily!! Time to bake a few cakes!

We even got a half hearted rainbow today!

I think tomorrow I will have to plant some seeds. I know its a bit too early but I am itching to get something going!
Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!
Cheers!

Hello!!
First thing I saw when I went out this morning were these pallets! Clearly Cousin Jeff had dropped by early! Fabulous!

As I type its raining steadily. It was overcast all of today but didn’t start to rain until we had finished outside.

I had a little windfall recently and decided to surprise Jeff with a shiny new toy. He struggles a bit at this time of year especially. When the weather is gloomy for 99% of the time and you also work nightshifts… it becomes hard work to lift your spirits.

He hasn’t been able to mow for ages now – something he really enjoys doing. Partly because of the weather, but mostly because of that tree – the ride on mower just can’t get to the other parts of the yard.
He has wanted a normal mower for a while – its easy to do the small areas with.

So today he set about making the place look beautiful again!

Its been unkempt for so long, it really makes it hard to stand in among it all and wonder where to start!

Of course… I found some new projects to work on because I am the queen of starting stuff and moving on before finishing. (Really… that coat I made all in one go was something special!!)

Pathways needed tidying

This one is not done – we also need to splurge on some new woodchips.

I have decided that the whole strawberry patch needs pulling up and starting over. Getting out the good plants and really digging in to remove weeds. Will also dig in a heap of mushroom compost before replanting the strawberries.

It was getting dark and cold so we had to quit…

Earlier in the day I experimented with mulching some of the tree branches

I gave up pretty quickly. It does work… but we have had this mulcher a while now and I think the blades need sharpening… or new blades. I want something to work smartly. This small pile took way too long.
Still… I would like to mulch some of the tree rather than burning it all.

I went down to put some more coffee grounds into the compost and saw this!! Cheeky Chook. Its funny when I go down there and find all the six new girls in there and they poke their heads up! Figure I’ll have to cover it soon if I want to keep some worms.

Well… I think I need to get to bed.
If the rain keeps up I suppose I can get the house ready for the folks and maybe even bake something!
Sleep tight!

Cheers.

The plum tree is getting fluffier and fluffier!
I hope we get a decent amount of plums this season. Always depends on the wind really! (and sun!!)

We made a slow start on the low fence for the raspberries.
It always takes so long to do the first bits of new ideas. Hopefully the rest won’t take so long now that we have worked out what we are doing!
I will need to move that little plum tree though…

I’d like to paint it at some point too… probably should have done that before we started, but being honest with myself… I’d never get the thing up if I was waiting for me to paint everything!
I have also sourced a place to buy the polypipe by the metre, so I can get onto that pretty easily now.

Hopefully the whole thing when done won’t look too dodgy and will do the job I want it to do!

Parents are due in next week. I guess I should put some time aside to tidy the house a bit better. Lets hope for a rainy day soon then because now that I have got a taste of the sun, I don’t want to be stuck inside during the day!

Cheers!

Another lovely day! Feeling quite spoiled!
So… on with the gardening clothes and out to it!

Decided to start by jumping the back fence with a couple of feed bags and a bucket to stock up on pine cones for the fire and pick some fresh paddock daffies.

I should return with a shovel and pick up some cow poo as well!

I toyed with the idea of putting some out the front for sale, but to be practical… it would take me quite some time to sort out for fairly little return. And right now I am so far behind the 8 ball that I just need to get my main garden stuff going.

So I contented myself with a lovely big bucket to bring back up to the house

Its probably a couple of weeks before I should plant my potatoes, so I will finish off the patch another day.
Today, I really wanted to get moving on my raspberry patch

Its too close to the duck-yard garden and its hard for Jeff to mow in there.
So I am going to leave the right hand row where it is, but dig up the left row and move it over.  I am also leaving a bit more space between the two rows so I don’t have to fight with the canes when I go picking.

First up… I needed to get the poles out.

That was fun. Pity Jeff was sleeping today! These did not want to come out of the ground in a hurry!
I also dug up the persimmon tree which I think was pretty much dead. There is a nice young blue plum tree at the other end… I am not sure whether to leave it there and try to espalier it and keep it under the raspberry netting, or dig it up and try to relocate it…

Anyway, I put in some steel droppers and dug out a nice big strip of lawn.

Naturally the chooks think this is their new amusement park

Then there was some more digging… I dug down into the strip to break up the soil a bit.

I found the usual glass, nails and other odds and ends!

Next step was to dump a couple of barrow loads of compost in the area

I suspect my raspberry patch will have a few potatoes… never mind. They are easy enough to pull up when they appear!
I did have to cover the new plot fairly smartly because as soon as my back is turned the chickens were back into it… wouldn’t take them long to kick out the compost and eat all my worms!

We need to build a short fence around the whole plot which we will probably do out of pallets – the netting will attach to the fence rather than being on the ground and having grass grow into it. (which is a pain)
I also have grand plans for a door.
We will have to source the big polypipe that we can buy by the metre, the local produce shop only sells it in rolls – which is just shy of $300!!!
But it is an easy way to get a tall frame happening for the netting!

We got nine eggs today! Clearly the warm weather is suiting our flock!

I spent the evening binge watching Battlestar Gallactica and sorting three large boxes of collected seeds!
I am so keen to start planting but feel I might be jumping the gun a little. It is still pretty cold overall.
Patience…

Anyway, many bits of me are a bit tired now! Best start heading towards bed!
Hope your day was great too!
Cheers