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Hello there! How are you all doing in this upside down world these day?
I hope you are all keeping safe and happy.

Its well past midnight and I have just finished making another 19 jars of jam. (the above was from the other day)
We’ve still been getting oodles of plums, although I have managed to give away a couple of buckets worth so that takes the pressure off

I cut/tore the fruit leather into strips and dusted with icing sugar… just to ward of the stickiness.

Raspberries are still steadily coming along. Jeff did a lot of weeding in there today!

We are able to grab something fresh from the garden daily… which is fun.
I love having lots of lettuce to pick as needed.
I think soon we’ll get our first cucumber.
We have had a couple of small tomatoes… they didn’t get photographed but they certainly got eaten! Taste amazing!

A lady came around to collect a bunch of tomato seedlings I couldn’t use… she’s a bit newer to gardening and was talking about her daughters potato patch.
She didn’t know you could bandicoot potatoes, so I showed her what I do.
Nice to know you can start eating your spuds earlier than the official harvest day (And yes,… she got heaps of plums too!!)

These potatoes are already eaten!!

Here is the wasabi soap from the other day, cut.

I also made soap today… the ever popular cedar and saffron, which I had totally run out of again!! (Must make a point of really stocking up on that!)
It was my reward for doing a few hours of housework.

Anyway… its pretty late now, so better get to bed!
I’ll leave you with a photo of Baby Pip, when he was all ears and feet!
12 years ago!!! Hard to believe!

Cheers!

Hello!
How is your 2021 progressing so far?
Things are just rolling along here, lots of things to do in the kitchen. Like cook a million plums

I have de-pipped and moolied them and made some into plum/raspberry jam (and I tried that this morning and was really happy about it!)
I also made some plum/raspberry fruit leather… although I popped it back into the dehydrator as it was a bit sticky still. I did put a little sugar into it… and the taste is good… a bit sour and sweet at the same time!

Also made some straight raspberry jam, which has also been taste tested 🙂

I picked a heap of basil.. hopefully the trimming will make the plants bush out and produce a lot more leaves.
I wanted to make pesto of course… baked the garlic.. then discovered I had forgotten I needed parmesan cheese.
Couldn’t dash into town because the car went doo-lally on us the other day and it was taken into the mechanics.
There was only one mechanic in the district open.. apparently everyone else takes extended holidays at this time of year!
It was ready today but they were so flat out there was no-one available to drive it out to us.
Being a one car family… I had to walk into town to get it.

The walk down the side of the highway isn’t great, but the walk through town, stickybeaking at peoples front yards and gardens was nice!!
Anyway, got the car, got the cheese, back home to some cooking

Looking forward to having this in a meal! (I like making chicken, pesto, pasta)
Maybe even with a side salad??

I have started dehydrating some strawberries.
Oh they are so good like that. I am trying not to eat them though.
They make a wonderful addition to trail mix or in home made muesli bars

I did get into the garden yesterday… to sort out this poor tomato patch.
There were 6 tomatoes planted… but my compost produced a ton more!
I literally had to weed out tomatoes!
I put a post on the local noticeboard for anyone to come get the plants but.. surprisingly no takers…
Will have to try again and do the word FREE bigger 🙂

Hopefully they now flourish.

I squeezed in making a loaf of Wasabi Fragranced soap.
I think there is a local market in February… so if I want more stuff cured in time I need to make a couple more batches. Just hard to fit it into the kitchen schedule right now.
There is only so much washing up one wants to do…

There’s my handsome blue-eyed boy!!
Currently curled up on my lap.
He is being a bit of a snot-head at night at the moment.
He knows when I am fixing his food and about to put him into the laundry for the night and he hides under the couch… its a really awkward spot to get to. I have to lie down on the floor behind the couch and try to reach him… usually means grabbing an extremity and carefully trying to drag him out without hurting him until I can get a better hold.
He goes like a limp tea bag and is extremely unhelpful about the whole situation – apart from purring his head off!
Last night I shut him in the bathroom while I sorted his food and bed out so I didn’t have to go through the whole ordeal!!
Pest! (Lucky I love him)

Ok… thats all from my end of the world
Hope you are all doing fine and keeping healthy!
Cheers

(The ‘look’ I get when I’ve taken too many photos)

Hello.
Here we are, day three of 2021
Its steadily raining outside at the moment. I am sure the garden is enjoying that.

There is Jeff cavorting about on top of the water tanks, picking plums!
Some birds have started getting into them, so we did another good lot of picking today.

Not a bad haul.
They don’t need to be red to be ready either. The skin and pip can be a bit sour but the rest are sweet and juicy
I see Jam in our future!!

We also got in and picked the raspberries… it was threatening to rain earlier so we did that first

And another handful of strawberries

The new tomato patch has perked up a bit. Although I’ve given up on the lateral… pretty sure the blackbirds have been the ones that dug the poor thing back up again.
So annoying having to net everything!!
I need the whole garden netted, not just plot by plot!!

Pretty sure it wasn’t Flea… who is keeping her escape route a well kept secret!!!

We put her back on her side while we were picking plums but she snuck back when we weren’t looking.
She sinks to the ground when you get close in preparation for being picked up and relocated haha

Overall we pretty much let her do as she pleases because we have no disciplinary skills!!
One day I will hide down there and watch to see how she is getting out!!

In other garden news… the butternut pumpkins are trying to produce flowers.

The zucchinis have lots of flowers… and some hopeful starts to some actual fruit

I never bother trying to hand pollinate… I just let nature take its course…eventually, she does 🙂

I gave the corn another feeding of ‘gogo juice’
We really need more warm weather though.

When I sort out some netting for this patch I’ll also put a heap of mulch on it… will add that to my ‘To Do’ list. I am sure I’ve talked about this before… All talk no action!!

Lovely little beetroots!
I re-covered these today as well as giving them a feeding too.
I suspect the birds have been digging in there too. Not badly.. just enough to be annoying.

The pear tree is laden with fruit!! Fingers crossed they hang on and ripen!

Finally got in and snipped the heads off the chives so I can collect the seed!

The day lilies are looking gorgeous! I really love their colour!

We also pulled out a ton of weeds from the side garden but will follow up on that with photos when we’ve made more progress.
I think we need to pull out most of it and start again. Its a bit crazy.

Anyways, thats about it from Tasmania for today!
Tonight I am all rugged up as its a lot cooler than what I prefer summer to be!!
I was too lazy to start a fire though!
Pip is tucked up under my windcheater making little kitty snoring sounds… he clearly thinks its too cold too!

Hope everyone is doing well
Cheers!

(Bee’s and Borage!)

Happy New Year to you all.
Lets hope 2021 will be a little less challenging than 2020!!
I don’t have any mad goals or plans… we’ll just roll along and go with the flow!

I am still hugely optimistic about a November trip to Japan with a few ladies… but… we shall just see what the year brings.

The other day I actually went and relocated a few tomato plants. Cleared out the garlic patch and topped it with some nice compost.
All the tomatoes look a bit sad but I am sure they will bounce back

Its a bit of an overcast day to start the new year…
I’ve uncharacteristically started 2021 by folding and putting away a lot of laundry.
Its going to take me a week to recover…

I’ve also done a bit of cooking.
There is a banana/raspberry loaf in the oven… and its smelling amazing.
Still a few minutes left before its ready.
I also made stage one of some strawberry ice cream. The mixture is chilling in the fridge…
Should go do stage two soon so I can get that finished off!

Then I guess I should go find some potatoes for dinner??
(These ones we ate the other day. Love being able to just go and get them as needed again)

Still a bit of a wait before the tomatoes are ready… agony!

Yesterday we picked some cherry plums! We’ve been grazing a bit on them. Happily this season we are getting some before the birds.
We also picked a box of them for Sharon and family who came around with a bigger ladder!!

I’ve cooked some, but will have to go get some lemons from Margie so I can make some jam!

Summer… its a really lovely season!!
Cheers!!

Hi… Lee wrote and asked if I would just outline how I do my netting supports.
So I’ve just gathered a few snaps to try to go over how I make the hoops for the netting to cover.

The polypipe is pretty much just irrigation pipe. It comes in various diameter widths – this one is slightly bigger than the smallest, maybe a couple of centimetres. The main thing now it that its wide enough to slip over the sturdy stakes you choose to act as the main supports.
The stakes above I got from Ruby’s place. I think they were from tomato cages.
In the past I have also bought rebar… iron bars that are about the same width as above.

This method is slightly different than from how I first started making these, where I screwed the polypipe onto wooden garden stakes.
This is much easier.

The metal or hard stake is pushed down into the soil… with one on the opposite side of the bed, then the pipe just slips down over the stake!
The curve is natural and its all self supporting!!! Too easy right?

So you can easily adjust to the size of your beds too… for example our raspberry patch…
We got really large irrigation pipe…

They fit snugly over the steel droppers that we banged into the ground and they are sturdy as anything.
This has now been there two years – we don’t leave the net on over winter but leave the structure up.

And because its all just smooth pipe, stretching the netting over it is so easy. Jeff and I can happily manage this without outside helping hands

We don’t like staking the net into the ground, rather just use timber or bricks to weight the net to the ground. We need to lift it periodically to mow and pulling up pegs is a pain. (and if you don’t mow for a while you lose them in the grass!)

I need to get more of these. I got them in Japan – they are used to peg bedding to balcony rails to air. Its surprisingly hard to find similar wide pegs here.
I like to use them when attaching netting to raised beds.

I have two types of netting. The one above which allows bees and other insects in and out for pollination.
I have another couple of sets of netting that has a fine weave and I use it on plants that dont need pollination, esp those I am trying to keep the cabbage moths off (broccoli) Does a grand job.

You should check nets daily and stretch them as firmly as you can, as you don’t want to risk birds or other animals getting tangled and dying in them, which would be terrible.

The great thing I have found with this method is its flexibility… I can adjust the size needed per bed and just cut the pipe as needed. The materials are inexpensive and last for many many seasons. Even my first ones that I made with the stakes years ago I am still using. The nets can get torn, but I have cut them down or tidied them up and made use of them on smaller beds. So I get fairly long term use out of those too.

Hope this is fairly clear for those of you wanting to create a deterrent to rabbits etc (or chooks lol) or those blackbirds that dig up everything!!
Feel free to ask any other questions and I’ll try to help!

Cheers!

Flea!! I still haven’t found out where she is escaping from.
Luckily she was just digging up the area where I had just pulled up the garlic and not in the corn.
Wouldn’t have found her nearly as cute.

I tried to convince her to go into the bucket but she wasn’t having a bar of that.
She got piffed back over to her sisters but then later on I heard clucking from the car port.
No idea why she needs to be in the car port!!

Flea just has an adventurous soul

The purple garlic was a lot more underwhelming compared to the amazing white garlic.
I’ve clearly chosen the wrong spot. A lot of the plot was a bit waterlogged and garlic likes a place to be well drained.
The above bulbs I will set aside for next years seed

Haha – look at those titchy things!
Below is most of the harvest, sans a decent armful that I gave to Sharon and Paul as they really wanted to do a garlic plait.

Today (Boxing Day) was again overcast, dark, rainy in patches and windy.
I’d really like for summer to last at least good number of days in a row!!
I have the fire on again tonight!

I am not sure why I thought Christmas Day was a good corn weeding day! Well, it was so quiet here plus it was sunny AND not windy. Much nicer working out there

Now I can see where the corn is!! I even gave it a feed!

The snow peas are doing pretty well. We picked quite a good amount off them the other day

The beetroot patch got weeded …

Mind you that wasn’t hard to do… easy weeds.
I still have to relocate tomatoes though

The butternut pumpkins also got a weeding and a feeding!
I want to mulch both this plot and the corn but no point until I set up netting as the blackbirds are still enthusiastically digging the straw up everywhere

Couldn’t resist digging up some more potatoes to add to the dinner table later

Check out the feverfew!!! They’ve just popped up in the yard where all the mess of the trees are! Just thriving with no help from me!

In the hothouse the cucumber are making a move! Onward and upwards!

Waiting for the first tomatoes to show some colour is agonising. Reckon we’ve got a while to go.

The basil is looking ok… I am thinking pesto soon! Now that I have garlic to bake…

Yellow capsicum… nice to see fruit on the plants

So… there is stuff happening. Always seems slow though at this time of year. A lot of waiting!
Tomorrow it is meant to be raining again and not that inspiring. I am thinking it could possibly be a soap day??

Hope you are all having a nice break!
Cheers!

Hello, Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings!
I hope wherever you are and whatever you ended up doing, it was – or will be – a lovely day!!
I am sure a lot of you had to revamp plans and work around restrictions or health safety as we did… but it was still fun

Last night (above) Christmas Eve, I got all wussy and put the fire on again. Was so chilly!
Then I was cosy and happy and watched the Polar Express.

And today! Super gorgeous sunny etc.
I weeded the corn and Jeff started on the old garlic patch
We got on a vid call with family both in Canada and on Mainland Australia.
The Canadians were sensible.
The Aussies not so much!! That was chaotic and funny as we had about 4 screens going – best part was my parents cat showing us her butt
Hahahaha

Jeff got me a couple of new pairs of pants!!
Totally getting my Happy Hippy self on!
Took one out on its first outing! So comfy.

Glad we got out for a walk.
I didn’t want to mad hike.
Just be out.

So much beach, so few people.
Bliss

Jeff did some better hand written notes in the sand than I did with my stick !!
All that penmanship practice paying off

Anyway, I’ve had three glasses of champers for whatever reason I thought … well I am SURE it was a good idea at the time.
I am now starting to list sideways as I really am not used to drinking much at all these days. (Clearly, since getting squiffy on three glasses is pretty lame)

Take care and enjoy – good food, company, peace or whatever comes your way
Cheers!

Pip on Rabbit-Watch

The bunnies are getting quite bold and comfortable in our yard!! Sigh

And in keeping with animals we are failing to control… this is where I found Flea sleeping!! Just off the back veranda.
So… I thought I might see if she was keen to upgrade as pet.

Pip took off and hid under our bed – chooks in his opinion are NOT supposed to be inside (Probably in most peoples opinion if we are being honest)

Introducing her to Pips feeding station is probably why I found her on the back step yesterday peering in the glass door hahahaaaa
Happily there were no little accidents.
I am not going to let chooks wander in and out of the house, so rest easy. Not keen with having chicken doo-dahs to clean up.
Erk

Sorry… show off time.
Put the garlic out to dry off a little in the sun before sorting out a place for them to dry in the shed.

I have the wire basket from last season… but this year we put the extension ladder between shelves and lined them up on top.

Probably no room for the purple garlic… which is still in the ground anyway!

Collected some more strawberries…

And a heap more raspberries… which are now with Margie along with another pavlova which I made today.
She is taking them down to Hobart as she plans to celebrate Christmas with one of her sons and his family down there.

I used the leftover egg yolks and made a custard
Oh my!! I could just sit there with a spoon and be happy.
As it was I dolloped a generous amount on some ice cream for dessert.

Back to the hiking tracks before I go pear shaped haha
Cheers!

Despite the fact we were heading out to a BBQ this afternoon, I just had to get in there and pull up the white garlic. Couldn’t wait any longer!
Wow… so happy with this seasons SUPER harvest!

90% are BIG. A few good sized and probably only five small.
Will spread them out tomorrow for a good look (and see if I have exaggerated or not) and decide where and how to hang and dry this season.

Its so much fun pulling them up after 6 months growing to see what you’ve got lurking under the soil!!

The purple garlic is next on my radar but won’t be nearly as impressive this season
I’ll choose a different spot for them next time.

The BBQ was put on by a workmate of Jeff’s who had retired – really nice to meet lots of his fellow nurses and their families.
I made a pavlova last night, then filled with cream and topped with strawberries before we left.
It was demolished within about 5 minutes!! haha… should have made two!!

(If you are not familiar with this dessert, its basically a really big meringue baked and cooled, then goes on top your cream and fruit.)

Hope you are having a great weekend!
Cheers

I went bandicooting in the garden yesterday and dug up these beauties!!
So excited. Love new potatoes.
They got steamed and slathered in butter and my garlic salt!

Not a bad size for only three months growing!

Well… I have FINALLY sorted the ‘I cannot answer your messages’ problem.

Somehow there was a new WP page that I was opening up (who knows how) that I could write posts from (clearly) but not answer your messages!
Got onto support but before they worked out what on earth my problem was I realised I could click through to WP ADMIN and work from there!
Why does this other page even exist??
Sigh.
So I looked like a real nuffer to the support person when I said, wait I’ve sorted it.
Still had the hide to ask me to rate them at 5 for helping Bahahahaha
So I did because… what does it hurt?

So… drop me a line and say hi and tell me what you’ve been up to! 🙂

Raspberry bowls for the pickings are getting bigger!
This pleases me.
So… after having new potatoes, fresh salad and steaks from cousins farm… round off the meal with raspberries on ice cream
Delightful!

Strawberries are getting impressive too!

Windy today and overcast.
About to tackle the dishes and think about either folding laundry (small chance) or making soap (much better odds)
Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the big three day Steam Fest event has been postponed until September 2021… but I will forge on with soap stuff as its time to get new stock on the go anyway.
And its fun

Have a wonderful day
Cheers!