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It’s been a quiet few days at Norwich House
Pip went through a ‘hide and seek’ phase… he is not very skilled at the game but we had fun anyway.

I picked up a bag of tulip bulbs at a market recently! I had chosen a place to put them (in the old zucchini patch) and went outside today to tackle the cleanup

I didn’t really last that long out there!! Pretty sad huh? The wind was awful and the sticky mud was annoying me! My boots became about a kilo heavier and none of the weeds would shake off my gloves!!

And there is that one tomato plant right there that I don’t know whether to pull up or not. We are probably five seconds from frosty weather but while there is fruit there is hope and I hate pulling them out early!

So I decided to decide another day!! haha
The tulip bulbs will have to wait a little longer.

Lots of baby fennel has started to appear everywhere!! I’d like to transplant it – no idea if it likes being moved but I will have to try. Thought I would put it along the fence where the sunflowers were (that Little Moo ate) so if another cow arrives and eats the fennel it won’t matter all that much.

No, thats not vomit with a parsley garnish.
Thats garlic salt in the making!!
I got some pink rock salt and whizzed it all up with some garlic (1/3 garlic to 2/3 salt)
I had it in the dehydrator for about 9 hours… I had to break it up and put it back through the ‘Gee Whizzer’ and finish it off a bit more in the dehydrator. I have more to do, but I crushed what I had ready more finely in a mortar this evening and I think I am happy so far. Have to test it on some baking potatoes to really see if I did it right!!

Oh – and I put seed garlic up for sale on a local facebook noticeboard and got a bit swamped with orders!! So I’ve been busy putting packs together and organising that! But Yay!! Should come home with a few $$ in my pocket tomorrow!

We had a couple of funny visitors the other night.

A set of rather dodgy possum photos and a really grotty window… but they are cute!! I don’t know what it was up to!
Pip was fascinated!! He tried to pat the possums face through the window!

(You can just see the paw up there!!)
Then the look on the possums face asking what on earth that was!

Then there was some mutual staring…

Another possum came on the scene – after first inspecting my pumpkins then they both ran off and had a nice loud squabble!!
If you haven’t heard Australian possums – well… they sound like little banshees or something 50 times larger and more frightening than they actually are!! 😀

Anyway – I best be off to bed as I have garlic-delivery duties tomorrow morning!!
Hope your week has started well!
Cheers!

Hello!!
For some mad reason, Jeff was all super keen to get out and work outside. I was looking longingly at the unlit fire thinking ‘Netflix’.
He had been into town earlier and picked up some more steel droppers and Cousin Jeff had dropped off some more pallets.
So we built a wall for the wood.

My previous efforts were just not working so well this time. The pressure of the heavy green wood really pushed the stakes out alarmingly.

Its a lot easier to quickly stack the wood up this way – we don’t have consistent enough sizes to do a criss-cross stack at each end. (I am sure we will get better at this as we go along.)

The pallets under the wood really help too – I hated getting the manky bottom pieces full of mud and bugs!

Ready for some more wood now!!

In Huggle-Monster news… I have two sadly neglected compost bins that I have decided to clear out and start again from scratch. I emptied one today and spread it over as one of the layers on this second Hugelkultur garden.
Then I got in touch with my bushcraft skills (er… lacking)

OK – here’s the plan. I saw a really great little fence woven out of sticks and branches on Mavis’s page over at One Hundred Dollars a Month.
I need to prepare more stakes but to be honest by this stage of the day I was saturated and pretty ready not to be outside. (I started off in wet weather gear but just overheated haha)

At some point, these ‘snowball’ bushes need a brutal pruning. I think the branches are going to be ideal to weave through the stakes around the Huggle-Monster. Then I can finish going the hack with adding more compost and materials and finish with a layer of straw

I have so much to do in here!! It was great to use it over summer but I didn’t have a chance to really sit down and think about how I was going to organise the space properly.

I am thinking a lot more of those smaller brick raised beds… or similar.
I should just sit with paper and pen and some measurements and figure it out!

Not much more I could have fitted in time wise, but there is a lot of potential here!!

Once the tomatoes come up I will put the garlic back in the same place as last season… At least the grass and weeds were kept down where I had mulched with the seaweed.

This is one cherry tomato plant that decided to grow right next to the garden bed!! Not being a great tomato-disciplinarian, I went ‘meh’ and let it go!! I even picked a tomato off it the other day!

The leek and brown onion I put in here a couple of weeks back are now mostly all sitting up fine.

Lettuce, capsicum, cool wriggly willow branches and hopefully rocket seedlings and not weeds!

The cabbage patch needs weeding but apart from that and a few chewed leaves, they seem to be going along well. Perhaps its time to be kind and give them a feed of my kelp juice!

Oh, and good news… we sold the ride on mower today!
A couple dropped in that had seen it before – complete with cash in their pocket and a trailer on the car!! One more thing done!
Hope you had a slightly less muddy day than me!

Cheers!

Today I had a couple of spoils.
I went in for a massage which was rather divine!! The lady instructed me not to throw about wood for the rest of the day!
I dropped off eggs and veggies to Shirley and also popped in with some eggs and pumpkin for Ruby, sat and had a cuppa and a good old catch up. (She very apologetically brings out the ‘shop bought’ biscuits (cookies) and reckons she is letting the side down)
I asked how she has been and what she has been up to…. she gives me that funny grin and says, “You know… I think I am just getting old!!”
Bless her cotton socks. She does things but wears out quickly and has to sit and have a rest or a lie down. You can imagine it doesn’t please her much!!
But then we are talking gardens and planning what we are going to do this year… then she laughs and says, “Listen to me at 102 planning on what I am going to be doing next season!!” But then we agree that planning really is 3/4 of the fun of things!

The other egg delivery was to Maureen and I also dropped off my latest bin of coffee grounds for her husband Gerry – he was very pleased to get that! He was showing me his compost system and we are talking about worm farming (I a currently proof reading an ebook on worm farm for beginners for a friend of mine which is giving me a solid understanding of it) and Gerry offered me his setup that he had never used and didn’t plan to!

Ooooh – yes please!!! So into the back of the car it went!
Now to clean it up, finish proof reading this book so I can jump right in there and start my worms!!

I love the idea of getting the worm wee and the castings – all that good stuff is magic for the garden of course.
I’ll let you know when my friends book is available in case there are other beginners out there that just need to know where to start!!

Anyway, lovely, lucky day for me!
Hope your day was just as bright!
Cheers!

Hello!
Pip was being Mr Irritating today. I don’t think I was translating his Siamese very well. I had no idea what he actually wanted. Multiple times he was up places he knows he shouldn’t be! And look how remorseful his face is!! Like not in the slightest!!
In the end I put him on his harness and shut him outside for a while!

Enjoyed a big veggie dinner last night with some baked chicken marylands to go with them. I love baked veggies. Even better when everything is 100% home grown. (Ok… my friend grew the broccoli but it still came out of a home garden!!)

The weather was a bit ‘meh’ today so I was just as happy to get into the mess that was my seed storage and make use of that lovely drawer unit.

From chaos to harmony

No excuses not to have everything from now on right where I can find it!
I even have a drawer for all the little envelopes.

I fancy a trip back to Japan to stock up 😀
Anyway, thats another job I can tick off the list! Now I can go collect seeds to my hearts content!
Have a lovely day!
Cheers!

Look who found the bird feeder!! I am able to sneak quite close to them. They are wary but not super timid.
Would be nice if they got really used to us.

Jeff was the motivated one today and got out to work on the tree. I eventually followed! We just got the chainsaw back from being sharpened so Jeff got into all those bigger logs at the top of the yard.
I dug out two barrow loads of ash from the fire and dumped it down a handy hole 😀
Unfortunately the wind was blowing the wrong way today… it didn’t seem too strong, but it blew it onto the highway and over Jeff, so gave up on that.

I concentrated on stacking.

Jeff taught me how to split wood today!! I hadn’t done it before… I harbor some worries about taking a foot off (this is me so entirely possible) and sometimes its good NOT to know how to do everything – if you get my drift.
However…

So here’s me in my super flattering sexy garden clothes having a whack at the logs

Actually its a nice relaxing process once you get into it! Jeff showed me clearly how to swing and where my hands should be etc… so I am set!
(I am hoping one of my readers, Elizabeth, will be a little impressed that I have finally had a go at this!! 🙂 haha)

I handed the axe back to Jeff and continued stacking.
I also put a couple of loads into the duck yard garden along with more of the tree that Jeff cut, ready to create another Hugelkultur. I was just using all the really small, weird or impractical pieces that were too hard to stack or cut. Lets be honest. We don’t have to be picky. 🙂

The log piles are growing! The scary thing is…this is only scratching the surface. There is SO much more tree to come down. Just got to work out what on earth we are going to do with it all!

Isn’t the grain of this wood gorgeous? And it smells divine!

I am going to need a 4wheel drive wheel barrow soon! Pesty chickens are trying to dig to China or something!

Since we don’t have any decent square bits, I cheated and went with the steel droppers at the ends.
Anyway, since you can have too much of a good thing, I quit for the day, brought up a load of wood for the evening fire and went and picked tomatoes. I am hoping to barter these for some home made sausage rolls…

Cheers!

Hello! I spent most of the afternoon working on the cabinet of drawers.
Sensibly I took all the drawers out first before we moved the main bit to the back veranda. It was still heavy, but it wasn’t impossible for me this time!
The card dividers alone had a lot of weight.

I thought the best place to work on it was out the back so I could brush off all the spiders, webs, dirt and whatnot.

Looks slightly disastrous from the bottom!

The back has an area of disintegration. Shouldn’t be too hard to remove and replace.
One side of the unit is a nicely finished timber and the other side is just raw – I suppose wherever it lived it had another unit right beside it so the maker didn’t see the point in making that side attractive.

Once cleaned off of most debris, I got some furniture polish and buffed things up a bit.

Meanwhile, back in the shed, we put the second unit away for now. If we can’t think of a good place/use, then cleaning it up and fixing them up and selling them on would be the thing to do.

Jeff helped put the unit inside and I got to and started cleaning out the drawers. A three fold process… a good scrubbing down dry with a brush, then a bit of a wash with a damp cloth, then the front got a dose of polish.

Times by twenty – I was there for a while!!

There were some odd little things in there – explainable things like paperclips… and unexplainable like above!

As mentioned… oodles of dividers

The drawer bottoms were made out of a chip board – most were in ok nick, but a few were a bit manky… or in this ones case, a big bit manky!! I didn’t bother trying to clean… I just knocked the bottom out. It wasn’t coming in the house!

I want to get a new set of drawer pulls too. Jeff said he thought I should leave these to keep with the rustic look. I think they just look rusty. A quick look online and they will be quite easy to get hold of.

A slight jigsaw puzzle which I have failed a bit on – because its been handmade a long time ago… not all the drawers fit in every sliding space. Of course I didn’t note which ones went where when I took them out.
I have all in but one that won’t slide home.
Tomorrows challenge.

I cleaned up some spare timber we had floating about and just laid them across the top so I can kinda use that space

Now I need to start madly saving more seeds to fill it!!
Hope you had/have a great Saturday!
Cheers!

Hello there!! Friday night and a big night out for the Millars – at the auctions!!
I’ve really been wanting to get some sort of cabinet system with small drawers to store seeds.
I spotted this in a catalogue in an auction not far from us. I’ve never really gone and bid at a proper auction before. It was a bit nerve wracking but I enjoyed it a lot! I think I want to go to more!!

There is another unit behind this one, same size but with 4 large filing drawers. Neither has a top but we can easily remedy that (hopefully with some of our milled timber if we can get that done!)
Its a VERY solid piece – heavy as Billy-oh!!
We’ll take all the drawers out to move it next time.
It went for more than I was hoping for… BUT… I had made an offer of $450 on another piece elsewhere, but I hadn’t heard back as they were waiting to maybe get more $$ for it, so after a couple of weeks I withdrew my offer. I had my own stash of $$ (from selling veggies, knitting etc etc) so it wasn’t coming out of normal ‘household’ funds.
Someone else REALLY wanted this too! Damn!! They were also skip bidding I think to try to put me off… like at 110, they jumped to 150. So I just went 160, so they jumped to 200 and so on. Thank goodness they quit at $360 because I think Jeff was panicking behind me haha.
So I am ahead by $90 from my original offer, plus this one is way more practical for what I want. If we can’t use the second piece we can always fix it up and sell it on.

Its still in the car – can’t believe they both fit!! No room for anything else that’s for sure!!
We’ll get them out tomorrow.

Yesterday I went into town and voted early – if you are not in Australia you may not have heard we are voting in a federal election to see who gets to run the country this time. Mind you, knowing our track record, the next Prime Minister will probably be changed within 6 months if our recent history keeps repeating itself! (The parties keep squabbling within themselves and kicking out the PM and changing them (eye roll))

While I was in town I went to one of the Op Shops (thrift) and bought this marvellously tacky bowl that I thought could act as a bird feeder. Its quite heavy so I thought less chance of the birds cartwheeling off it, bowl and all.

Its got shiny bits!!!

Add a suitable stump and Voila! Bird feeder!

Hopefully the galahs find it and the chooks don’t. Its solid enough but not enough for a boisterous chook tap dancing on it!

I also got to and baked another apple pie. I forgot to put some raspberries in. Next time.

So easy

Tasted pretty good as well. I am about to have a VERY late dinner of some toasted sandwiches, mustn’t forget this for dessert!

I dropped by friends yesterday and offered them a bucket of apples! (as you do!)
Maureen was cooking sausage rolls and their house smelled amazing! There is a church fete on somewhere tomorrow so I have to investigate and get down there and secure me some!!
Her husband Gerry handed me over some of his fresh picked broccoli!! Absolutely HUGE! I love a good barter! Can’t wait to get stuck into these.

Well… time for my late dinner!
Jeff just had cereal and headed to bed!!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Cheers!

Hello!
Guess what? Today wasn’t Tuesday. It was Wednesday. I only found that out tonight. Generally that wouldn’t be a problem, only I missed my doc appointment this morning. I hadn’t forgotten it… I was just living in the wrong day!! I’ll have to call them tomorrow to apologise.

So… while being oblivious to the day of the week, I strolled outside to do some less strenuous outside work.

I thought I would go around the yard a bit and put a few more barrow loads of composting materials onto the Huggle Monster.
Quite a lot to be raked up around the place!

There are a lot of gaps of course… I think when I build another one (I think I might…) I will make the effort to put more fill in during the early layers. Just a bit easier I think.

So I was just stuffing everything in everywhere.
I found some lovely dodgy slimy smelly kelp in a bag!

I also picked up some of the grass clippings that were in a couple of piles around the place – I’ve learned to add that slowly into the compost and not all at once!!

I also found a bag of seaweed grass so that went on too!

I was considering going into the paddock to collect some cow poo, but… I wasn’t feeling motivated enough.

Anyway – its coming along. 🙂

While I was washing the chooks water dish, these two cheeky galahs came down and helped themselves to the wheat!!
They’ve been out on the raspberry patch frame every morning waiting for some nosh! Its so lovely. We had lots of galahs in Canberra but these are the first at our place here. I have some wild bird seed and plans to make them a feeder… (its on the list)
I was able to get reasonably close too! I spooked them a little but they were brave enough to come waddling back.

Still got lovely lush lettuce!

And I am just picking the tomatoes that we need mostly… Still some lovely cherry tomatoes out there.

I did a bit of a round of the garden with my macro lens… just because I was in the mood 🙂

Thats all from me!!
Hope you know what day it is and enjoy it regardless!
Cheers!

Hello!
How was your Monday? I guess some of you are just getting into it!!
Today I made a really good start on a Hugelkultur garden bed! Its a bit of an awkward mouthful so I have named it the Huggle Monster.
It can be friends with Tentacular, the passionfruit vine! 😀

Anyway – above is the bin over filled with coffee and a heap of cardboard from one of the local supermarkets.
I did start the fire today but it was too much of a hassle to keep it going well in between my other project. I fired it up better at the end of the day, just because I rather enjoy a decent fire!

Luckily Jeff got partly in here last time he mowed – it was a bit of a jungle.
I selected this spot and put the cardboard down. It was windy so I had a couple of loads of wood to put straight on it so I wasn’t chasing the cardboard all over the neighbours paddock.

Basic outlining… then came the colouring in.

I used a lot of the older stumps and a few of the newer ones as a solid base.
The idea here if you are not familiar with this (and this is VERY general as I only did a crash course via youtube last night) is that the wood slowly breaks down – it provides an area for bugs, skinks, fungi etc to live and grow. You fill the areas up with all kinds of composting materials over the top – you can add soil etc. It will settle – you just top it up.
The wood will soak up moisture and if done well these beds don’t need much in the way of watering if you are planting deeper rooting plants.

Next came a few loads of the smaller logs/branches

I decided to start putting in some small tree litter on – once I rattled it about a bit a lot started falling in the gaps

Yeah I know – totally not going to win any beauty contest as yet!
Hopefully come spring my ugly duckling will be more swan-like.

Another load of the smaller branches

And a load of leaf litter from the ignored front/side of the house. (I hadn’t been around there in a while and that was a shock!)

Next – time to pep up the Huggle Monster with some coffee.

I must say, I totally love this style of building a bed! Its like Freestyle Gardening, if there is such a thing!

Because Macrocarpa are a pine I am figuring the bed is going to be a bit acidic, so I very scientifically dumped a container of wood ash on top as I cleaned out our indoor fire yesterday. Then topped that with a bit of leftover mushroom compost.

And because I didn’t think I had done enough work yet, I dragged out the chipper and put through one of the piles of branches. This time with the tin & tarp, making a bit of a berm to catch the errant chips. Gathering them up was a lot easier.

It spits it out far and wide – its a very enthusiastic machine!
I need to brace it better next time. It seems to like dancing all over the platform.

I got two full barrow loads out of todays efforts.
So I dressed the Huggle Monster in a layer.

Over the next little while I will add grass clippings, leaf litter – all that kind of thing. Might even jump the fence with a barrow and shovel and get some cow poo too. Once I have done that I’ll cover in straw so it can work on its decomposition.
Great way to clean up the yard too! 😀

I enjoyed the process rather a lot (suits my aesthetically relaxed nature I think) I’d like to build a few more in this area – just have to maybe give myself a day or two before jumping in there again!!

Finished up the evening with a rather lovely full rainbow! Didn’t have my wide angle lens on but it was a beauty!
Cheers!!

Hello!!
As I type its raining heavily, but I have the fire on and we are nice and cosy.
I didn’t do a lot today due to the super miserableness of the weather – but that gives the muscles some recovery time!

Yesterday Jeff and I worked through another good portion of the tangled branch piles.

We extended and dug out the fire pit… then ringed it with some of the new stumps… lol – what could go wrong??

We were able to fit bigger pieces into the whole pit – and we also thought maybe eventually collecting the ash and throwing it down that huge mystery hole we have in the yard!! Its too much ash for the compost.

Pretty amazing progress! Yay us 😀
Jeff did a lot of the hauling – I get slowed by taking out suitable branches for the chipper.

I have a couple of piles ready to go that I will get into next time the weather looks more inviting.
Obviously there is a size limit to what I can put through, but also its hard to put in any of the twisted branches – of which there are a lot.
It comes down to what is more time efficient

Plus there are a lot of these pine cone ball clusters… they are heavy and bulky, so I often have to chop them back or off so the branches will fit through the chipper.

One of the piles to deal with when we have the chainsaw back. Need to be cut to a sensible, stackable length.
Actually – I just learned about Hugelkultur gardens and I am really interested in having a go! Its all about using big logs down to smaller ones and covering with partly broken down matter, soil and compost. Its supposed to be self sustaining and very water economical.
Since we have an excess of wood, I am super keen.
Today I picked up a bin of coffee grounds. I had left it a bit long and it was so full… I had to wait about in the rain until a fellow walked by who I asked to help me lift it into the car!! Nice of him to immediately say yes! There was no way I was going to manage myself. I have to get back to the coffee shop once a week at least.
I also picked up a heap of cardboard from the local supermarket to line the beds. Might as well start by thwarting some weeds huh?

Our little Raptors systematically testing the fence for weaknesses!!!

Anyway, I am off to sloth about with the cat. Jeff is on a nightshift, hopefully I will have the fire still going for him to return to a warm house!!
Cheers!