Garden – Page 20 – Head in the Clouds

Nearly Potato Planting Time!

Its always an exciting time of year when I pick up my seed potatoes! Soon its all going to happen again! I also picked up some Bismark potatoes for Ruby (early) and some peas to plant (also for Ruby as I am a long time non-fan of peas. Ask my mother.) I also found some onion seeds to further my plan of using a couple of Ruby’s garden plots for my own.

The lettuce is going along well. Won’t be long before they take on actual ‘lettuce shape’

The rocket has really sprouted up quickly! It makes me want to just get in and totally plant EVERYTHING else! I still think I need to hold back another week! (Its killing me)

The cherry plum trees are getting fluffier day by day

More mini daffodils are appearing

And lots of Granny Bonnet’s are showing up everywhere (Columbine)

And probably most pleasing is to see my Accacia Cognata (smaller than full tree version) starting to bloom!

Hope everybody else’s weeks starts beautifully!

Cheers!

PS Note to self… when growing wheat sprouts in kitty litter trays, its best not to leave it on the floor.
That’s all I am going to say about that!!!

Fluffy New Neighbours & Nearly Spring Flowers

What an adorable little face! We have three lambs next door – cute little bleatings drift over the fence at random times of the day. I love their little leg-warmers. They need them. NOT nice out there tonight.

Anyway, they make me smile as they wobble about and then go for a drink with their tails madly wagging!

As mentioned – utterly miserable out there.
I thought I better do something to brighten the day for the chooks – so I baked them a cake. Lots of weird things added from the fridge/pantry/scraps.

My wheat sprouts that are sitting under the leaky skylight are growing well

So I yanked off a handful of those too

A perfect chook picnic basket.

My oh my wasn’t it a hit!

I went back later and nothing was left!

So – whats on the growing front??
I checked out the duck yard… no sweet peas showing but I did find the snow pea shoots! (This means I need to get back into the garden as soon as its not feral weather to plant the rest of my snow peas!)

The lettuce is growing fabulously… the marigold germination rate is a bit sparse so far

I was also a bit excited to see some of the rocket sprouting so quickly!

Because I was outside, I took a few other not-quite-spring flower photos. Its nice to concentrate on the pretty things and breathe the (very) fresh air!
Enjoy
Cheers!

Not sure of the name but its a scent that catapults me straight back to childhood!

Grouchy Weather & A Bit Of Garden Stuff

Hello – I’d just like to start this post with a very big thank-you to so many of you who dropped me a line with kind words of sympathy for our little Squirt… They were very much appreciated. I haven’t done my usual thing of answering every note as there is only so much time I can spend on thinking of her before the waterworks start again.
All your messages were so lovely!
Jeff got a lot of lovely messages via a Chicken Page he is part of and as some of you also pointed out, it was a situation that others were unaware of, so hopefully by sharing our little tragedy, others may avoid it.

I meant to write a blog last night, but the weather was howling and miserable (bit like me really!!) and we lost power – so I sat up with my head torch knitting & reading.

I picked up some asparagus crowns… only three because at $7 each I was almost in cardiac arrest!! I have never had asparagus before. I am told you need patience but they then last forever!

I am also told they can run a bit so I thought they could make a home in my round raised garden bed.

They look a bit lonely!

Two days ago – I was pleased to see green specks in here that are my baby lettuce.

Today they have gone even crazier!

I also planted some rocket today – I never have gotten around to putting it in the garden before so I thought it was high time to get onto it!

I also brought my potting table back into the hothouse. I have found if the pots of new seedlings are up off the ground, less chance of being found by slugs and snails.

This was the barrel that the kelp juice was in… This was completely empty two days ago and has now filled up on just roof runoff – no guttering. So we really have had a fair bit of rain in the last short while!

I am pleased with my garlic. Seems most of the regular garlic has taken hold and the purple garlic really looks great

Other little signs of spring are appearing everywhere

It has been quite cold – more rain than not, although we get brief spurts of sunshine which is nice. Not good weather to really get into a decent garden job. Forecast is for some pretty wild and woolly weather this week!
I see more cooking and more photo processing coming my way!

Cheers

The ‘on’ phase of our on again, off again weather!

Odd Jobs/Smelly Jobs

Hello and welcome to the middle of the week!
I enjoyed the sometimes sun and view as I sat out the back and ‘podded’ my runner bean seeds

Easy job to do but also easy to put off!

Anyway – now I have more runner bean seeds than you can point a stick at. I’ll plant some, sell some (hopefully) and give a lot away.

Because it was a reasonably sunny day with a breeze… I risked putting a load of laundry out on the line.
And it didn’t rain… well, not until I had my hands in stinky kelp water then down it came!!!! I swear the weather does that on purpose!

I put them undercover and they got mostly dry outside and are now finishing off in front of the fire.

Oh yeah – stinky kelp juice!!
You are supposed to soak it for about 2 weeks not, um… however many months its been!

I got a good number of bottles filled with the liquid and then tipped the remaining seaweed sludge over the base of a few plants. It looks what I can only imagine dinosaur vomit would look like…

I’ll let you know later in the season if the blueberries appreciated it!

Then there was kindling box top up time…

And since the weather has warmed a little, trying to grow some wheat sprouts as treats for the chooks.
*** Squirt was out for a lot longer today. She was very impatient to be out of her box this morning. Good sign.
She ate a lot and even ran away when I tried to pick her up! Impressive. I would not have bet in favour of her survival 5 days ago!
I did catch her as after a while she was just tired!! She told me off about it but into her cat box she went for a rest. Mind you, she ‘talks’ every time she wants to be spoon fed some more porridge! I have created a monster!***

I made rash promises to a friend to make him some hot sauce. So I went and picked all the chilli’s that were left in the hothouse.

I found a recipe that I will adapt somewhat.
What’s the worst that can happen??? (Its not like I will be tasting it haha)

How about that!! A red capsicum in winter. Not sure what it will taste like…

Anyway, thats a wrap up for Wednesday! Hope your week is going along fantastically!
Cheers!

Winter Produce

Hello! Not a bad day out there today, but I did spend most of it in the kitchen cleaning up my clutter & making strawberry ice cream!

I just make an old fashioned vanilla ice cream then swirl the whizzed up cooked strawberries through it! Roll on dessert tomorrow night!

I was out of potatoes in the pantry – so off to the shed to seek my backup stock.

Of course at this time of year they are all desperately trying to grow. So I knocked off the shoots and brought a box full inside. Hoping my next potato harvest will be more of the bigger potatoes compared to this titchy lot!

And – calamity – I ran out of pickled beetroot. Time to go foraging.

That will be a tomorrow job.

Three eggs… Looking forward to stocking up on a few more chickens when we return from Japan! (Squirt had a slow day. Just when I think she has about had it, she starts making chook-noises that I interpreted to “Feed me” – so I did. A lot.)

Close to my last tomatoes. This is sad. I mean, I am rapt that I have actual fresh picked tomatoes in August, but sad that soon I have a long wait until I get to taste tomatoes again.

Spent some time watering in the hot house. Seeds (of course) have not done anything yet. On Ruby’s advice I usually leave a watering can in the hothouse so I am not watering seeds or seedlings with ice cold water.

And the plum trees have started showing their first blossoms! That makes me so happy!

Cheers!

Sweet Chilli Sauce Day

Hello!
We are definitely back in winter. So glad I took the opportunity to get outside when I did.
I have a small list of things to drag out of the freezer and cook.
Today it was to make a batch of sweet chilli sauce.
In fact, I decided on a double batch

Even though my chillies were already cut and deseeded, the prep time took me a couple of hours!
It takes an eon to peel all that garlic (about 200gms)

Or maybe I am just slow!
Finally got all the garlic peeled, ginger also peeled and whizzed up the lot so I could get it into the pot to start cooking.

It eventually became hard to spend any time in the kitchen! Even though it smells good, it is literally eye-watering! (I must admit my sinuses are super clear this evening!!! haha)

It probably took a couple of hours simmering. I will know tomorrow if I did it too long or not long enough!
If you are interested in the recipe, click here.

I took some warm mash down to the girls, who were pretty pleased about it.

Squirt still not doing great… but she did eat a bit today and I let her wander about the shed while I cleaned out her cat box. She seemed keen on the bread scraps I gave her, but she tires out quickly.
She is sleeping in by the fire (no – not too close!!)

I noticed my ‘afterthought’ garlic is looking sturdy!

And three weeks ago I put some laterals on the kitchen window sill –

I think today they are looking quite good, although no sign of roots forming yet. Perhaps I should give them a drop of kelp juice! (Maybe after their day with the sweet chilli sauce fumes I might be greeted at breakfast with some ready to pick tomatoes…. who knows!)

Tomorrow I might do nothing…
Hope your day was great too!

Cheers!

Planting

Is this winter still? Its so beautiful during the day that its terribly tempting to start all the spring planting now! But I have been here long enough to know we still have some miserable weather ahead of us and a few frosts yet.

I did a little… I planted a tray of cos lettuce seeds and a tray of marigold seeds. They can live in the hothouse and hopefully germinate.

Along the back fence of the duck yard I put in sweet pea seeds…

Then along another fence a few snow pea seeds

I found a large bag of snow peas!! I’ll have to think of a few areas to put them in and then hope to offload them via my roadside stall!

I dragged Pip out today! He has been so lazy lately. Was funny at his dinner time tonight – hoovered up all his dinner in one sitting (not usual) so I gave him second and third helpings ALL which went straight down the hatch, so I topped it off with some of his biscuits. Clearly the fresh air and sunshine did him good.
(Just hoping he doesn’t do the cat-thing and spew it all up somewhere for me to step in)

I got back into more weeding – its not hard to dig into, but the soil is gluggy so its slow going.

Weeds gone in that area so I dumped a whole lot of seaweed grass on top to slow their return

I also had enough to cover one of the future potato plots.
Time to get the trailer back to the beach to refill!

Hope your day was lovely too!

Cheers!

Duck Yard Plans

First day of the last month of winter! Yay! And it certainly wasn’t an indoor day!

because I suck at finishing any jobs I start… I cheerfully abandoned the remaining weeding in the herb garden and turned my attention to the duck yard.
The weeds have been kept significantly back with the leftover seaweed on top, but there were still a few barrow loads worth of weeds to dig up.

The chooks were thrilled someone was digging up worms especially for them!

There was a constant pack of little stickybeaks diving in grabbing worms as I dug out weeds

Docks. The bane of my life in the garden and probably why I am feeling more muscles than I should right now!

You can dig down so far and get a really good grip but they still won’t budge.

One of the few that I didn’t mostly break off

There is still a bit of weeding left to go, but by this time I had had enough for one day. I staked some areas to estimate where I was planting things this season.

I plan to line the wider pathways with marigolds, and there is space by the entrance to put in some zucchini. Not sure about the pumkins yet.

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt within the next week to get my marigold seeds and see if I can get some started now.
I am enjoying the planning process, especially knowing that spring is so close now!
Hope your day was great!

Cheers

Burning Off – Cleaning Up

Ahhhh – a man and his chook!!
Poor Squirt isn’t feeling so well and has been spending her nights inside the house in a cat carrier stuffed with hay. I hope she perks up soon – she is definitely Jeff’s favourite.

Today was sunny and only moderately windy… so we went down the back and burned off a fair bit of rubbish (household & yard)

This area is an easy dumping ground for weeds & prunings etc.

I love fire.

We have been here nearly 6 years now… and still we find ‘treasures’
Like this spoon. Just sitting there under the macrocarpas like it has been there forever. How have I not seen it before now? Maybe a crow dropped it off.

In among the big old trees are lots of leftover ornaments from previous owners.

Maybe once I have my new herb garden extension done I’ll use them up there, just for the fun of it.

These two look like they have been at the pub for way too long!

Random wombat

Actually she looks kind of cute there

These birds are a little freaky…

Not complete without a couple of cherubs

The frog is there to stay. The tree has grown around it, so that is Mr Frogs forever home.

Anyway, I had a lovely time burning ‘stuff’ A lot more needs to be cleaned up, but we got rid of a lot of the weeds that had dried out and other scrappy sticks etc that were littered around the place. And it kept me warm.

The girls were very excited to dig under the area I cleared. I am sure there was a bug-buffet under there!

Moving right along to the hothouse!

I really think the tomato plants had seen their best days behind them

I feel a lot better about this. Now I can start planning on what to grow in here. I know its too early to go mad… but I am sure the next month or so will disappear fast enough.

The passionfruit I moved to the hothouse is doing fine. Its even putting out new baby leaves.

I love passionfruit and really hope I have done the right thing by putting it in here. Time will tell I suppose.

I have a lot of whitefly in the hothouse. I think I breathed in a lot today!!
I have read up a little on what to do. Vacuuming was one suggestion!!!
(Trying to picture Jeffs face when he catches me in the hothouse with the Dyson!! haha)

There was some interesting ground cover doing quite well in the hothouse… I liked it but have no idea what it was – so I moved it outside. We shall see if it survives.

And, to top off a reasonably productive day, I finally finished off my batch of BBQ sauce! Winning!

Cheers!

Cake.

I felt the banana-raspberry loaf had been missing from my life for a while. So baked one this morning.

I have had a couple of slices so far… trying to not guts it all in one day.

Pip acted as resident Snoopervisor – switching between keeping an eye on me and an eye out my grotty window for birds.

While the cake was finishing baking I went out back to my dwindling grocery store and picked a few things to make dinner with

I think that is about the last of my carrots

I wanted to make a slow cooked stew – we still have plenty of beef in the freezer.

So glad I took time to cook up several containers of tomatoes over the summer season. They have been fabulous to chuck in stews and spaghetti meals etc.

I think the only non home grown ingredient in my stew tonight was the onion (ok, and the chicken stock)
I also found a bag of frozen corn kernels that I threw in as well which made a really nice addition.

Sadly I ate alone – Jeff just couldn’t keep his eyes open when he got up this afternoon and headed back to bed. Night shift does weird things to you. But – by the time he gets his share the flavour will be even better, and (if I do say so myself) it was pretty good to begin with!

Nothing like a hearty stew of home grown ingredients in winter while you sit by the fire!

Hope your midweek is excellent!

Cheers