A Garden Post

Our little garden pixie, Eden.

It has been a while since I posted on our garden, but as we in in the full swing of Spring, and loving spending these tentatively sunny days ticking things off The Great Gardening To-Do List (which is less like a list than a carousel on full speed) I thought it might be time to share some pics.

We were late planting our winter seeds, and equally as late getting our spring seeds planted, so we are a little behind schedule. That hasn't mattered this year, though, as the temperatures are still quite low and we have had fairly steady rain for all of spring so far. The onions, garlics, leeks, beetroots, silverbeets and beans are all going strong.

We have planted all the citrus trees (a Lemonade, a Meyer lemon, a Kaffir lime, a Tahitian lime, a grapefruit, an orange and a Feijoa - yes, I know, not a citrus!) with an understorey of nasturtiums, chillis and artichokes.

The little kaffir lime tree with an understorey of nasturtium and artichoke.

Beautiful citrus-y blossoms.

The greenhouse is full - little tubes and toilet rolls containing (many, many) tomatoes, chilli, rosella, rockmelon and sunflower seeds.

We have been harvesting our green manure crop of oaten grass before it went to seed and drying it on the fence to become mulch for summer. We have also been trimming down the wattle trees to use their foliage as mulch (as well as feeding some to the goats).

Wattle foliage as garden mulch.

Oat grass drying on the fence.

The apricot trees have flowered and are now in full foliage and beginning to set fruit, so the next task is to net them to avoid losing nearly our whole apricot harvest to the local 28s (like last year).

Chickens fertilising the apricot trees. Behind, you can see the large goat pen.

We are putting in a grape vine near the kitchen window to stop the summer late afternoon sun streaming in. It won't help this year but next year it should be established enough to make a difference. The beauty of a living screen is that, as it is deciduous, it loses its leaves in winter to let all the available sun in.

I counted the other day and we now have 20 fruit trees! That's not bad at all for a half acre block! We should be getting our bees within the next month to help with all that pollinating.

It's three assignments on the agenda for me this week so I daresay I won't be seeing much of the garden until next weekend!

Happy Australia Day

Happy Australia Day, fellow Aussies. This is a day on our calendar that I particularly love. When I was younger, I would go to the Perth Skyshow (fireworks) with friends and an esky full of beer and celebrate with the thousands of others doing the same thing, down on the South Perth foreshore. There was always a game of cricket going, some people took paddle pools and it was always a very rowdy, happy day that I look back on with fondness.

I haven't done that for a very long time, and Australia Day is celebrated in a much more civilised and, ahem, mature kind of way these days. Often it will be a barbecue with friends, or, as our wedding anniversary is the day following, it may be a weekend away.

Big batch of baked beans for the week's breakfasts.

Today, though, I plan to put up a few bottles of passata using some tomatoes that I peeled ahead of time. I will put a new batch of yoghurt on, maybe two, and generally potter around the kitchen with the radio on. I am generally a local AM radio station kind of girl, but today I will turn on JJJ and find out what all the younger ones have been listening to all year! Nath will be putting a brew on (beer) for enjoying in a few weeks' time, and I'll do a bit of sewing, getting some stock together for a market stall in February.

Peeled tomatoes, ready for passata making.

At 4:30 this afternoon, the TV will go on for the Twenty20 match, and we'll barbecue some lamb and snaggers, make some salads and maybe even a pav for dinner.

Basil given to us by a friend, for drying and pesto making!

It's a beautiful warm day (36 degrees), the windows are open, the cicadas are singing and I couldn't feel more blessed to be right where I am.

Pesto and nut butters for sandwich spreads.

I hope you are enjoying your Australia Day, however you decide to celebrate it!

Weekend Home Happenings

Another weekend is wrapping up, and thankfully it has not contained the wild weather of last week! Instead, we have had two perfect days to get some things done around the house and yard. Some weeks, the chores just build up and rolled over to the next week, especially the outside chores, so it is nice to be able to tick things off the list.

The storms this week left us with leaves and twigs and debris all over our yard, which meant we had lots of raking to do. Raking half an acre is hard work! The bright side is, it gives us good leaf matter for the compost bays.

With the rest of it, we will lay out some new garden beds and leave them until the leaf matter breaks down a bit, ready for Autumn planting.

We have been nurturing tomato seedlings, quite a few heirloom varieties of them, and they were ready for planting this weekend so we popped them into the spaces in our existing beds, then we prepped one of the backyard beds that previously had daisies in them and planted out some leafy greens and herbs. I plan on replacing the daisies we have ripped out with other kinds of flowering bushes to keep our bird and bee life active in the garden.... but I can't stand daisies when they aren't flowering! We will probably plant out more lavender, rosemary and bottle brushes.

Our Plymouth Rock mama and her eleven babies are rapidly outgrowing their little coop and as the weather warms up they will need more space to make their dust baths to cool down, so it was time to extend their pen. Also, right near their pen are two apricot trees, just young ones, and the early ripener was picked clean by the 28s (parrots), so we wanted to protect the late ripening tree from the same fate. We spent most of today building a large run for the chooks and within that, closing off the young tree with chicken wire to keep it covered. The hen and her babies are most grateful to be able to stretch their wings and scratch and bathe!

Our blueberries are ripening beautifully on the bush, and I can't wait to pick them off and make myself a smoothie!

The quails are laying, we think we have at least four girls on the lay so far. They really are the most beautiful eggs! I am tempted to sell them off at a premium as they are sought after by fancy restaurants, but I think we will just eat them!

We finished drying our garlic crop out, and picked out the biggest ones to save as seed for next planting season, then braided the rest. This should keep us in garlic for a long time, and they really are the most beautiful, fat, fragrant garlic heads!

The next door neighbour invited us over to raid her overstocked, bursting-with-fruit apricot tree today as well. We came away with a bucketful AND a bagful, and will make jam, sauce, liqueur and bottled apricots for the year to come. Her peach trees are ripening now and she would like us to pick them before the parrots get to them too. Feels like Christmas!

Lastly, the girls had a lovely time yesterday going for a pony ride on our good friend's old pony. Miya was very wary to begin with, but once Miss Eden blazed the way, she suddenly found her courage!

We hope your weekend was as enjoyable as ours!

Treasure Hunting

Nath, the kids and I went on one of our scavenging dates yesterday. We found an awesome website that outlines when and where Perth's roadside collections are, complete with maps of the boundaries of each pick-up. We decided to head out on a freebie adventure to see what treasures we could find.

If this sounds a bit unglamorous or even downright dirty and desperate, I'd like to point out that nearly everything that goes out onto the curb for collection ends up in landfill. So much of it isn't broken, or unusable, and is put out for collection merely because it's owners have no use for it or have replaced it with something new. Roadside collecting is more than finding treasures for me, it's also about reducing the amount of so-called rubbish that ends up in landfill for no good reason at all. If we can truly use it, I'd rather give something a new lease of life than have it end up at the tip!

So, after a trip to the tip to empty our trailer of greenwaste, and a stop at the op-shop so Miya and Eden could spend some of their snail collecting money (more on that later!), we were off.

Check out some of the treasures we found!

With summer approaching, having bottles of cold water ready to go in the fridge is always handy. These are in perfect condition, they just need new seals. Luckily, I have some of those!

A lovely wooden tray, perfect for breakfast in bed.

I couldn't believe it when I saw this gorgeous enamel serving dish on someone's front verge, what a gem!

Sitting alongside the enamel dish was this deep casserole. I loved the design on it, so in the car it went!

There is nothing at all wrong with this wicker basket, and I was after a new laundry hamper, so I whipped up a liner for the inside, and.... voila!

This old wooden stepladder, after a sand back and a bit of paint, will make an excellent pot stand, or bookshelf, or teddy bear storage, or..... we'll see!

We also picked up some old hose to run around the sharp edge of a tin-lined garden bed near the kids' fairy garden, a watering can (yay! I have been asking on Freecycle for one of these!) and a bin with a swing lid that I discovered was full of little jars and lids - perfect for some of the Christmas gifts I am thinking of making.

It was a very worthwhile foray into the suburbs, even though it always takes Nath a good few hours to recover after venturing down into 'the city'. I'm really loving the opportunities for creativity that living frugally brings. Over the next few weeks, we will be foraging a bit more for food that is readily available in the local bush areas and learning a bit more about about our local flora and fauna and how it can complement our bought groceries and homegrown produce. I'll keep you posted.

Dates With My Daughters

Life is crazy here at the moment. We leave on our four week road trip to Broome in a week, and move the weekend we get back, so we have been busily preparing, not only for the holiday, but also for the move. Decluttering, donating to charity, selling unwanted goods, cleaning out each room, sorting.... it has been keeping us very busy.

Next week is the girls' last week at their current school. Eden is completely nonplussed, saying she didn't even want to go anyway because there are naughty boys at school and they bother her. Miya is, true to form, a little more complicated. She hasn't been enjoying school, to the point where we cut her school days back from three days a week to two days a week (and even then she had quite a few 'sick' days). We couldn't ever get to the bottom of why she disliked school so much. We floated the idea of homeschooling with her, but she wasn't overly impressed by that, either. But when she realised that she would be going to a new school once we move, she became quite unsettled by that, too. I think it has been playing on her mind a bit, as some of her classic 'stress' behaviours are coming to the fore.

On the weekend, Nath and I decided that I needed to take a couple of breaks from the busy-ness, so that I could take each of the girls on a 'date', one at a time. Miya decided she wanted to go to the riverside cafe here in town for a pink milkshake, then a walk around the river bridges. Eden wanted to go to a cafe on the river in Perth for lunch. Shaking aside the niggling, annoying voice inside my head complaining about the cost, I thoroughly enjoyed two afternoons' worth of fun with my lovely girls.

Miya is still worried about school - both her last week at her current school, and the change to her new one (which, incidentally, Nath and I are very hopeful about). But I do hope that we can create a soft place for her to fall when her burdens become too much.

Miya and I on the Northam footbridge.

The beautiful Swan River near Woodbridge.

Ok, maybe the cost WAS worth it!

Sunday Snaps

Some projects completed...

The pin-up board and glass whiteboard I have been meaning to make for ages. I'm quite happy with how they turned out.

Our table all set up ready for dinner with friends, complete with the pretty little placemats I made for the occasion (in the nick of time - I was still top-stitching them when my friends arrived!)

Some opshop finds....

Brannen in his beautiful vintage highchair I found in our local opshop. The lady told me it was for dolls only as it doesn't meet Australian safety standards.... I might need to tie him in with a belt! I just love it, though.

My $5 opshop dress, so retro! Here's the pattern on it, close up:

Some weekend footy....

Some fun with the kids.....

Miya catching 'fairies' in a jar. Yes, my bedroom is possibly a touch dusty. She would try to catch the 'fairies' and was becoming quite disheartened when she couldn't see them shining in the jar. I'm so glad I snapped this pic of the sun hitting the jar, because she was pretty thrilled when I told her that I thought maybe fairies became invisible when they were captured, but sometimes, just sometimes, you could see them shining in photos.

 Bike ride and a play with friends in the park. It is pretty darn cold here these days but the sun is usually still shining, so we are lucky enough to be able to enjoy getting out and about for walks and bike rides during the day. Miya is an awesome bike rider (with training wheels) and Eden is.... well..... getting there.


Hope your weekend was fabulous!