In the garden

I really have been spending a lot of time in the school garden and thinking about our garden and dreaming up plans for my garden for this autumn. Once the rain has kicked in I will be madly planting until it gets too wet in winter. More citrus and fruit trees winter veg is exciting me (since we missed sprig panting because of our ny trip) and lots more plants for the flower gardens and the front yard begun. But I need to be patient and wait for some rain, the ground here is super hard.

In My Garden

I have been loving seeing the snow filled pictures out there in blog land at the moment. But here it is a very different story. It is very dry and we are still having mid 30 degree days, Autumn is nearly here and we are getting some cooler days in between but for now we are still waiting for rain and cooler weather.

 I have been watering the passion fruit vine but I think it may be flowering a little late.

Many people here have run out of water and have had to have it trucked in, we are no exception.

This is the view from my front door looking up towards the hill. The colours are still golden and blue and I am so looking forward to the green that Autumn will bring.

Lots of things going to seed.

I am so looking forward to the end of the brown days and the beginning of some greener ones!

Happy March

Hello Happy March!

 I have been looking forward to this time of year for so long, Autumn for me is the best and my most favorite time of year. in spring I get a lot of hay fever  summer is far too hot here for my liking and though I do have a very soft spot for winter and its snuggly feel, autumn is so nice here.

The weather starts to cool off enough that I can get back out in the garden and I have huge plans this autumn for my garden, there are beautiful colours here in the hills and the wind usually dies down a bit in autumn here.

Speaking of gardening, I have been volunteering at Blake's school in there kitchen garden each Friday so I have been coming home with a little produce on a Friday  but today my friend who is also gardening at school bought me in all these tomato's and figs and onions and a beautiful bouquet of fresh herbs.

Gardening and homegrown produce just seems so Nourishing.

I was thinking that March should be the month that I nourish this little blog. My goal is to be here everyday. I will see how I go and there will probably be a lot of mundane stuff here but I just wanna be here.

Now and Then in the Garden

Last year I posted this photo back in July, I came across it the other day and was a little bit gobsmacked because the view has changed a lot

This is what it is like now! Those Daisy bushes have grown so huge that Paul often says "they are the size of small cars!" They took over so much that we had to move some of the plants that were berried under them.

With all this sunshiny weather I am wishing that I could be planting out more areas in the garden but.... (here comes my BIG news) We are saving up for my FIRST OVERSEAS TRIP this November!!!!

Paul is going to America for work and we were able to combine that with a week in NEW YORK!! Its not my first choice of places that I would love to go but hey its New York, I am pretty excited to say the least. 

At my own pace.

Today I am reminding myself to take things at my own pace. 

Next week Luke has 5 appointments in 5 days! Its going to be a busy week and I am nervous and worried even though I know that I have no reason to be. It is going to be mentally very draining. Each new person wants to know exactly what has happened from birth till now and they also want to know what the person before has offered, what assessment has been made and what has been done. It will be tough, I'm not great at remembering details.

 (on my table, a chocolaty milky drink and a home-made banana muffin)

We will have two, possibly three assessments one of them we are half way through.

We also have a haircut this weekend which can still be tricky.

We will make it, I will have a good cook up on Sunday so that I don't have to cook so much this week.

(in my kitchen- roasted pumpkin for pumpkin soup)

 I will remember that it doesn't matter what little amount of cleaning gets done or how big the washing piles get all that matters is that we are all happy and all feel loved. That we are together.

(in my garden- Blake has his own little green house going)

There could be some amazing results from this next week. Results that could be the beginning of changing our lives for the better. I will take what I can at my own pace. The rest will be what it will be.

On My Table

There have been lots of flowers from the garden. We have 1/2 an acre of land and I have a very small patch of daisy's, roses and a few other little bushes and a small veggie patch.

I guess that is something more that I need to commit to- spending more time in the garden, cos I sure do love bringing in flowers from the garden

In my garden

I was so excited today when I went to water the veggies and there was a tomato ready, two zucchini and some beetroot ready to be pulled

I putting that little yellow tomato on my pizza for dinner tonight!

Our Wicking Beds (its a long one!)

Last week while the weather was still sunny we finally decided to have a go at creating a wicking bed. Quite honestly if I didn't have Paul I would have no idea what a wicking bed even was, he has be thoroughly researching them over the past few months and finally convinced me when I bought a miniature version from Tupperware (yeah you know when you feel obliged to buy something) and started growing some flat leaf parsley on my window sill, where I have previously had a great deal of trouble killing poor plants by unknowingly over watering or completely forgetting about them and letting them dry out on the hot sill. So my flat leaf parsley has not only survived but truly thrives in the little Tupperware pot that has a wicking system. Basically how it works is that the water is in an container under the soil and is wicked up through the soil  to the plant which is then able to drink as much or as little as it needs! This saves lots of water ( it uses about a third of the water) which is so important for people who live in dry South Australia and who live on tank water, we cant afford to waste water on anything!!

So we began digging out our first bed.

 Wicking beds can be made in all sorts of ways - you can make above ground beds but this was a really cheap way of doing it.

 I helped with the digging of the first bed but Paul mostly did the second. A seriously good workout we dug down 30 cms of clay rocky soil!

 The beds were then lined with black plastic to hold the water then pipe was cut to fit and slots were cut in the pipes to let the water out.

 We then filled the bed with gravel all the way up to ground height. Also a good workout bringing gravel in a wheelbarrow down a steep hill.

 Both beds were filled with gravel and as you can see the pipe runs all the way down. You fill at the high end and as the water fills the beds it travels down to the second pipe hole where you can check that the water has made it into both beds.

 Then a weed mat was put on top of all this so that the top soil wouldn't seep down into the gravel

 All the soil that was dug out was then shovelled back on top of the weed mat and added some organic matter.

Once we were done I planted it out quite heavily and we filled it up with water. Since then it has been raining quite a bit and has been cold again. You can see my other veggie bed (a normal one) next to it we will see which does better- although my bed has already had a set back with something eating at some of the seedlings I planted- possibly rabbits maybe a bug still not sure yet ...do millipedes eat plants?

Next week it will be back to crafting and hopefully some scrapping!

Sunday Gardening

Yesterday was quite a productive day,
We dug a long vegie bed and planted some seedlings
We weeded
Paul installed some better sprinklers to disperse the grey water around the garden beds and grass
We made a batch of muffins
And a batch of bread for the week
We spent time together
And we had an enjoyable day

We now have
rainbow beetroot
capsicums
carrots
strawberries
lettuce x3 varieties
bok choy
snow peas
one tomato plant
parsley
sage
mint
coriander
chives
basil
That's not including all of the fruit I listed last time.I've a very long way to go, lots of seeds to get going but we are still having a bit of frost here in the mornings so I think I need to wait a little longer? Paul is on holidays in a few weeks so we hope to get at least one wicking bed done then  :)

Weekend

Over the weekend we:
* planted out some seedlings near my back door
* cut up meat, minced and diced and put away in the freezer ready for meals
* spent almost all weekend outside cutting the grass (and digging up weeds)
* ate outside twice in the beautiful sunshine
* dreamed about all the sewing (and even some scrapping) I want to do this week!

Today I DUG!!

Today we took a quick Sunday morning trip to the nursery because we knew this was really our last chance to get in some last minute fruit trees. so we spent the rest of the day doing this:

 And Hurrying to get them in TODAY! Before spring hits!

 We also planted about 12 other plants around the garden beds. That's a total of 17 holes dug :P

So our grand total:
2 plum trees
2 peach trees
1 pear tree- with two pears grafted on
1 nectarine tree
1 apricot tree
1 orange tree
1 grape vine
1 passion fruit vine
and 1 raspberry bush

Almost lawn

This weekend went so fast! Paul and I went out for lunch on Saturday which was super nice, he took me shopping and spoilt me with some beautiful new candles. On Sunday we spent all day doing this:

The area with the reddish brown loam is about 7x6 meters and Paul made us get out every single weed! We are about half way and  this is going to be the grass area. As much as i would love to plant out this area with vegetables and fruit we need somewhere for all of the grey water to go and it will be nice for the boys to have some grass to run around on. As you can see around the grass is a garden bed and lots of huge rocks we used for edging, we moved lots of them there yesterday. I am pretty sore and tired today as you can imagine :)

Monday and Tuesday

Monday: I whipped up two more shopping bags. I really like this fabric, the chocolate brown helps the other colours really pop! I want to make enough of these to have a trolley full. They are so much better than those green bags we get here, you can fold them up and put them in your purse.

Tuesday: We have been buying seeds up, all kinds as you can see. We are getting ready for spring and hopefully soon we will have our veggie beds ready and I will also buy some seedlings and I want to get my hands on some heirloom varieties too. Since this will be our first  real year I want to give lots of things a go and see what works here. 

We are starting to get little bits of sunshine here and flowers are starting to blossom, some small signs of spring beginning here

In my Garden

Today we spent a good part of the day in the garden. This morning this area was FULL of weeds. Paul helped dig them up and lots of rocks too. Then I dug about 24 holes and planted a pile of daisies both white and pink, four roses, some grasses and a few other bits and bobs. The area is about 10 meters long and just under 2 meters wide.

While I was planting up top Paul was down the back digging one hole for this Valencia orange tree. I didn't mind since it is much harder digging down the back. I still have to plant 1 grape vine, 1 passion fruit vine and a raspberry (is it a bush?)plant.

We bought some soil in and dug that in and then as you can see mulched around everything. So good to get a big patch done but we are still only scratching the surface. Before we did all that I made a batch of the bread from the artisan bread in five minutes a day. And have just taken the first loaf out of the oven, cant wait to try it!

A Weeks Worth (day one)

One Happy Thing :
Tulips, arnt they so pretty. Oh it makes me happy to have flowers around especially since its so cold and wintery round here. On My table:
This is in a corner of my crafty room, gotta sew some things from these books.

Today I Made:

Butterfly polka dotty wands- why cant i get a good piccy of these??

From My Garden:

Finally we are getting somewhere. Last weekend we put down some gravel paths and made two garden beds. We have a looooonnng way to go but at least we have finally made a start and it feels real good.

One Grateful thing:

Living out here! Happy that my 15min drive to pick Blake up from school has beautiful scenery and I don't have to look at concrete jungles anymore!!!

Ahhhh now I feel all caught up :)

My garden has flat spots :)

This week Paul is on holidays (a little birthday present to myself lol) and yesterday we hired the bobcat man to come and make us some happy flat spots.



He was here for about 6 hours and he got a stack done. He took over 16 tonne of rock away and he got about 3/4 done of what we were hoping to achieve. We are hoping to get him back for about 2 hours to do two small spots lower than the large part you can see in this photo. He also made two really great flat spots on the left hand side of the yard, only you cant see them past all of the tall grass.

I'm so happy that we are gonna have grass soon and a place for the boys to play. AND for my birthday Paul is going to buy me a puppy as soon as the fences go up, hopefully the fences will be up next week.YAY!!!