Butterflies in my garden

This post is for my benefit more than anything. It's late summer and the 2 flowering plants that I am noticing around are "Naked Ladies" (which this plant, by the way, I find very weird and unappealing, unless they are popping up amongst the foliage of an agapanthus, since they flower after the agapanthus flowers have died and are removed), and the other is the Butterfly Flower/Bush, or Gaura Lindheimeri, which I am finding myself very attracted to. I have visions of one day having a long driveway headed slightly up hill toward my house or some other part of my property with this plant planted en mass as a border. I love it :)
http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/factsheets/Flowering-Plants-and-Shrubs/Gaura-Siskiyou-Pink/1691

The first day of what will hopefully be a long and happy life of natural food preservation!

Tonight I have begun, for the first time, endeavoring to store what seasonal produce I can access and fit in to my freezer as part of the next step of growing a garden: Preserving your produce.

I have a few kilos of cauliflour, broccoli, some leeks & mushrooms that I picked up cheaply from my local green grocer, and a red capsicum from our garden, and have so far blanched the cauliflour, capsicum and broccoli with the intention of freezing them and using them while cooking over the next few months. I intend to do this regularly with what I can find cheaply and seasonally without compromising quality, and eventually what i can grow myself, and stop buying prepackaged frozen veg!

I have also collected a few handfuls of mint and basil. Apparently these can be frozen, whether it be as is, chopped and mixed in butter, or frozen in ice cube trays. I've rinsed them, allowed them to dry, and placed them in rigid containers and frozen them this way. I also have an abundance of oregano and thyme I want to look into freezing if possible, and next season I will be harvesting my sage also. I would try drying herbs if it weren't for the fact that I don't seem to have anywhere very appropriate for them to hang while drying. I would however like to perfect this art and maybe Jared will let me take over the garage a bit next season for storage ;)

Then I could make my own teas once I've got my chammomile growing too!!!

PHEW!

Things have been chaotic.
Spring > Christmas > Summer > Change of routine > Illness... and a few months of frustrating internet reception, 2 broken lenses, and a boisterous toddler.

Excuses excuses right? There have been things that I have wanted to post about but haven't managed it, so here is my update. Hopefully it will be followed by another sooner rather than later.

Much of what I have so far mentioned has been about my efforts to start a garden. I do intend to expand on this, and incorporate other aspects of the lifestyle I am pursuing. There is so much I want to address, but mental space is such a commodity! So here goes:

Lets start with the garden. Tomatoes, snow peas, Californian poppies, squash, zucchini have all been pulled up. The tomatoes and snowpeas enjoyed a short season after both outgrew their stakes and toppled over. The Californian poppies reached the end of their flowering season, the squash and zucchini succumbed to powdery mildew which I didn't bother combating. Currently I have my 50c pitiful-cum-radiant variegated basil planted in the garden bed, as well as a row of leeks, and the frangipani plant. In pots I have a fabulous capsicum plant with a few capsicums waiting to turn red, an eggplant plant which has been flowering for a week or 2 and now has a little eggplant developing, my lots-a-lemons is still going, our strawberries have recently gone berserk and its now a race to beat the snails to the juicy red sweetness dangling from their stems (ironic).....umm....

Herbs. I've aquired a new mint as my old one succumbed to rust, I've got some aloe vera, the nasturtiums are beginning to look sad, and all the other herbs are doing very well.

NOW FOR THE MOST INTERESTING STUFF...

We are planning to get chickens!!! And we are FINALLY fixing up the "backside" to make it kid-friendly again. To do it as cheaply as possible and to work with the impracticalities of that space without excessive hard yakka we have decided to split the space into 3 sections. In the top section, the flat area, we are going to build up slightly and build a small retaining wall with some pine sleepers, fill it with topsoil and there we are planning to grow grass from seed, selecting a variety that grows well in shade considering it is directly under a liquid ambar tree. This will be the space we intend for the children to be able to play in. Stepping down you would come to a space that will either have grass, fake grass or pavers... whatever works. That space has a lot of crushed rock pieces that are a pain to clear away among the dirt, so we are planning to scatter some grass seed there and see what happens, if it doesn't grow we will seek out a cheap alternative to fill that space. Then at the bottom under the clothes line Jared is fashioning a deck-space out of scrap wood sourced from the tip and anywhere else he can, and as a frame for the whole thing he has reworked and welded the metal skeleton of our trampoline. He is drilling holes into the wood and the metal frame, then using I-forget-the-names to fasten it all together. This will provide a level space for a potting table, pots, the small clam sandpit we have, and a BBQ, where we don't have to worry about killing any grass underneath these things.
It's all experimental, but completely removable if our landlords don't like it when we move out.
Then we have a garden space directly under the liquid ambar tree that is not serving any purpose other than to store all of our things while we are working on the ground. This is a nice sized space and it is here where we will be looking to house some chickens once the grass is strong enough to walk on and we are able to build a home for them. Then after we sort out the chicken area we will be looking to make the garden nicer, filling it with flowering, scented things to mask the occasional drifting sewer waft from next door. Helloooooooo eggs, and a guilt free way to dispose of our food scraps! (Composting isn't working out for me. I'm planning instead to give our scraps to chooks, and eventually a worm farm.)

It was my birthday in January, and my Father in law has committed to helping me build some wood planter boxes to resemble ones that I spotted on a tv commercial a while back (Possibly for an insurance company? I forget), as well as a storage bench seat that was featured on Better Homes and Gardens last year to house my rakes and shovels and things, smaller tools, kids toys etc. In the meantime I am currently thinking about what winter crops I will be planning to plant in the boxes once theyre done, and raising the seeds. Speaking of seeds, my Dad bought me many seeds of different pretty and yummy things for Christmas, I got to pick out the ones I wanted and he bought them for me.

It is time for planting some poppy varieties, which I have started today ;) Oh, how I love poppies!!!

This has been a rushed catch up post, stressful as its been a long time since the last one, but I'm glad it is just about done so I can get back to my regular musing ;)

Next installment... storing things in the freezer

Festival of the Green

In true Mummy fashion, I started this post early this morning but got interrupted by some more pressing needs that woke up and hungrily wandered out of her bedroom before I could finish. And now it is 16 hours later...


Today is Friday. Which to me usually means scrambling around trying to get most of the cleaning done before Jared's weekend begins come Saturday afternoon so he doesn't feel the need to spend his precious weekend minutes helping me out. And that is exactly how today will be spent, but this Friday feels different. It must be the cloudy coolness of this morning, refreshing after the blaze, haze and heat of yesterday. Maybe it's because my children are still in their rooms and all is quiet save for the odd truck driving past on the highway. I think is also is partly because I am choosing not to stress about my pile of dishes as I have a lovely local lady who has committed to coming over soon to wash them for me, helping to kick me out of the dishes rut I so often get in to - if there is a big pile of dishes, I find it difficult to focus on anything and just end up stressing and feeling battered and flustered and although I spend my time "doing things" not much seems to get achieved. The kids haven't exactly helped lately, I think they're both going through difficult stages at the moment which I have found it hard to cope with on my own.

The light at the end of the tunnel for me, however, has been looking forward to this Saturday. Jared has taken the day off work so we can all go together to the Festival of the Green in Springwood.

I'm very excited. To say the least.

The flyer on our fridge tells me there will be a farmers market, garden workshops, craft and garden stalls, great food and music, an animal farm, pony rides and amusement rides.

Not to mention Costa. I'm not as familiar with him as I haven't watched Gardening Australia in years (why, I don't really know. It's exactly the kind of show I would be interested in. OOH! Which reminds me that I have tonight's episode of Better Homes and Gardens waiting for me...) but it seems like he's a bit of a big deal and it's got other people excited so I am more than happy to jump on the bandwagon :)

 

In a moment of sanity...

Haha!

Reading back over last nights blog post I think it's easy to tell which posts are written when I'm depleted, or feeling like I am behind in blogging. Both are valid excuses for the way my last post turned out!

I'm not too sure what I'm going to do next in my garden. Any suggestions?

Maybe I need to re-visit the Diggers website for some inspiration :)

*Yawn*

A few new teeth and a bunch of infections and time passes oh so quickly. Or slowly. It really depends on how much sleep you get in a given period of time, whether or not you have a stock of childrens Nurofen in your medicine cabinet, and if you have access to coffee when it is required (I have to go buy mine as instant coffee with oat milk from home is oh so gross). Either way the garden has not had a huge look-in of late. Which is more than I can say for the pile of dishes which, no matter how hard I try, will NOT GO AWAY! Ugh.

A midst the chaos however, perusing the garden provided the perfect distraction for Mr S when nothing else would calm him down from his misery filled tantrums (the poor little man has had a ridiculously crappy time lately, I can't blame him for needing to vent). So lots of thinking has been achieved, and just a little doing.

We have experienced an array of weather. There was even snow 20min further up the mountain which we of course HAD to go and check out! No gardening was achieved on that day ;)

Our strawberry plants have provided us with a handful of nice big strawbs lately, only some have been lucky to actually turn red before Mr S plucks them off their stalks (he sure loves his strawberries!) I picked up a few extra plants the other day and bundled them together in a pot with a pedestal they look more "in place" now than they did before. I also had another few potted strawberry plants of a different variety which have been reproducing so I separated them and sent a bunch off to their new home in a friends garden, along with some of my seedlings and seeds I have excess of. This has been my latest achievement. I had been trying to figure out how to get the most out of the pots I already own and so the pot that previously housed the strawberries will be used for a new tomato plant which will be coming from another friend. There's lots of sharing and caring done around these parts :)

We've planted a few new seeds, Alyssum and more Californian Poppies. I'd like to focus on raising some poppy seeds and transplanting them into a sloping garden bed near the street that was previously overrun with honeysuckle. I did try to sow seeds straight into the patch but all but 1 seemed to have washed away with the water run off. My older Cali Poppies are now shooting up flower buds, the first one opening a few days ago to reveal a beautiful, buttery, creamy coloured little flower. It personified (flowerfied?) the image I had had in my head of the flower named Acceptance With Joy from the book Hind Feet on High Places. Thats my favourite part of the book, the part that sticks in my mind and plays out in my life the most.

My membership to the Diggers Club arrived a couple of weeks ago. That was an exciting day! Since then, when I've found some time, I've been browsing the catalogues and highlighting the varieties of plants I want to grow. Did you know there is a variety of poppy that looks like a lady bug? Miss C was pretty chuffed to find that, and is keen to order the seeds for it eventually :)

Speaking of lady bugs, I have been noticing their presence in my garden. I have now spotted a lady bug on three different days so hopefully that means they (or that one at least) are here to stay!

And I ordered some soap nuts to use for my laundry. Apparently you're not allowed to grow them here though which is a shame. I would be great to grow my own but they're considered a weed. Oh well...

So this kind of brings us somewhat up to date I guess :) I'll leave you with a photo of our capsicum...

I've got a little dilemma...

Our little punnets of beans, zucchini and pumpkin are growing quite big now, and are very ready to go into the ground.

The problem is I don't have anywhere prepared to plant them, and if I do manage to plant them there is a good chance that we wont be around to harvest them (the joys of renting). I only have about an hour a day to get outside by myself when I am home and I know that it's unlikely I'll be able to get a nice little garden bed prepared in time to plant them before the seedlings choke in their tiny punnets.

I don't want to just toss them, I'd feel like it would be such a waste.

So... should I put in the hard yards to dig out these Agave, dig out the rubbish in that area, feed the soil and get these plants into the ground, or do I pass these seedlings on to someone else who can accommodate them... or do I chuck them into my compost bin?

As sad as it might be, I think the best option is to give them away and only grow plants that I can contain in pots and transport easily for now.

Gee wiz. I feel like I'm saying goodbye to my children!


UPDATE:

Yay! In a fabulous twist of fate my seedlings are going to be off to the Faulconbridge Crop and Swap! How awesome is that! I can't go myself as we have been invited to a wedding, but a fabulous likeminded local individual will be taking them instead.
I love our community :)

Here's the link to the Crop and Swap: http://cropandswap.blogspot.com.au/