What's in the garden

The raspberry (in the foreground) - it will live! Thankyou to my good friend from Thistlebrook for giving me two suckers from her raspberry.  One died and one looked like it was going the same way, but here it is, alive!

The cherry tomato bush grew from a little seedling into a giant behemoth of a plant. There are hundreds of little green tomatoes on it ...

... and some are getting red! We go outside in the afternoons and eat all we can find!

Snow peas!  They are producing well, but there are never many snow peas on the plants.  This is because we eat whatever we can find.

Sweet corn.  Our last crop was a total failure, and this was planted by semi-accident in a bed I wasn't wanting tied up right now.  Now I feel that I need to offer the corn the dignity to at least try to produce a crop before I fill the bed with a new load of soil and clear out the weeds.  Not in that order.

Same for the beetroot.  Awesome yummy beetroot dip: roast a beetroot or two along with a head of garlic, peel beetroot and squeeze flesh from garlic, process until smooth, add low-fat Greek yoghurt.  I am making myself hungry.

Capsicum.  How do I know when it is ready?  I think it is growing slowly because we've had coolish weather.

Straw bales still going well.  I popped a few sprouting sweet potatoes into it and they are looking very grateful.  Now I despair of ever having the area done with so I can put new soil in.  I keep growing stuff there!

Succession-growing lettuces.  I've put these ones in after the last ones were eaten.  By us.

I am so happy when I am outside putting holes into stuff with my cordless drill.  On the right hand side of this picture you can see the wires I put up on my fence for things to climb on.  Time will tell if it's strong enough.  My entire garden is an experiment, I think it only fitting the structural integrity of the fence and supported vines follows suit.  Lots of green elsewhere in the garden, including the green beans which have kept on producing despite being eaten into oblivion each day by the children.

Weeds, weeds, weeds, weeds.  So many weeds!  And piles of tiles and the shoots from a 'rubbish tree' that a gentleman kindly cut down for me but failed to poison.  Goodo.  I'll deal with the shoots for the next 50 years.  Cool.

But more important than what's in the garden ... WHO'S in the garden!  Does Bullseye count?  I get these alert expressions from her by holding a tennis ball to the side of the camera lens.  I get the underexposure by not taking care with my photography and failing to photoshop the image after the fact.

And here's my favourite bit.  Children.  Children spending time in the sandpit that I made, playing in rainwater collected in the cover that I made.  Okay, it's just a tarp.  But I did attach it to cuphooks I put in the fence using my cordless drill.  The shadecloth was achieved after much drilling and use of my handy-dandy screwdriver set.  And lo, I was greatly pleased.

And that's my garden today.

A Little Bit Weird

I've been trying a bit of straw-bale gardening. It's where you get some straw bales and ... plant a garden in them.  Well, it's a bit more complex than that, but that's the idea.

I got two bales for my first attempt.  I decided that if all else fails (which it isn't) then at the end of the growing season I can take the bales and spent veggie crops apart and let it improve the soil underneath.  I've put them in a place where I would love to have veggies next year, but currently has quite poor soil.

I've put in cucumbers, capsicum, rocket and some little carrots which will certainly fail because the bales have proved to be too rich in nutrients.  The carrots see no reason at all to put down big, fat roots in search of noms.  Everything else is growing well though, and I've decided that you can't have everything.  I also put some pumpkin seeds into the ends of the bales and then had to decide which of the resulting plants were to be allowed to spread their vines out along the garden from there.

There are some tiny capsicums and cucumbers appearing ...

... and the flowers are making it look quite joyful.

But there's one weird thing.  When I started this little straw bale garden, I put the two bales standing up here in my garden ...

... with barely the space for my hand to fit between them.  Sure, there's been a lot of decomposing and squashing-down, but it also appears there's been SLIDING.  And that is totally weird.  In the picture above you can see the two bales covered in Green Things Growing, and then an expanse of dead grass clippings in between.

And that, I believe, is a Little Bit Weird.

In my front garden

A magnificent hot pink azalea, sitting amongst the gazanias

The first rose blooms of the season with which something strange is going on. I'm not sure what is causing it yet.

A little outdoorsy boy who likes eating mulch and crawling towards the road.

Daisies in between the roses.

Kalanchoes stretching towards the sun. But only if you lie on your tummy and photograph them that way.

Ubiquitous petunias.  The word ubiquitous reminds me of this post.  Terrible, wasn't it?  It still makes me chuckle.

A beautiful butterfly who brings her own special brand of "help" to my garden.  On any given day, her help could involve watering plants or having a tantrum on the front lawn.

The back garden, now, it is something quite different.  All I have to show you is this collage I made to send our sponsor children.  I notice that it's out of date too, as all of these seedlings are much bigger now.

Maybe later this week I'll show you what the little plants are up to, take a picture of the straw bale garden that we've planted, and perhaps even tell you why Bullseye the dog is now canis non grata at our place.  But I say "maybe" because I know all too well what happens when you're in a blogging slump: you promise blog posts that never eventuate. 

And then you put up a post of pictures of your gardens.  Sigh.

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All photos SOOC for reasons of lethargy and apathy.

Portal to the Centre of the Earth

I have found a portal to the centre of the earth.  It is here.  Under my rose garden.

I have always wondered why, after thoroughly watering my roses, the soil is dust the next day.  I have put it down to too-good drainage in the soil, and failed to follow that up with more frequent watering.

Now I know why the drainage is so good.  Under my garden is a portal to the earth's core.

I discovered this by accidentally leaving our tank running slowly onto one of our roses.  After it had been trickling onto the "Old Fragrance" all night, it had drained from completely full to completely empty.  Something like 13,000L went onto that rose.

You'd think the surrounding ground would have been wet, but apart from directly under the end of the hose, it was dry.

13,000L went straight down - to the centre of the earth - without touching the sides.

The Pumpkin Pimp

Today I have been pollinating pumpkins.  Despite the fact that pumpkins have been hitchin up and doin the deed without human involvement until now, when you don't have a lot of bees around, when you only have one or two plants, or when you don't want your lovely little punkins crossed with zucchinis, giving them a little help never goes astray.  This is my first crop of pumpkins and seeing that we eat so much pumpkin at our house, I don't want to have a failed crop.

A few short months ago, I didn't know a single thing about growing pumpkins.  Now I know the following facts about growing pumpkins:

1. If you bury garden scraps containing 316 discarded pumpkin seeds, you are likely to get 316 pumpkin plants growing in the exact spot.

2.  I now know what embryonic pumpkin plants look like.

3.  I know that if you want a pumpkin plant growing in that spot, it's okay to pull out 315 tiny pumpkin plants and allow just one to grow.

4.  I know that the one remaining pumpkin plant will take up an unimaginably enormous amount of space.

5.  To a pumpkin lover, this is a truly wonderful sight:

6.  This is what a male flower looks like:

7.  This is what a female flower looks like:

Aw, look, she's pregnant!

7b. This is a cucumber, don't let it confuse you if you're growing them side-by-side.

Actually, it would only be me who would be confused by this.  Please ignore what I just said.

Again...
Male:

Female: 

See the difference?  Vive la difference.

8.  My mother told me that you'll need both males and females and you therefore shouldn't go hacking off any of your radials until you are sure you don't need them.  Even if you think your broccoli seedlings need the sunlight, do check before you go lopping off anything.

These two radials have grown through the sweet corn bed, and are now taking up my broccoli and cauliflower beds.  They are a bit of a nuisance, but they are bearing female flowers.  If I chopped these two off, I wouldn't be able to go cryin' to my Mum when I got no pumpkins.

Sorry, that was a bit dramatic.

9.  Now this is the bit where you should avert your eyes if you want.  The inside of the flowers are different.  The male looks like this:

and the female looks like this:

I want to shout with joy, "It's a boy!" and "It's a girl!" when I see these pictures.

10.  What you do is get the pollen from the stamen of the male flower and get it into the stigma of the female flower.  It seems that you can't go too wrong in this step, but for more detail on knowing when male and female flowers are ready and different -er- pollinating techniques, read this great article.  It begins with the marriage service of a male flower and a female flower.

11.  Before you know it, the female flower dies and you see a Leetle Baybee Punkin:

I really have no right to go on about this like I've been doing it for years.  I only mention it because it's what I've been learning recently.  I hope that in a few months I won't be lamenting my non-crop of pumpkins, shamefacedly admitting I shot off my mouth on 25 March, appearing like the expert I'm not.

But that's a worry for another day.

Numerous and Various

October 2007, Nat was 2 years 7 months.  He was getting tired and emotional but it was nowhere near sleep time so I decided to calm him down with some TV.  I said, "What would you like to watch?  We have Wiggles, Noddy, Bob the Builder, Peppa Pig, Veggie Tales ... actually, we have VARIOUS!"  Nat began to cry.  "I don't LIKE "Various!" he stormed.
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And so on with the Numerous and Various.

1. Nat's holiday uniform (remember Aussies say 'holiday' when Americans say 'vacation.' It's not like we're still having Christmas.)

2.  Anna-Lucia's holiday uniform

3.  Nat's nearly-back-to-school-time uniform, worn each day and to bed for two nights this week, and to the shops on Saturday morning.  I am liking the orange!  Unique!

4. Veggies

5.  Somebody should brush that little girl's hair

6.  Raspberry Tiger, arranged so it looks like an orange Brilliant is aiming to crush its spirit.

7. Gold Bunny, cruelly broken from the main plant by an unco-ordinated woman taking the dog for a walk at 5:00am, who tossed the newspaper towards the side gate but missed the mark and took out a new long stem of the Gold Bunny instead. Goodbye to the new growth and four of the five buds I was so looking forward to. (The unco-ordinated woman was me, in case you missed that.)

8. Double Delight, arranged haphazardly, stood in front of my computer screen with the skylight above, some slight soft focus and saturation of colour in 'post' (Picasa, because I'm too tired for Photoshop.)

I would have loved more black around the edges, but my computer screen is only so big.  I'm sure that Tracy P could clone some black though, and put it onto an increased canvas size.

9. Plumbers and doctors: Yes, you did read right. In a town where I cannot find a lady doctor, I have myself a totally awesome lady plumber. She's great. And my man doctor is turning out okay too.

10. To "veiledturnip" - firstly you have the best screen name I've ever heard. Secondly, I did call Koinonia Medical Center twice in the past but their books were closed ... hmm. Maybe they were just closed for ME? Maybe you've had more luck than I have, and recently? Maybe you ARE Dr Alison Brown, and are offering to have my family on your caseload? Hm? If so, thankyou! How kind.

11.  To Emily Sue - I had made vague noises late last year of being on the creche roster at church, but decided against it as A-L didn't even want to stay in creche when I was in there with her!  What a waste of time!  Church probably checked their records and saw that she'd attended approx 10 times, but didn't know that she'd made it to the end only once or twice.  I'm just saying though, to receive a roster in the mail would have been softened a little if it had an accompanying note saying "We see Anna-Lucia has attended ... At our church it is usual that parents of children who attend are on the roster ... We've taken the liberty of putting your name down ... Is that okay?"  And while we're at it - why is it automatically the mother?  Why don't they put fathers' names down, or "Father/Mother", to give us the option?  But no, only women have to miss church to look after children, like we never get a chance to have kids around us the rest of the week.  "Hey You - you've got saggy breasts - you can do the job."  Ugh.  Why did I start on this topic?

12.  To Boomer - I've been on various BP medications for nearly two years now, and the particular med changes according to whether I'm pregnant, breastfeeding or not.  Never fear, I am being looked after!  Sometime my body asks for a change, that's all.  "Creche" is the nursery at church, yes.  And it wasn't really sadness/joy at seeing Nat go off to school - it's joy-joy-excitement-pride-joy!  He can't wait, as evidenced by his non-stop school uniform wearing the week before the first day of school!  What a cool kid.

13. To Tracy P - Yes, it was tremendously cathartic to write it all out.  As soon as I hit "publish" I had the strength to make a doctor's appointment, get out of the house while the water was off, and combine the school-uniform-buying trip with the doctor.  Blogging is great!

14. To Crafty Mummy - You asked if you could help.  Hmmmm ...  I'm two centimetres away from asking if you'd make an art smock for Nat for school.  Would you?  I'd give you some $$.

15.  To Scurrette - Do you travel to Greenslopes from your current home?  Wow.  That's dedication.  But when you've got a good doctor, it's great to keep him/her.  My old one offered to keep me on, she said it was only an hour down the highway.  And how many times have I nearly going to see her since moving up here?  Heaps!  Push has never come to shove though.

16. To Hippomanic Jen - Yes, we have often lined our Worry Horses up in the past, haven't we?  It takes time for a doctor (or speech pathologist) to build up a consistent caseload, and as Dr Mwilambwe said to me the other day, until a doctor gets a fair number of elderly or chronic patients, things can be a little quiet.  Reminds me of my own working years in between the baby-raising years.

17.  To BB - you are wonderful!  I will really try to do these 2 times on the roster, who knows, it might be just wonderful!  But my suspicion is that A-L will always call the shots to up & leave ... however if she were to be allowed with your big girl and Nat in their class, I'm sure A-L would stay until the end, every day!

18. To The Working Mum - you make a good point.  A fear of dying of a stroke in the middle of Boyswear is a little irrational.

19. To Crazy Sister - I like that particular horse in light blue.  Good choice.

20. To the rest of you - glad to give you a smile.

Smiles, Encouragement and the Garden

1. Smiles  It's funny, isn't it?  For the first few weeks of your baby's life, you can't wait until they smile.  Then they get to that age when they start giving the first little smirks and you hold out for every single one.  And then your days are full of this:

2. A Special Type of Encouragement  I am messing around with my blog template, trying for a fresher, cleaner look.  And I know from when I was pregnant with Joseph that the orange-yellow-green theme can make a gestating woman terribly nauseous. 

The other night I spent hours playing around in Photoshop and then inside the HTML code of my blog and I did some exciting new things, surprising even myself!  Mr de Elba looked at it, paused for too long, and slowly said, "I would have made it this tall," indicating about a third of the height of my new header. 

Bowled over by that withering barrage of praise, I went to bed.  But I am still working on it!  ("The template or the marriage?" you ask.  Well, the template involves less negotiation, but the marriage doesn't involve HTML code.  I wonder which is easiest?  I know which is more worth the effort!)  Here's a dead fly to keep you going until I change the template for good:

3.  Gardening!  I am enjoying my little garden!  The fun of growing tomatoes...

...the promise of planted seeds (shallots here)...

...and the manic chaos of a border collie chasing a tennis ball.

It's great being outside.