Vegetable Gardens - 8 weeks later

Building new gardens 8 weeks ago

Just amazed at how quickly things grow. Can't wait for the corn.

The carrots and beetroot should be ready in around 4 weeks time

We are already eating lettuce and silverbeet

Looking forward to leeks and eggplants and already enjoying the sage

Until now I haven't ever been successful growing coriander.  Obviously I did something right this time!

Water Lillies

This is the 2nd year the lillies have flowered in the dam and this is the most I've seen at any one time.

Garry bought the seeds for these online a couple of years ago while living in an apartment.  He grew 3 plants in buckets on his very small balcony.  I could never really understand why and used to complain about the buckets of slimy green water.

We brought them up here to our block and put them in the dam long before we started building the house.  Two of them didn't survive but this one seems to be doing well, although it spreads quite slowly.   The flowers are worth waiting for they are such a beautiful colour.   It will be interesting to see how far one plant can spread.  We're not actually sure of the name of the flower but I think it's a kind of lotus flower.

The Avocado Tree

We've been really keen to get some fruit trees planted but for whatever reason this has taken longer than planned.

Yesterday Garry planted the first tree in our orchard -  a Wurtz Avocado.

I did a lot of research into which Avocado variety would be the easiest to grow in our area and this is the recommended one.  We have rock hard soil that nothing much grows in so Garry broke up the soil and added a lot of compost but planted the tree high in a mound to provide good drainage.

Then of course the tree needs to be protected from our two puppies (Lilly and Layla).  I expect the wire cage will need to stay for a year or so.   The tree will grow to about 4 metres high and 6 metres wide and will start bearing fruit in the 2nd or 3rd year.

We're looking for a lemon and a lime now to add to our orchard of one !

Creativity - On My Mind.......

This post is part of a Friday photo feature called "On My Mind" over at the Down to Earth Blog. 

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/   (I'm just a little late this week)

It's been a busy and intense week and I'm feeling the need to exercise some creativity and get the right side of the brain going.


I'll do some work on this mat today.  I've made a few of these before and they are handy to put on the kitchen bench to put hot pans on as they come of the stove top.  They are made with natural jute (bought at the hardware store) and this is combined with some variegated natural cotton.  It's just single crochet stitch simple and fast to make.

On My Mind...................

This post is part of a Friday photo feature called "On My Mind" over at the Down to Earth Blog. 

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/


A few months back I received some day old chicks for my birthday.  This week one of them produced their first egg.  I wasn't there to see it so Garry took these very cute photos for me.  The little egg  measured35mm end to end.

Have a great Friday !

Morning Storm

 These are some pictures I took of a storm we had last Saturday morning.  In South East Qld morning storms aren't common so it was a very eerie feeling when this one came over.  There was some hail that fell but it was only small and thankfully didn't cause any damage to our growing vegie patch.

The storm moved really fast and was all over and done within an hour.  

After the storm the Kangaroos came out to graze on the wet grass.

What Really Came First - The Chickens or the House?

I called my first blog post – The First Step and it was about building our house.  The truth is the first step was building the chicken coop.  I was so eager to have chickens that we built our chicken coop and bought our first layers before our house was built.  We spent many hours researching chickens and chicken coops on the internet and it’s fair to say we started this exercise from scratch with very little knowledge.

Garry designed and built two boxes for the chickens to roost in.  We then got started on building the chicken run.  For me it was important that they had plenty of space to free range.   We got our first layers a couple of days before Easter and our first egg on Easter Sunday.    We spent many hours just hanging around in the chicken coop watching and learning about what chickens do and after a few weeks we would let them out of the coop each day to roam free around the property but if we were outside they preferred to be with us.

They were very happy chickens but unfortunately we weren’t aware of just how smart foxes could be.  One night we lost 2 chickens to a fox who managed to scale the chicken run fence.   This was heartbreaking  for us and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

We did some more research and ended up buying two mesh cages that we have joined together.  We attached the nesting boxes to the sides and can still retrieve the eggs without having to enter the cage.  The chooks put themselves to bed at night and we go up later and close the cage door.    The cage is completely enclosed so they are now safe not just from foxes but snakes as well.

At the moment we have 9 very happy healthy chickens who supply us with amazing eggs each day

On My Mind.........................

This post is part of a Friday photo feature called "On My Mind" over at the Down to Earth Blog. 

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

On my mind today is driving out of the city tonight back to the farm to see the girls.

I love Fridays........................

Restoration

This silky oak dressing table belonged to my Grandmother and was then passed onto my parents sometime in the 1970’s.   At this time there were some very interesting colours in furniture stains around and my father chose Antique Green for this grand old piece.

I have just had it shipped up to my house and unfortunately on the way the main mirror was broken so we will be getting that replaced within the next few weeks.We have been busy sanding off most of the green.  I don’t believe we could ever get it all off and I actually don’t want to.  I love the colour that it is becoming and plan to only finish the table with a clear protective coat.

We’ve been onto this project for couple of weeks now and probably have a couple more to go.

The dresser was unassembled to ship so I wasn’t able to take a before photo however I’ll look back through some old photos to see I can find and post it together with the finished photo soon.