the farmer and the musician

I wasn’t going to write a post today.

The 365 Project is over and I can relax and skip a few days, posting only when something that interests me happens, or when I want to talk about something.

But today had its moments so I wanted to share them.

Firstly, we have a huge yellow plum tree in our back yard, which has been sadly neglected and which we forget to prune every year, without fail.

It grows yellow plums – obviously – and Slabs turns them into plum jam and plum sauce. A few weeks ago they started dropping off the tree, and Junoirdwarf went around the yard picking them up and putting them in the back of his Tonka truck.

This was because, he said, he is now a farmer.

So this morning we found him standing on a chair picking the unripe plums from the tree and putting them into an empty pot.

All part of being a farmer.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when Juniordwarf and I had a little disagreement and he went outside. A bit later I went to look for him and found him in the vege garden pushing all the plums he’d picked this morning into the polystyrene box that his carrots are growing in.

He said he was planting the plums so they’d grow.

I really hope they don’t . . .

As well as being a farmer, Juniordwarf is also a musician. We make a lot of mix tapes (or whatever the CD equivalent is), and Slabs has made several for Junordwarf of his favourite songs of the moment.

The other day he announced that he would be making his own CD, with 16 songs on it, because that’s a good number. Not only does he name all the songs, but now he sets himself up a venue to perform, complete with drum and pedals, and sings the whole CD.

Here are some photos of today’s performance, in which the Tarja (former singer from Nightwish) song “Anteroom of Death” was followed by two of his own compositions: “Doodlebum” and “Race Your Feet so You’re the Bum”.

If you’re wondering about the outfit, so are we. 

Late this morning, Juniordwarf got changed. He said he wanted to dress up in green. Presumably no further explanation is necessary.

P365 - Day 361 - the pirate caterpillar (and year in review 8/12)

Juniordwarf helped me in the garden.

What I mean is, he played in his sandpit while I spent hours clearing out vegetation from various parts of our yard. Then he wanted me to fill his little clam shell pool up.

I didn’t want to say no, because I’d already told him we weren’t going to the pool today and I didn’t want to disappoint him again. But the clam shell pool is located off to the side of the house, under shadecloth, in the fenced off area where the dog can’t go, and I was working in the main yard.

He’s not at the age where he can be left unsupervised in water, so I had a problem.

Luckily there was a shady area just near where I was working, and the beauty of the clam shell pool is that it can be detached from the sand pit part and moved. So that's what I did, and Juniordwarf played happily in his pool while I continued the clearing out process.

Win-win.

After he got out and had dried off, I told him he could put his same clothes back on. He didn’t want to, and insisted wearing an ensemble that included the green stripy pants that I’d made for his Very Hungry Caterpillar costume for Book Week. 

Ok, well they weren’t intended for general wear, but he didn’t seem to care. He put on his antenna headband and his pirate eye patch and announced that he was ‘the Pirate Caterpillar’.

I’m just glad that something I made has actually been worn more than once. 

And . . . now that I have my very own sewing machine (courtesy of Lil Sis, Mr Tall and my mother), I’ll be able to get out the pants pattern I used for the costume and make some more pants for Juniordwarf that fit around the waist and in the legs – something that has proven to be more and more of a challenge when shopping for clothes.

Year in Review (8/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

August: Giving the inner critic the boot

A post, and a day, I am really proud of. Somewhere between the miserable post from July that I posted yesterday and this one, I started to feel like I could make some of the changes in my life that I think I need to make. This is an example. 

P365 - Day 360 - return to the purple carrots (and year in review 7/12)

Remember when Juniordwarf and I sowed the purple carrot seeds in June?

Well they have taken a lot longer to grow than the 12-18 weeks suggested by the garden guides. In fact, only two of the seeds even grew into carrots.

Today I thought one might be big enough to harvest, so Juniordwarf and I pulled it up.

These are very cool carrots - purple on the outside and orange on the inside.

And they taste so much better freshly harvested than store-bought carrots.

Year in Review (7/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

July: Here I write

Not so much a favourite post, as one that shows me how much I have changed, and become better at coping in the not so good times over the past six months.

P365 - Day 338 - trellis

This is part of Slabs’ masterplan for his shed, aka The Beer Barn.

Previously there was an old, low, very dodgy trellis held up pretty much only by the plants climbing over it.

This weekend he put a flash new big trellis in place.  I like it because it gives my little herb garden a bit more privacy. 

P365 - Day 332 - beans!

When I got home from work this afternoon, the first thing Juniordwarf wanted to show me was some beans that he and his friends had grown at their daycare centre. He was so excited about it, I just had to smile.

Slabs said that they were the first thing Juniordwarf showed him when he went to pick him up from daycare, and that he was really excited then too.

Juniordwarf said that he and I would share them tomorrow. Somehow they are going to be present at a puppet show that Juniordwarf will be doing tomorrow. He's doing this to make up for missing out on the puppet show at the Child and Family Centre site celebration on Saturday that was cancelled due to the rain. I'm not sure that he actually even has any puppets, so this might be interesting.

I love five year old logic.

I'm still not too sure what the connection between the beans and the puppet show is. I'm sure I'll find out though.

A good thing about all this was that he was so proud of his beans that he let me take a photo of him holding them. He does that now: stuff he's proud of can be photographed (sometimes), but he has to completely over-pose for it. Once I've taken the photo, he says: "that was a good one".

I'm just happy he lets me take a photo, because he's become very resistant to photos lately.

Now I just wish the stuff in our vege garden would grow so he can get excited about that too.

P365 - Day 331 - i could write a lot about my bad day . . .

. . . but I won’t. It would all be ranty, venty stuff.

Instead I will focus on something good.

I know Juniordwarf is only five, and he’s only in Kinder and there shouldn’t be too much pressure on him and he will learn and develop at his own pace, and we just have to support and encourage him, not push him.

But it has occurred to both me and Slabs – independently of each other – that when it comes to reading, he’s a lot more capable than he lets on. We thought that a few fun activities to encourage him to work things out for himself rather than keep asking us to tell him things that we are fairly sure he could figure out if he tried, might not be a bad thing.

So we’ve signed up for a trial period for an online reading program, which he started earlier in the week.

So far it’s going really well and Juniordwarf is having a lot of fun with it. We think it’s great because he’s learning basic reading and spelling skills to reinforce what he’s doing at school and learning how to use a computer at the same time. All while he’s having fun.

I loved watching him enjoy himself this morning. 

His favourite parts are where he deliberately makes a mistake and gets told (in an amusing way) that he got the wrong answer.

Also today, despite the forecast of rain, it was a nice day, so we had no excuse not to get out in the yard and continue the never-ending task of clearing out the jungle, the undergrowth and the stickyweed.

These photos will serve as reminders of how far we’ve come over upcoming weeks as this thankless task continues.

Vege garden hell

Comfrey - I know it's good for compost, but this is ridiculous

Stickyweed and feral grapevine

Most of the stickyweed has gone.

Also, if anyone knows what I should do with my feral grape vine, please let me know. 

P365 - Day 327 - vege garden or something

I am battling oxalis in my vege garden. I believe it is almost impossible to get rid of. As soon as you rip it out, more grows in its place.

Here are my poor little corns in among the evil weed.

P365 - Day 322 - here be dragons (eggs)

A while very long time ago, Juniordwarf and I met up with the fabulous Kim from frogpondsrock to create some dragons eggs. 

One of the highlights of that day was walking through the bush and finding the huge eggs that Kim had made for the event and hidden in the bush for people to find. Here are some of the fantastic eggs that Kim created.

Unfortunately, some people decided to help themselves to the eggs, and several of them went missing, which was a very disappointing end to a fun day.

Kim very kindly offered to give me the sculpture that I had featured on my blog post about the event and I was thrilled that she’d offered it to me. 

I had an idea that it would go very nicely in the little sanctuary part of my garden that I’ve set aside just for me and my herbs.

It was just a matter of organising to catch up with Kim and picking it up, together with the dragon eggs that Juniordwarf and I had made in February, after Kim had fired them in her kiln (or, as Juniordwarf thought, killed them in the fire).

Well making a time to meet took longer than expected, but after a couple of false starts, today we finally organised to meet Kim at the Off Centre Gallery, in the Salamanca Arts Centre,  where Kim and a group of ceramics and glass artists display and sell their work.

I didn’t have much of a chance to take much in at the gallery, but I’ll be sure to go back in the next couple of weeks when I don’t have to keep a watchful eye on the small person, so that I can have a good look at everything. From this brief visit, it looks like there is a lot of beautiful work in there.

Juniordwarf had been looking forward to getting his egg from Kim for months, and he was so excited to find out we’d be going to get it today. 

He asked Kim whether it was going to hatch, and when we got home, the first thing he did was sit his little dragon on his egg to hatch it.

That approach being unsuccessful, a couple of hours later, he decided that he’d have to sit on it to make it hatch.

You have to admire his persistence!

I’m very excited about having a feature piece to put in my herb garden. I feel very inspired to get out there and make it all happen. Now if I can just manage a couple of days off work to spend in the garden, I might start to make some progress.

And thank you again Kim, for your very generous gift. 

P365 - Day 296 - find your passion

Go directly to the garden. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

I’m one of those people who never knew what they wanted to do after they finished school. I was the career guidance teacher’s number one nightmare, and my parents despaired that I was never going make up my mind.

As a result, I changed my mind about what university course I was going to do basically on the strength of a throwaway line from a friend, dropped out of the course after one year and four weeks, and did a degree I would never in a million years have seen myself doing two years previously.

Then, having absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, I somehow landed a job in the public service in Canberra. While the prospect of moving to Canberra was less than appealing, the prospect of earning more money than I’d ever had in my life was somewhat attractive.

So I took the plunge, packed up and moved, with the intention of staying for a couple of years and then coming home and doing what I really wanted to do, whatever that was.

History will show that the ‘couple of years’ lasted a bit longer than that. It will also show that I have no more idea about what I want to do now than I did then. But all the time, I was convinced that all I had to do was find what I was passionate about, and then I’d find a way to make that a part of my working life, then I’d be doing work that I loved so much that it didn’t even seem like work*.

Only what was my passion?

I dabbled in many things. I wanted to like things. I bought stuff. I started reading books. I did career inventories. I shelved stuff. I bought more stuff. I stuffed books onto bookshelves. I assessed my Myers Briggs Type for clues. I tried to remember what I loved doing as a child. I tried to imagine my perfect job. I made plans. I ditched plans.

None of it worked. There was too much out there. How could I possibly find the one thing or the couple of things that I was truly passionate about when there was so much stuff to do? Was my gut instinct telling me what I really wanted to do, or what I thought I wanted to do, or even what I thought I wanted to want to do?

How was I ever going to know what I REALLY wanted to do?

What am I passionate about? Am I passionate about anything?

I remember reading some time about in one of the zillions of “Find out what you really want to do and go out and do it” books that I started reading (and mostly never finished) that a good clue is to find the activity that puts you into what I think they called “the zone” – that is the place where you so immerse yourself in what you’re doing that you lose track of time, forget to eat, forget to go to bed . . . and no, I don’t think they were thinking of chatting online all night.

It occurred to me today – as it has at other times – that the only time I really get that completely lost is when I’m in the garden. When these authors described this zone, they were describing what happens to me when I’m gardening.

When I’m gardening I’m in my own world. I tell myself stories, I dream, I replay incidents that didn’t work out so that I get the result I want, I have conversations with people in my head. The real world ceases to exist.

Back in the days BJ (Before Juniordwarf), I’d think nothing of spending the whole weekend in the garden. If I didn't have to eat I wouldn’t have.

But even so, it’s not something that I jump out of the door to do first thing on a Saturday morning. It is a huge effort for me to get to the point where I’m actually working in the garden and, from there, to that state where I get lost in it. It’s very easy to find something else to do, see something that has to be done, get distracted by something, and then it’s too close to lunch time or we have to go up the street, or we have to go out, or Juniordwarf wants me to do something with him, and then it’s too hot, or it’s raining or I don’t have the seeds I need or . . . .

So despite the fact that I love it, I find it incredibly hard to get motivated to do it.

It seems like a complete paradox. If I love it so much and it gets me into this other world, why then am I reluctant to get out there and do it?

The other factor that comes into the equation now, that I didn’t have before, is Juniordwarf! I want him to get more involved with the garden, but I don’t want to force him, so I just let him do pretty much what he wants outside, show him things that might interest him, let him plant seeds, do some digging and whatever else he is interested in, but most of the time he’s more interested in hanging out with Sleepydog. And the good thing about that it is it keeps her out of my way – she’s a very ‘in your face’ dog.

But getting into the “zone” is harder when I have to spend time with Juniordwarf. Not that I don’t enjoy doing stuff with him in the garden – I do, I love it – but it’s not the same.

And then if he wants to go back inside and do something else, my well-honed sense of Mother Guilt kicks in, and I feel guilty that I’m outside doing my own thing and leaving him to his own devices - despite the fact that he's probably having a great time inside with his Dad! 

This is a combination of (a) guilt that I’m relying on Slabs to spend more than his fair share of time with Juniordwarf, (b) guilt that if Slabs is also doing his own thing, Juniordwarf has to entertain himself and leaving him to his own devices for too long isn’t fair, (c) guilt that I don’t have as much time as I used to with him and that I should be spending more of the weekend with him and that spending time in the garden isn’t as important as spending time with him . . .

However . . .

If I hung out with Juniordwarf all day and did no gardening, then the jungle would continue to multiply at a crazy rate, we’d have no home-grown vegetables and every time I looked out the back window I’d feel guilty about not being out there and getting stuck into it.

Really?

For goodness sake!

I wonder if other parents struggle with this sense of guilt no matter what they do? Is this one of those things that no-one ever talks about before you have kids, and even if they did, you as a child-free adult would scoff and tell them to get over it?

Now that I’ve actually written it down, I can see how ridiculous it all seems. 

Where the hell does all this guilt come from? And that’s only scratching the surface. What purpose does any of it serve, except to make me anxious and feel bad - and for no good reason? Surely there must be better things I can put my mind to than making myself feel rotten.

It’s that nasty inner critic at it again, this time attacking me with its little arsenal of “shoulds”.

And I “should” ignore it.

Well, for a post that was just going to talk about how much I got done in the garden today, this has turned into something completely unexpected.

What can I take from this?

• I need a big push to get me started on anything, even if it’s something I love doing. This can only come from me. There are no excuses. I can either take the easy way and procrastinate, do nothing and continue to feel bad about that, or I can push through the pain of the resistance barrier, do something and end up feeling good about what I’ve achieved.

• I want to be able to get out in the garden for periods of time that will let me get a reasonable amount of work done without feeling like I’m abandoning my family. I need to talk to my family about how we can make this work – what’s reasonable, what I need and what they need. How they can help.

• I still don’t know “what I want to do”, but that’s OK for now, because at least I know what I am passionate about.

And today I had a great morning ripping out weeds, cutting branches off a tree and giving myself some hope that I might still get the vege patches under control in time to grow a few veges this year. I even found some veges growing in amongst the weeds. Yay!

* Before you tell me that this is complete piffle, and that very few people are ever able to find that work-passion balance, and that actually working with your passion can end up killing your passion, remember that I was in my early 20s when all this happened, and I really didn’t have much of a clue about anything! (Some would say I still don’t, but I choose to ignore them.)

P365 - Day 295 - stickyweed hell

Back in March, I wrote about my battle with the dead stickyweed in what is supposed to be my little piece of paradise.

Well I haven’t learned my lesson, and seven months on, the stickyweed is back in full force.

I spent a lot of today paying for this laziness, and removed most of it from my little patch and what was once the vege patch.

One day I will learn that I should wear long sleeves for this task. But at least ripping the evil stuff out now, before it seeds and dies, means that I’m not going to end up covered in the filthy sticky seeds.

Chances of me keeping it under control?

P365 - Day 263 - gardening

Juniordwarf said he wanted to go outside this morning, so I told him to go while I finished what I was doing.

A while later I went out to see what he was doing. He’d put on his little gardening gloves, got his little digger and was in the vege garden digging in the soil.

He was digging soil out of the garden and putting it into the polystyrene box that we’re trying to grow carrots in (rather than battle with the oxalis in the vege patch).

I asked what he was doing, and he said he was gardening.

Of course he was!

P365 - Day 176 more space to garden

My vegetable garden is something of a mess at the moment.

Well, let’s be honest here, our entire yard is a bit of a mess at the moment.

And when I say ‘a bit of a mess’, you can probably take out the first three words and the sentence would be more accurate.

What is supposed to be the vege garden is an area about 6 x 3 metres (this is a wild guess, I actually have no idea and am not going outside to measure it in the dark) that is fenced off from Sleepydog.

In the past we have successfully grown pumpkins, corn, potatoes and tomatoes. Oh, and zucchinis. Did I mention zucchinis? 

We have also successfully cultivated a crop of oxalis, aka soursob, which is a beast to get rid of and which I am almost ready to declare the victor in our five-year battle.

I decided that I needed more space to grow different kinds of veges, because the ones we grew over spring and summer took up pretty much all of the vege patch, despite the oxalis.

So I set up a couple of plastic squares (which are starting to fall apart), supported with bricks, with the intention of growing smaller, more compact veges like lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli, alternated with peas and beans and maybe some onions, spring onions and garlic.

This is working to a limited extent, although Sleepydog has no concept of keeping off any designated areas (the reason for the fenced off garden in the first place).

But now I’ve decided that the whole area where the squares are is going to be part of my master vege garden plan. As I’ve developed it, the non-vege parts have become harder to mow, and it makes more sense to rip all of the ‘lawn’ out and use it as well, because the left over space isn’t big enough for any other use.

Today I finished the task I started the other day of digging out the first corner of this space. I’m thinking since it’s the southern-most point of the space it would make most sense to use this for tall or climbing veges, so I’m going to start with peas to climb up a trellis.

According to Gardenate I can plant snow peas right now, so that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow. I’m hoping I can convince Juniordwarf to help out too, now that he’s planted his purple carrot seeds. 

I’ve decided I just need to get out there and plant something. Ideally I’d have worked out a crop rotation plan and a sowing schedule before I did anything, but I know me, and I know if I waited to get all that organised, I’d still be sitting here this time next year wondering what I was going to do.

So in the interests of keeping the space filled instead of leaving it bare and prone to the soil being washed away or filling back up with weeds (which I’m sure it will do anyway), or all the nutrients being leeched out of it, tomorrow we plant.

The plan can come later.

Or never.

P365 - Day 162 - purple carrots

A few weeks ago I found some purple carrots in a supermarket. Juniordwarf was quite delighted by them, and was more than happy to eat them. A victory in the battle to get him to eat vegetables!

He followed this by a refusal to eat orange carrots. Only purple carrots would do.

Of course.

Well our local supermarket doesn’t stock purple carrots, and we were only in the one that did because we were in the area to do something else, and it seemed like a good idea to get the groceries while we were there.

Since I’m not going to make a special trip anywhere just to get purple carrots, the only way he’s going to get them, unless we see them again somewhere, is if we grow them ourselves.

So on the way home from the Botanical Gardens last weekend, we called into a store I was fairly confident would sell purple carrot seeds (thankfully it did) and bought some.

Juniordwarf was very keen to sow some seeds, but the weather this week has been terrible and not conducive to gardening, so he didn’t get a chance until today. Today we spent a couple of hours out in the garden, mainly pulling out dead plants and weeds, and we sowed some purple carrot seeds.

Yay!

I’ve never successfully grown carrots, so I’m hoping this will be the first time. Instead of putting the seeds in the oxalis infested vege patch, we put them in one of those polystyrene vegetable boxes filled with potting mix. I’m hoping the mix is light enough to grow carrots in. If not, I’ll need to think of something else.

Juniordwarf watered the seeds once he’d put them in the potting mix, and he was very careful carrying his little watering can from the tap to the garden that he didn’t spill a drop.

Now the challenge is going to be keeping him interested in the seeds’ progress until we get some carrots in about four months time.

P365 - Day 156 tread lightly

It was World Environment Day today, and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens held its annual TreadLightly EnviroFest. 

Last year was the first time I attended, and I had a wonderful day exploring all of the stalls and activities, and listening to the speakers. I learnt a lot and I came away with a lot to think about.

This year was a bit different, and I went with Juniordwarf, Lil Sis and Mum. Despite the winter weather, we had a great time. Juniordwarf was very excited to be able to take his Aunt and his Nanna to show them his favourite place in the Gardens, the ‘Cold House’ (technically the Subantarctic Plant House, but it’s about four degrees (Celcius) in there, so his name is perfectly apt).

I caught some of the amazing Peter Cundall’s talk on growing vegetables in Tasmania.

This gentleman is an absolute inspiration. I remember seeing him on TV when I was much younger in the days of Gardening Tasmania, and used to watch him regularly when that show morphed into Gardening Australia.

I own a beautiful first edition copy of his Year Round Gardening book, published in 1985 (which I was able to find in a second hand bookstore after lusting after the copy held by the Library) and I enjoy reading his articles in Organic Gardener magazine. 

I missed most of what he actually said about growing veges (other than that cauliflowers need the trace element molybdenum and beetroot needs boron and that you should sow beetroot seeds yourself, not buy seedlings).

What really got my attention was the man himself. He is 84 years old, but you’d never know it. He said that there was nothing wrong with him at all and the last time he went to the doctor for an illness was over 40 years ago.

He puts his good health down to a healthy lifestyle – most specifically gardening, which is all the exercise he needs (he asks ‘did you ever see a happy jogger?’), and growing his own food. 

I compared myself to him. I lead a rather unhealthy, overweight, sedentary lifestyle, and rely almost solely on others for my food supply. This winter I’ve been constantly sick and have felt rather uninspired and, well, just bleh. Yet here was someone more than twice my age bursting with an energy and enthusiasm I can only dream about.

It certainly gave me something to think about, because I’ve noticed when I’ve made a real effort to improve my diet, such as focusing on fresh, non-processed ingredients and cutting out things like wheat, alcohol and coffee, it’s made a noticeable difference to how I’m feeling, my attitude and energy levels.

And that begs the question why haven’t I stuck with it, if it’s made me feel that much better. I don’t know the answer to that and it’s something I intend to work on.

But that aside, back to the Festival, the other speaker I saw was Paul Healy, who writes about sustainable gardening and raising chickens in the Mercury's Saturday Magazine. He breeds Barnevelder poultry, and he brought a couple of these beautiful birds with him to the Festival. Juniordwarf was a bit wary of them, so we didn’t get too close, even though they are apparently a very placid bird.

Last year I listened to all of Paul’s talk on sustainable gardening and other issues around food and the environment, and got a lot out of it. This year I only heard a bit of what he had to say, but that was still interesting.

He was talking about the principle of feeding the soil, rather than feeding the plant. He said that if you feed the plant, you are forcing it to take in everything you give it, regardless of what it actually needs whereas if you feed the soil, the plant will take what it needs and leave what it doesn’t need. He said plants have a sort of intelligence in the sense that they ‘know’ what they need.

I’ve heard a lot of people say to feed the soil. I never really knew why, but this made perfect sense.

Paul referred to a book called The Living Soil, by Lady Balfour, published in 1943, which he says is the soil ‘bible’ and should be your first port of call for more information about this type of gardening. It is out of print, but the State Library has a reference copy.

The other thing I didn’t get to find out as much as I’d have liked to today is Peak Oil,  which is an issue that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention in the climate change debate, where everyone seems to be focused on the proposed carbon tax.

It’s an issue that really frightens me when I think about the implications, but I won’t go there today – it’s a whole other blog post, or more. I might even rant a bit. I don’t think I’ve done a ranty blog post yet.

In the mean time, I think it’s time to use the inspiration from today to actually do something. 

P365 - Day 142 lettuces

A good thing about letting lettuces go to seed is that a bit later on you get new lettuces.

In the bricks that are holding up the garden beds.

And sometimes, exactly where you want them.

Right next to a self-sown spring onion. Who needs to buy seeds?

P365 - Day 137 broccoli

You might remember back in February - coincidentally exactly 100 days ago - I planted some broccoli seedlings.

I haven't thought much of them since then, other than noting how well the snails have fed on them.

Today I was hanging the washing out (part of my vege garden is in planter things under the clothes line - yep, really well thought out), looked down at the broccoli and was amazed to see there were actually heads on them!

This is the biggest one. It's not quite ready, but it's not far off.

Looking back over my gardening past, this might well be the first, or perhaps second, time that I've successfully grown broccoli.

So it can be done. Yay!

(Today's edit is in picfx)

P365 - Day 78 my little piece of paradise

Regular visitors to pastpresentfuture might remember my post about the jungle down the side of Slabs' shed.

To recap, our back yard has a fenced off section behind Slabs’ home brew shed that is ‘mine’. I have my own tin shed, a sort of paved area out the front and a small garden space at the back between the shed and the neighbour's back fence.

My original plan for the area was to have a culinary herb garden in front of the shed, a walkway between the shed and the fence lined with different varieties of thyme leading to another herb garden behind the shed.

This is what the area in front of the shed looks like today.

What you can see is: my shed, Juniordwarf standing in front of what was supposed to be the container mint garden, but has been taken over by the lemon balm.

Lemon balm is also the plant you see in amongst the pots and the green bucket. 

A rather large lemon verbena plant to the right. It has taken over what was the 'culinary' herb garden and is huge. I keep expecting it to die completely in the winter, because I thought it wasn't frost tolerant, but it has just gotten bigger and bigger. It has the most glorious lemon smell.

Unfortunately it has started to be taken over by this insidious creeping vine thing, that I believe is called 'morning glory'. It sends out runners underground, crops up everywhere and twists around plants that it climbs up, strangling the life out of them.

Ugly, horrible stuff. It's everywhere around here. 

Moving right along, as I said before, the gap between the shed and the fence was to be lined with thyme. I used to call it the 'thyme line', and I originally planted several different varieties along the fence, about five or six years ago.

Only the original thyme has survived, but it's gotten very old and woody now, with new bits sprouting out here and there.

The other side of the thyme line (the shed side) was supposed to be a chamomile lawn, with some honeysuckle climbing over the shed. The chamomile has gone and the honeysuckle has become a ground creeper.

Another part of the plan was a climbing 'Black Boy' rose to be planted at the back of the shed and intended to climb over the shed's roof. Unfortunately I had no idea about how one would get a climbing rose to climb a tin shed and everything I tried failed. 

Then the garden got somewhat neglected due to other priorities (aka Juniordwarf) and the rose went in completely wrong direction, away from the shed and over the neighbour's fence.

So my first task, after hacking my way through what had been the thyme line, was to try (again) to train the Black Boy over the shed. 

It required considerable effort, and there is some more fixing work to be done, but at least I could get into what was supposed to be my relaxation garden. 

I expected it to be overgrown, but was shattered to find that the whole area had been overtaken by stickyweed, which had died. So there was just masses and masses of this dead brown sticky, seedy evil plant.

As I started to pull it out, I got more and more covered in the foul little seeds to the extent that I decided I had to keep going and get it all out, so I'd only had to de-seed my clothes once.

This is what my clothes looked like at the end of the session:

The seeds were everywhere: in my hair, my hat, all over my clothes, underneath my clothes, in my shoes . . .  it was gross. And my arms looked like this.

But even though it really hurts and I don't know how I'm going to get my clothes clean, I keep reminding myself that it's all gone, so next time I'm in there I can get to the real job of pruning everything back, pulling out old plants and putting in new ones if I have to.

I want to reclaim my space. I started it almost six years ago and now I want to finish it.

Oh and as a total distraction, I spend a few minutes watching this little guy.

I've never watched one closely before, and found it quite fascinating to watch him breathe and see how alert he was, how bright his eyes were, and how at one point he had both his front and back legs pointing backwards, instead of actually standing on them. 

It was a very relaxing break in the middle of a hard afternoon's work.

P365 - Day 68 sunflowers

Several months ago, I signed Juniordrawf up to the Yates Junior Landcare Sunflower Challenge.

The idea was for the kids to plant some sunflower seeds, that were provided free (yay), grow and maintain their sunflowers and, once the plants were fully grown, submit photos of their tallest sunflower and largest flower head. They had to get photos taken of them with a measuring tape alongside the plant to show how big it was. There was also a category for the most creative photograph .

When we signed up we downloaded a project kit that gave tips on growing sunflowers.

So in spring, once we'd got the seeds, I dutifully cleared a patch of ground in our vege garden for Juniordwarf to plant his seeds. Only he wasn't in the slightest bit interested. So I thought I might as well put some seeds in, because I really love sunflowers and they look great in the garden. They germinated, only to be destroyed by, I assume, snails.

So I cleared another patch, this time outside the vege garden fence so we could easily access it and tend to the plants. They grew too, and two survived.

I was quite surprised to find that one of the plants I thought had been destroyed by snails had actually survived, and it grew to about 130 cm. This compares to the winning plant (as at 25 February 2011) of 270 cm.

Yep, we grow good sunflowers! Perhaps we should have followed the instructions a bit more closely. For example, feeding it with a liquid plant food every two weeks, keeping it well watered and mulched.

Oh dear.

The other two that actually survived were even less successful (size-wise).

The one on the right opened a couple of days ago and the one on the left opened today. Long after the 25 February deadline. The taller of the two is a tad over a metre high, and the bigger flower isn't quite 15 centimetres. (Just for reference, the winning sunflower was 46 cm wide.)

Even thought they aren't very big, they are very pretty and I love how bright they are. I love taking pictures of them, especially closeups.

Here's one I took two days ago when the flower opened (you saw it yesterday as well - this is the whole picture though).

P365 - Day 45 - lemon tree

We planted our lemon tree in December 2009. Slabs, Juniordwarf and I spent the best part of an afternoon transferring soil into a huge planter box from the ute in the driveway.

Today while Juniordwarf and I were out in the garden, I noticed some tiny green fruit on the tree!

It was the first fruit it had ever grown, so that was pretty exciting.

Only I remembered that I’d seen Peter Cundall say many years ago that it was best to remove all the fruit from a lemon tree for the first couple of years, so that it could put its energy into growing a strong root system and a strong structure. He said something along the lines of however much it breaks your heart (he probably actually said ‘bloomin’ heart’) to cut off the fruit you’re actually trying to grow, it’s best for the long term health of the tree and for future crops.

A tiny lemon

Lemon flower

So with some regret, that’s just what I did. I felt terrible, but I kept reminding myself it would be worth it in a couple of years when we have a magnificent lemon tree.

And in other gardening news . . .

This morning Juniordwarf and I went outside to do some gardening, which to me means pulling out weeds and so on, and to him means putting his little gardening tools into the back of his Tonka dump truck and parking it somewhere in the backyard.

Then he found another snail, which absolutely thrilled him. He spent the best past of half an hour walking around with his snail, showing me, showing the dog, putting it down in various places to see what it did. He was very taken with it.

It's a snail, Mum!

I’m quite pleased with his new-found interest in all things buggy. It seems like something all little kids should be into.

In the mean time, I decided to take another step towards getting the garden organised. This time I ventured into my shed and pulled out the mouse-eaten box of seeds that had been sitting round for far too long.

From this . . .

I had this grand idea for a kind of seed filing system, where there would be a divider card for each month that listed on it all the seeds I could sow that month, whether to sow them direct or in punnets, when to plant out and when a harvest might be expected (if the snails hadn’t got them). This could all be added to my calendar/diary as each type of seed was sown.

Organised huh!

Well I didn’t quite get that far. I tossed out all the obviously out of date seeds and the ones that the mice had got to. The rest I sorted by vegetable type and then put them either into the ‘sow now or in the next four months’ container or the ‘sow in spring or thereabouts’ container. (These containers are great – they are from those terrible recipe card series that I always sign up to for the free/cheap two or three months and the free card holder and then cancel.)

So basically the seeds are stored behind the February, June, September or October dividers. Now, the theory goes, when I’m looking for something to plant, I can just go to the current month’s divider and grab something. Once I’ve planted something for that month, it goes into the next month that it can be sown in – either the next month, or sometime later in the year.

. . . to this

The other thing I did was set up a potting station and a sort of greenhouse thing for seed punnets. I’m not sure it’s in the best position, because it gets some of that really hot late afternoon sun, so I might have to restructure a bit.

This is on a stand that holds 8 trays & is all covered by a plastic cover.

But because it’s close to the back door, I’m hoping it will make seed sowing a more accessible activity for Juniordwarf and me.

Time will tell if it will make the garden more productive.