Holiday helper.

The kids are on school holidays for two weeks and, as usual, we are hanging about; watching cartoons, messing about in the garden and being super competitive about sports. Well, Wii sport anyway.

We have had a few lovely days weatherwise, but today was ferociously windy and sporadically rainy, ruining our plans for a bike ride. Stuck inside instead, we spent the morning laughing ourselves silly while jumping about the lounge room doing our best not to break things, or each other, while playing Wii Sports to the death. 😀

After our arms were worn out from all the flailing about the boys went off to make lunch and I dragged my latest purchase for the garden out of the back of my car.

Yesterday I bought a 120 litre wheelie bin with a tap at the bottom for catching rainwater and emptying my washing machine into so I could re-use the water on the garden. I have a long grey-water hose that I usually attach to the washing machine to direct the water onto the bits I want watered, but the garden I need the water for has expanded well beyond the reach of it. Last summer I spent time racing back and forth with buckets and watering cans while the machine emptied but I have decided that I should be better organised this time!

Once I got the bag of bits out of the bottom of the bin to put the lid and wheels on and the tap in I realised I had a problem. Bin deep, arms short. How was I going to get the tap screwed up tightly on the inside while holding the bit straight on the outside?

Actually, thanks to the school holidays I had the perfect thing to help me get it done. Son Number 2.

Number 2 is small and dexterous and when I asked if I could put him in the bin to do it up for me he jumped at the chance. After all, how often do we get to see the inside of a shiny clean bin? Usually they are coated in the icky stuff that has escaped from bin liners and horrible enough for the lid kept tightly shut at all times!

I lowered him in, and Number 2 had the tap screwed on in no time. He saved me the embarrassment of the neighbours seeing me leaning too far while doing it and falling into the bin headfirst… Thanks kiddo! 😀

Don’t worry, I helped him back out.

More sundews.

Yes, I’m posting about them again…. I can’t help it! 😀

This post is on request of Meeks. She lives a similar place to us so there is the possibility of having sundews growing in her garden too. Well, maybe not in her garden, thanks to the munching of the alpacas, but perhaps there might be a few bravely growing just out of nibbling reach on the other side of the fence.

Just like fat grass.

As you can see, with the help of my ring for scale again, they are small enough to pretend to be grasses and remain unnoticed. The tallest are about 20cm high but can be much smaller.

They are quite fragile things. I tried to put my ring in a better spot and each plant I gently placed it on immediately keeled over under the weight and glued itself to the ground with its sticky tentacles.

Never fear, I carefully unstuck all of them and stood them back up.

One plant tipped itself onto a large ant who was passing by who was no doubt quite startled to suddenly find itself under assault from above. It probably went home screaming something about Triffids to its friends…

Finally I found his little group who were the best option for comparison as they were all already stuck together and holding each other up!

No grass here….

I took this photo yesterday afternoon in the small window of time that the small light pink/white flowers that top each of the sundews was open. (click on it to see it more clearly)

Each of the white dots in this low-level landscape is one plant, generally only one flower per plant seems to open at a time.

The flowers stay tightly shut when the sun is at its brightest and will only open when it has passed over.

I am surprised that any of the flowers are ever pollinated. After all, every other part of the plant wants to eat the bug doing the pollinating! Clearly the flowers are irresistible to some brave bugs out there.

I hope this helps you find some of your own fly eaters in your garden wanders Meeks. 😀

Pretty, and sticky.

Yippee! Lemony success!

Look! Look!!!! *jumps about happily*

Hurrah!!

Woo Hoo!

Yes. I am getting ridiculously excited about the tiniest bit of new growth on a plant, but bear with me.

When we moved in here about 15 years ago much of the back garden was a barren wasteland, although the previous owner clearly had delusions of grandeur and had planted a few things on the hill.

When I say planted I really mean ‘hacked out a wedge of clay and inserted a plant’. Over time most of them died leaving only the dent in the hill to show they had ever been there. (Yes, the impressions are still here after all this time. Our hill changes at glacial speed….)

One of the few that still soldiers on was a lemon tree, although calling what it is doing ‘soldiering on’ might be a tad optimistic.

When we arrived here it was about hip height and not the healthiest specimen. Now, all these years later, it is about chest height and not in any better condition. A few weeks ago I resolved to actually care for the poor thing in the hopes of reviving it. After all, what is a food garden without a lemon tree?!

The first thing I did was drag a short, fat fallen branch from the pile of waiting-to-be-cut-up wood to use as a barrier against any more dirt being washed away from around it, and then pinch some soil from another part of the garden to sprinkle it around it.

Over the next few days I made a short wire fence around it to keep Jack away from the chook poo I spread around the base. It has now been pruned and mulched with pea straw to within an inch of its life in the hopes it will retain some kind of damp when the weather warms up.

The kids have also been instructed to relieve themselves on it whenever they feel like it. Number 1 is a little hesitant, the chance a neighbour might look out of the window at the wrong time is too much for him, but Number 2 cares less about what people might think and has taken up the challenge with relish.

Clearly all this attention has had some effect and hopefully this tiny bit of new growth is the start of an abundance of lemons. Well, I’m not holding my breath but I can dream! 😀

A sticky end.

Yesterday’s post was all about my veg garden so I thought I would share one of the things that are growing in the bit of the garden that does its own thing.

I have done posts about the sundews in the garden before but I never tire of looking at them so I am going to force them on you again. 😀

A wander up the hill the other day revealed that in some sunny places there are groups of sundews growing together like tiny, sticky, forests. Usually they are quite spread out but each year they are growing more densely.

Judging by the amount of bug corpses trapped in their sticky tentacles they are all eating extremely well too. Some of the spots were growing so thickly they had even managed to catch leaves that had fallen from the gum trees!

If I can just keep The Man from mowing up there for a few more weeks they will get to finish their season unmolested, and who knows what next  year might bring!

Sticky death….

Out in the garden.

I have been horribly neglectful of my blog lately, sorry blog. 😦

I haven’t just been sitting around on the couch slacking off though! As I mentioned in my last post, winter has been thrown off as quickly as possible and the garden is behaving as if we are well into spring.

Peas, Kale and Oregano all living happily together. 🙂

The peas are growing prolifically, the broccoli happy, the Silverbeet and Kale have exploded and the carrots that are left have such thick and luscious feathery tops that when I went to pull one out the other day I didn’t realize it was concealing a sneaky stinging nettle too… OUCH!

The Man has started calling one of the types of beetroot out there ‘the plastic ones’ because the leaves are so large and shiny they look too perfect to be real.

Don’t start thinking the success of those few plants are indicative of the lives of my normal veg garden inhabitants though. I am more of a hit and miss gardener and it is equally likely they would barely survive, wither and die, or be completely consumed by snails overnight than grow so vigorously.

I have bought a few new inhabitants as well, one was rhubarb upon request of The Man. He planted them in one of the apple tree beds, and next to the strawberries (one of them already has fruit!), because in his mind it will make it easier to gather the ingredients for his favourite dessert once they have all grown. They have already started sprouting so I had better find a pie recipe soon! 😀

Spuds breaking through.

Over the last few weeks we have put in potatoes, (more) carrots, radish, lettuce and I have a new metal garden bed waiting in the shed for us to hack out another terrace on the hill.

Because of this wonderful weather, and the speedy growing of the plants, I have been dressed in my dags and gumboots and wandering about in the garden with Jack every day (she’s no help at all).

I’ve been happily rearranging bits of garden, hauling bags of potting mix, weeding (much to the delight of the chooks) and planting seeds that may well just get to the point of growing beautifully in time to perish when the frosts come next month.

A greenhouse for those who can’t commit to the big picture. 😉

In order to avoid this I have invested in a cold frame* (like a little greenhouse on a table) so I could keep them warm.

Luckily for me, when I was putting it together over the weekend, Number 1 son had a friend over who I suspect is destined to become a mechanic or a farmer. As soon as he saw me pulling the bits out of the box he came out in the garden to join in the construction, unable to resist the lure of using tools to make something for the plants.

We managed to put it together without shouting at each other or breaking anything! The Man had been out for the morning enjoying the nice weather in his own way, on his motorbike, and arrived home just in time to drill the screw holes in the fragile plastic lid so I could blame him if it all went horribly wrong and was ruined…. 😉

Sprouting rhubarb, heaven for The Man.

*A cold frame, a new corrugated metal garden bed, a few hoses to connect together to make watering up on the hill easier, half a dozen bags of potting mix, a bit of this, a bit of that…. I made the mistake of going to Bunnings and actually having some money to spend. 😀

Blowing the dust off…

We have been having the most perfect weather here over the last few days. It is like Spring got sick of waiting for its turn and just kicked Winter out of the way.

It has been far too nice to spend any time inside, so my blogging and blog reading has become sadly neglected, that and the far less important housework. Oh well, the nice weather can’t last so I will have time to catch up soon enough.

Sunday was a gloriously sunny Father’s Day and my whole family ended up at a local lake for a picnic lunch with Dad. We sat on the grass on rugs feasting on everyone’s delicious offerings and the kids dragged us all into a very amusing game of random bocce (no real rules, just throw and laugh, try not to hurt any passers-by).

Playing on a lumpy and sloping bit of grass ensured that no amount of skill could stop the heavy metal balls from zooming off on unexpected trajectories when they landed, much to the delight of the kids.

The weather has remained perfect since then so my computer has been gathering dust and I have been spending my time at the local nursery wasting money on plants I don’t really need, wandering about in the garden with my camera, taking the dog for more walks than she probably wants and just generally avoiding being indoors at all times.

A change of weather is due tomorrow so it seems that Winter isn’t going to give up without a fight. Oh well, poor footsore Jack can rest her weary paws for a while before Spring actually gets here and the walking weather returns. 😀

If I lie here quietly she might just leave me alone…