February plot

There's a lot of green in these photos, as the garden is growing so well and aside from the rainbow chard everything is exactly that - lovely lush green. Both types of beans have appeared just 3-4 days after their flowers opened up. Looking forward to fresh beans - the shop ones we've been buying only seem to last a crappy 3 days in our fridge these days.

The bok choy is floursishing, crispy and very tasty.

The lone tomato I posted last week has now got sisters and brothers. Surely we must be a few days away from being ripe?!

Ooooh YES, it's been a good few months since I have handmade anything so on a crafty note yesterday I finally bought a free-motion quilting foot!!!!!! I hope to start quilting my picnic (come queen size bed quilt top) blanket soon, which I haven't even glanced at since October... see here, here and here.

The last thing I had done was tie the quilt layers at intervals with embroidery floss, but I became worried that the ties are too far apart which will mean the batting will separate and eventually come adrift in the sandwich. An attempted to quilt the layers together on the machine rendered me feeling hopeless. I read that free-motion quilting is difficult so I'll be sure to do some test runs on pretend mini quilt sandwiches before getting stuck into the real thing.

♥♥♥♥

green

Our 50 year old pear tree is now brimming with gorgeous fat pears, and similar to last year the rainbow lorikeets and possums are getting to them before we can. We were hoping that placing them on the kitchen windowsill will ripen them up nicely, but we tried one yellowing one which smelt divinely pear-esque the other day and it was terribly bitter and had gross brown spots inside. Shame. Hopefully the rest are better.

Tasty spring onions, bok choy and rainbow chard have been harvested for our last two dinners.

We took a trip to Bunnings today and I spent a few happy hours gardening in the afternoon. I planted one too many leeks, in hope for some yummy potato and leek soup in the Winter (it appears that the tray for $2.99 contained 32 to be precise hehe). Friends and family, I hope you like leeks! Also put in some green dragon broccoli and one brussel sprout plant just for the fun of watching it grow - the little sprouts grow dotted all around the outside of one tall stem. Very random.

Hope your enjoying some lovely mid 20's weather as we are in Adelaide ♥♥♥♥

lounge room re*decorate

Adios dark brown leather sofas!!! After being unsure about purchasing a light coloured sofa - we decided just to jump in (all well and good while we don't have any children) and we are now completely in love  with our lounge room and new cushions ♥♥♥

The oatmeal coloured fabric is wonderfully light and has opened the space up and... us tallies can both lay down on the new modular without our legs hanging over the edge!

 The step ladder went up on the wall as a joke, then we decided it was sort of interesting and it has stayed put. I am thinking that the printers tray might look nice on that wall once I have finished cleaning it up.

See the blanket stand above? We seriously love blankets in this house. Are you eagerly awaiting the cooler months too?

little veggie plot

We tried our rainbow chard on Friday which are growing quickly, and now have thick brilliant yellow, orange and red stems, and those typical glossy bumpy leaves....

...and we're celebrating bees and their clever pollinating handiwork. This morning I counted about 20 yellow flowers. I can already taste tomato, basil and bocconcini salad....  mmmm!

first harvest, berries and pies

We picked our first veggies on the weekend. 5 extraordinarily peppery radishes! We tried one and couldn't handle the taste so gave them all to my mum and dad :) They seemed very grateful, but I haven't called them to ask their honest verdict. Although they grew so quickly and it was delightful to watch those red baubles appear at the soil surface we will never grow them again. 

On Sunday The Boy took us on a drive into the Adelaide Hills to pick blackberries. There is something so special about picking berries from the roadside. We did get ripped to shreds by nasty thorns (gloves helped somewhat) but after about 30 minutes of picking we came away with half a bucketful of plump glossy berries!

When we got home The Boy used our basil to make pesto and pine-nut pasta. It was incredibly tasty. Hoorah for freshly grown herbs! And for dessert .... I Googled blackberry pie recipes and made two large pies in cake tins (should buy a pie tin) with this recipe.  Very simple and yummy. A delicious weekend (sans radish).

♥♥♥♥

flea market finds

Last week I mentioned a special something that I had wished and dreamed of having in my possession, then found it at Limberlost. One beautiful (albeit dirty and cobweb ridden) printers tray!!

When I saw one shabby looking tray on the floor I asked without much hope if the owner had any more. He walked my friend and I down to his little workshed and there in front of me was what you see in the photo above. My jaw dropped (I recall my friend taking a photo of my face hehe) as I couldn't believe what I saw. So many trays all piled up on top of each other! I went through them all and chose the one on the top.

Here she is in her before state.

I hoped to have before and after photos by now, but it's still in it's before state as there is crispy grotty paper covering the back of each little space which needs to be removed. I attempted to clean it up then realised that  this job will be a more time consuming task. As I have mentioned previously, I do love a little project :)

So until then, do pop into Sophie's for other cleaner finds!
♥♥♥♥

January plot

It's all growing! Thanks to my crafty fellow's blue tarp shade structure($40 for everything!) most plants survived the 42 degree heatwave Adelaide experienced this week. Of the unlucky few were our poor passion fruit plants which crisped to smithereens :(

Bed 1. The basil is growing SO quickly and looking rather lush. Incredibly hardy herbs in this bed. No shade, all survived the heat. The bok choy is beginning to resemble store bought bok choy.This makes for happy gardeners at our house. We examined the rocket plants this evening, which are beginning to develop that thin frilly leaf... and already tastes peppery.

Bed 2. The radish plants have begun producing round scarlet bulbs just below the surface. We lost a few orange carrot seedlings, and I'm waiting for their greenery to pick up... or are carrots just slow growers? Our golden butter beans, which i sowed directly in the bed from seed, have grown taller than the green beans I sowed in seedling raiser trays - even though the butter beans weren't sown until about a week and a half after the green bean seedlings were transplanted. It appears that direct sowing leads to faster growth.

Bed 3. Rainbow chard is growing beautifully, as are the purple carrots.  It's difficult to see in the photo (click on it to see the full size, might be easier to spot) but the beetroot plants have thinned themselves in the scorching temps to the fittest (saved me from doing it!).

Bed 4. We just love tomatoes. It is one of those staple foods for us which we buy regularly, although they rarely taste spectacular. So we bought a $2.99 pack of 8 cherry tomato seedlings only 3 weeks ago in hope of getting a few fruits before the end of the Summer. Already the plants have quadrupled in size and  ... two have tiny yellow flowers. We couldn't believe it - flowers so soon. We might have our own tasty tomatoes  in the next few weeks. Yummo.

ps. We really need to invest in a digital watering timer to reduce garden related stupidity like forgetting the soaker hoses were on for oh, 9 whole hours!

my creative space

I have been putting off sewing 6 cushion covers for our new couch for 5 weeks - and finally in the final week of school holidays it was time. There was to be NO more procrastination! I used fabrics from IKEA (PS screen printed spots), Umbrella Prints (sweet teal elephants), natural seeded cotton drill and ruby red linen ($2.00 a meter from Spotlight - woot!). I decided that those gorgeous white spots on the IKEA fabric would be too spread too far apart so I pinned two random pleats at intervals and sewed along

I watched this (whilst being impressed by a male sewing) and read this to learn the quickest and most practical way to sew in a zipper... and when I manage to buy the correct invisible zippers next time I will be sure to read this.

I am feeling pretty chuffed with myself, and The Boy even approves.. and LIKES!.. which doesn't happen often.

In a few days I will post some photos of our lounge room re-decorate, with spiffy new cushions in tow. Do pop back to Kristy's to see more making!

♥♥♥♥

flea market photos

I took a few days this week and went on a trip to visit my lovely friend and her gorgeous family. I am lucky to have a friend who knows me so well and took me to the most amazing secondhand warehouse - Limberlost in Laura, just a few hours north of Adelaide.

Picture loads of huge old rickety sheds in the middle of dried up paddocks, each piled high to the ceiling with old furniture in need of love and restoration, spiderwebs in every nook and cranny, paint peeling off doors making beautiful patterns, and piles of old farming tools knotted up together hanging from rafters. I was so blown away and fell for everything I laid my eyes on. However, I only bought one thing. One thing I have really hoped that I would find in a oppie one day, but have never found. Until now. It is so beautiful but needs a little tlc.  I will share my find next week :)

I took way too many photos but these are my favourites.

See more thriftiness over here 
♥♥♥♥
Tracey 

January plot

I have been trying to keep note of what vegetables and herbs we have planted or sown in each bed, so we don't forget and repeat plant the same crop in the same bed next season.  I thought I would try to create a plot organiser using Publisher every month or so. Yes I am still on school holidays, and yes I am a night owl and frequently stay up drinking tea and playing around with Publisher till 2am. 

We have not really stuck to any planting rules of thumb (aside from considering the amount and angle of sunlight in each bed throughout the day) as I was much too rapped about having a veggie garden and impatience got the better of me. Quite literally as seeds germinated in raising trays the next day they were whisked out and planted into freshly composted soil. 

So we'll see how that goes, without a doubt mistakes have been made. Next season we will be definitely consider companion planting and waiting until seedlings are strong enough to tackle the baking Summer sunshine. Lesson learnt!

* NOTE Those little wormy critters are most likely intestinal worms from the composted cow manure we turned into the soil before planting... and Hurrah - have NOT been munching anything. Thanks xx

mirror mirror on the.. fence

A new mirror thrifted for $10 is going to be hung on the fence. I love mirrors in gardens.

One colander full of nectarines from our tree. One colander more than last year. Watering helps hehe

I tied up bamboo stakes making 1.5 m high teepees for our Golden and Sugar Snap Beans.

Happy days!!

framed

I get bored easily, particularly of seeing the same things day in day out around the house. These IKEA ribba frames previously housed my great-nanna's salvaged lino and now hold three pretty illustrations taken from Frankie 2010 calendar and magazine.

left and right by Yoko Furuhso  middle by ghostpatrol

what the heck are these????

Dear gardeners,

It's true... I had hoped I would have a perfectly pest free vegetable garden. But it seems my dream of pest free gardening is not going to happen. Just weeks in and there are thousands, no - millions, of tiny white wormy critters on my carrot and chard plants, surrounding soil, and soaker hose.

I have been googling, and searching throughout all my gardening books and magazines to identify it, but cannot be sure. Might take a sample to Bunnings tomorrow morning. Oh, I am consumed with worried thoughts and imagine myself going for my morning stroll by the beds tomorrow to find they have chomped on all of my seedlings!!!

Have you seen these before in your garden? If so, what did you do to get rid of them, or are they beneficial?

Eeek!

rain rain ...

so great for our garden, yet so devastating for others.

from seed to seedling

After miserably failing to sprout an entire tray of seeds last week (note to self - seeds and teensy seedlings don't fare well in extreme direct sunlight), I think I am finally onto something. Woot! The trick? Much waiting and watering, shade hehe, watching and waiting and watering.

Little green radishes popped up first, 

then sweet basil, dwarf snap beans and finally silverbeet... those capsicum seeds aren't doing anything???

I transplanted those radish seedlings today into vege beds as the weather was relatively mild with all day cloud cover. The silverbeet should be ready to go in within the next few days. They are growing so quickly. This afternoon I decided to plant carrots and more radish seeds, as they grew so well for me) in x2 2.4m rows each and yellow butter beans beneath one of our homemade bamboo tee-pees. I have always enjoyed growing plants from seed with kids in my classroom in little pots, but to do it on a bigger scale and with the goal of eating our own produce to is...  so much better!

hurrah!

... for salad bowls overflowing with surprisingly sweet apricots and to almost completing a tricky puzzle.

radishes

Why did I do it? I never really LOVED them, but I planted them in raising trays... and oddly they are the most vigorous growers of all my seeds. I recall them being peppery and crunchy. What will I do with them? salads perhaps. Nom.

little veggie plot

Both The Boy and I have been ultra busy and a bit keen as mustard, so for good measure we built two more veggie beds, and now have 5 - which you can see in the photo below. The lower 'tetris bed' is officially his bed and will be for perrenial herbs and Asian greens (Bok Choy and Pak Choy), as my fellow is a stir fry wok master. 

I have been soaking seeds and checking on them like a new mother, which sprouted and are now in small seedling tubs growing a big enough to survive the Adelaide sun... except my carrot seeds are taking a long time to germinate. Too warm perhaps?? In the next few weeks we will hopefully be planting out radishes, snap beans, carrots, sweet basil and silverbeet seedlings.

The Boy has been so so busy, motivated and industrious today and installed drippers to our two new Passion fruit vines AND soaker hoses to all four other beds!! WOOT!! Can you see how impressed a girl is by such loveliness *sigh*

Oh, we all used extra soap tonight washing off any undesirable cow manure scent. Fun times in the garden!

♥♥♥♥

garlic, fruit & petals

I love surprises, especially garden related ones. A friend noticed gorgeous purple balls of flowers in our front garden - low and behold we have been growing wild garlic. I cooked with it last night and it's got a mild taste, more like an onion. I believe I can plant those small yellowish cloves around April next year and they will pop up again. Who'd have known!

For the first time since we moved here our apricot, plum and pear trees are riddled with plump fruits, so much that the branches are so heavy the tips touched the grounds and needed staking.  Last year we watched ripe fruits get finished off by lorikeets and rosellas and we are not willing to let them do it again. So we netted the tree last night in hope of saving some.

A walk around block =  me bringing home pretty "noxious weeds". Oh why does my park ranger boy have to spoil the occasion?!

♥♥♥♥