A special Easter gift

I've had my beautiful girls, Naughty, Henrietta, Larry and Buffy since just after Christmas 3 years ago. They have been a wonderful part of the change my little blue shack has brought for me. My original plan for them was to be willing workers, clearing the ground of grass and weeds, allowing me to establish garden beds, eating bugs, and in general being of service in my garden. Little did I realise how many contented hours would be spent with a cup of tea in hand, just watching them roam about the garden. It's been a relevation to me in so many ways, from a naive start(I didn't think for one second they'd eat plants, in retrospect, how stupid was I) until today, they have been an incredible source of learning and company.

Well, today I welcome two new girls, Alice and Wendy. I haven't met them yet, but feel like it's a meant to be thing. I met their current owner a couple of weeks ago. She had overheard me talking with hubby about it being time to move the chook house again and mentioned she needed to move soon and was looking for someone to give her two girls a home.
When I first investigated the idea of having chickens, I had thoughts of keeping about 10. The chook houses are both designed large enough to take this number in comfort, but I was contented with the four I first introduced. If you're wondering how I arrived at four instead of 10 it's because I got overwhelmed making the choice of which ones I would have from a large assortment. I ended up with a white one (Naughty, named by my niece and nephews because apparently that's all they heard me saying to it for the first few days!!!), a brown one, Larry, as she was always on her own at first, a peach one, Buffy, named after the vampire slayer as she is always the protective one when it comes to other birds entering their space, and lastly Henrietta, the baby (bantam) who is black. Four different colours so I could tell them apart. I had always intended to introduce a new chicken each year and slowly add to my little flock. I hadn't done this yet. After seeing the four girls in action, I don't think my garden could survive more than 6 anyways, so I've held off waiting for the right opportunity. I didn't know how old each of the girls were when I first got them, or if they'd even lay. Originally all the girls would lay an egg each every day or so, which was a bonus over their required work duties in the garden, but they've slowed down now. And I had been contemplating getting the extras because now I've been spoilt with our own girls eggs, I  hate eating store bought eggs.
And so fate has had a hand and this morning I'll be welcoming two more girls to our little family. I'm excited and anxious all at the same time, I hope everyone will get along, I hope my girls will accept them and they'll be happy in their new home too. Only time will tell.

Around the garden

A quick update on what's happening in the garden at the moment. After all the rain we've had things are really happening. The grass has grown to super huge proportions in the side gardens. We are guilty of letting it go while we've worked on the wicker gardens and retaining walls at the far end of the garden so it's not surprising it's now hard to tell there was once garden beds all the way along here. We've started to chop it down, pull it out or dig it up, but it's not going to be a quick job. I'm looking forward to the Easter long weekend to hopefully get a chance to get a good go at it.

The rain has given the apple trees a spur along and they have flowers on and the start of new fruit, as too does the passionfruit vines.

The apple trees are flowering and you can see the start of an apple next to this one. The trees are now about three years old so they are at a size where we should start to see some resulting fruit.

I love the unusual flowers of the passionfruit.

Passionfruit on the vine, and now we wait...

The loquat tree is a mass of flowers heralding signs of a good feed to come and the little mandarin tree is covered in tiny fruits.

This loquat tree only stands as tall as me, but these flowers will probably produce anything up to 50 small fruits across the tree. Normally we just stand there and gobble.

This mandarin is about two years old now. We've had a couple of small fruit that were so tart the only thing we could do with them was make jam. But the fruit look like they are holding well this time, fingers crossed.

Some things that I thought were finished for the season have suddenly sprung back to life. The kale and basil are bigger than they've ever been and to think I almost pulled them out. The chillies have started flowering all over again, just when I thought there would be no more.

Kale on mass at the top, basil brought back to life at the bottom and sides. Pesto here we come.

Flowers mean chillies. These are my favourites, they aren't too hot. I missed out on getting many this season as the chickens suddenly decided after living with them for over a year that they'd try them and really took a shine to them, so much so it's one of their first stops on their rounds when they are let out each day.

Not everything is blossoming however. Regardless of the rain and the sun in between, the water chesnuts haven't been confused about the season and just seem to know it's time to die back. Harvesting them soon will have to go on the to do list.

It's not all about fruit and veg now though, the rose hubby was given for his birthday last year is in flower and the smell is divine. I love roses, but never dreamed I'd have any success with them. This one might just change my mind.

And of course my garden wouldn't be complete unless all this rain brought out the frogs as well. These are one of my favourites, I'm not sure what they're called but they are only about the size of my thumbnail at biggest and although they are green, they shine gold in the sun.

Thanks for sharing my pleasure in my garden at the moment. How is your garden looking with your weather at the moment?

On the potting bench

When I first started gardening I bought most of my plants as seedlings from nurseries or from our local Bunnings hardware. This was convenient and made it really easy for me to make up a quick garden bed as the fancy took me. There were some down sides though. I would often select what looked to be the healthiest and the biggest of the seedlings (maybe with a degree of greed I have to admit) which would often turn out to be rather poorly performing plants. On removing them at the end of the season, I would often find an undersized root ball, the exact shape of the punnet cell it had originally come from. I believe this is probably because the plant was already root bound at the time I'd bought it. Often these punnets come with unexpected "extras", sometime caterpillars I've missed seeing under a leaf, or an additional tiny weed that spreads like wildfire on the days I'm not in the garden. And all this comes with a heftier price tag then the huge number of plants I can potentially get from a packet of seeds. My last pet hate with purchased seedlings and the one that has really turned me off buying them is the tiny styrofoam balls that help make up the filling of the potting mix used in their punnets. This stuff never seems to go away. Yet again just a couple of days ago I turned up soil out of a pot to top fill a garden bed and this white menace was everywhere. Things don't look so organic when you're trying to stop the chickens from gobbling these little seed look alikes.

Like most gardeners I turned to producing my own seedlings, from bought seeds, from seeds collected from plants that worked in my garden, from volunteer plants that pop up and from strikings of plants already existing. At first my hubby built me a rough potting bench against the back shed. But time has proved it a little too high for me to work comfortably at (maybe because he's six foot 5 compared to my 5 foot 6), and instead my hive of activity now centres around the old outdoor table. I thought that I should start to share what I'm anxiously waiting on sprouting, what's sitting there waiting anxiously for it's own garden spot, the stories behind the successes and the failures in a regular little update. It also might encourage me as a sort of confessional, to finally plant out some of these poor things that have patiently waited way too long to find a more permanently suitable spot.

Hibiscus cuttings still in their tubes, stacked into a bigger pot to keep them upright.

Lately I've been almost obsessed with growing anything I can get my hands on, just to try, so it's a real mixed bag. I've got what I think are called Spraxis in a punnet, struck from seed which I took from one that just popped up out of the ground near my front door one day, they look kind of like a dutch lily leaf and the flowers are dainty, gold with a red freckle. After the flower comes a seed pod, and well, I couldn't help myself, the seeds went into a punnet and the rest they say is history. Near them, some chillies or maybe capsicum, or bell peppers, in all honesty, they been there so long now I'm no longer sure, but they did come from one of the above I had growing at one point.
I have a large hibicus near the back door, and somewhere in my dreams this will need to be cut down and transplanted to make way for a deck, plus it needed cutting back, so I had about 30 cuttings, of which about 8 or so are now in small pots, another 10 are alive in tubes but still not showing enough root for me to believe they are ready for bigger things, and the rest are compost. Do I know what I'm going to do with either of these things? No, no idea. Just thought I'd give it a go because they were there and I could. I have ginger, lots of ginger, about 2 dozen in old herb pots, struck from the leftovers of last seasons ginger. I want to put these into the garden in the retained area around my levelled wicker bed area, but the area's not fully retained yet and the chickens keep digging it up, meanwhile they are quickly outgrowing their little yellow pots. The yellow pots remind me that I should mention that I kept my pots and punnets from previously purchased plants and reuse them (until they fall apart). I also like to keep same things in same coloured pots where possible, a habit I started when I couldn't really recognise what I'd actually planted. I've also got red pots with loquats grown from my own loquat fruit seeds, and green pots with cape gooseberry seedlings from last seasons crop.
So what's on your potting bench these days?

One tray of ginger waiting to be planted out.

Cape gooseberry seedlings from my own plant seeds

Spraxis to the left, chillies (I think) to the right

The loquat seedlings at least made it to the ground next to the table

A mixed bag of tumeric, ginger, comfrey, and something dead.