This is on my mind....

Inspired by Rhonda from Down to Earths blog (link at right) here's my contribution to todays "This is on my mind..."
This morning the house seemed too big & too empty. Yesterday was Jenny's (on the left) last day with us. She's been studying here in Australia and living with us this past year. We've been involved with a school homestay program for a few years now and it's given us an opportunity to meet a lot a fabulous young girls who've stayed with us anywhere from just a couple of weeks to more than a year. We'll miss her quiet presence, her ready smile & will cary the best hopes for her future.

Secret Santa gets me inspired!

 I'm so glad my hubby is not with me at the island tonight. Before anyone has a moment to think anything negative about this statement, just hold those thoughts until you see the state of my bed currently!

What can I say, I like to fiddle with bits while I'm in wind down mode just before sleep, and well tonight it got a little out of control!

Quite a few years ago now, I made my first necklace for my mum's birthday. At the time it was because I couldn't find anything that would really suit her premade. She prefers to have necklaces that were a bit longer than what was in vogue at the time. I discovered a passion for beads and often experiment with designs while sitting on the sofa watching the TV with hubby, or late at night when I'm having trouble sleeping.

Normally I'm inspired by new beads I've bought, tonight it was a combination of a needed gift for my Secret Santa from work, and when I bought the beads to do that I also fell in love with some lovely faceted Smokey Obsidian & some large "chips" of black agate which just seem to reflect the light beautifully off all its uneven surfaces. (I have to confess here that I really love to work with semi precious beads. The weight & polished surfaces always inspire me and as a "touchy feely" sort of person, I love the feel of them when I'm stringing combinations up. It does make things a little costly though, but I always figure that if I'm going to put the time in it may as well be for something really beautiful, also as most of the pieces I make are for family, I like them to be special, that and if the receiver needs them adjusted or wants the design changed they know I'm only too happy to recycle my own pieces.) I thought these two strings would look great together but had no idea when I bought them how they would end up. The picture below doesn't really do the colour of them justice, but you get the idea.

                                          

The Secret Santa pressie was easy and really no fuss. I just bought some fairly inexpensive (5 strands for $20, a good buy from my point of view) round faceted glass beads in a smokey sort of colour in two sizes. More than I needed for the job, but great colours for future use. Then for a "highlight" bead I bought a large black round timber bead that had a chinese design carved into it for the necklace and a smaller version for a bracelet to match.  I just thread some black hat elastic through these, tied the knot off and forced it into the middle of the carved beads so it couldn't be seen. I've only recently started using hat elastic with a prior similar design I made for myself that looked dressy to wear to work, but easy for me to get on in a hurry when I'm running late. I don't think it takes away from the look of the piece once it's on, but it really makes a big difference in making time, and it's handy to get on when you don't have someone else around to assist with finicky tiny catches!

Total cost for my Secret Santa (which had a twenty dollar limit) has worked out so far at about $12 so I may just make a quick pair of earrings to match as well if I have time.

                                                    

So that was all very quick and controlled but then I started thinking how the leftover beads could work back nicely with the other semi precious beads I'd bought. I do this a lot as I've found the cheapest way to buy beads is to buy them in strands, but I find I rarely use the entire strand in one design as I like to mix combinations that highlight the colours or shapes. I also frequently mix in some less expensive beads (normally chinese crystal or glass) to keep the costs down. This means I've got a stockpile of beads on hand to experiment with when coming up with a design. So after dragging out so of the afore mentioned stockpile, I ended up with a very messy but creative workspace, in the middle of my bed! Anyway I'm thrilled with the outcome, I was able to mix some gold metal beads that I bought really cheaply and had tucked away back with it.

It's still not finished but I think it will make a perfect Christmas gift , so you can't have a really good picture of it yet!  But here's a sneak preview below with the Secret Santa one.

And finally, just because he was so cute a picture of a large green frog that was sitting out front when I came home tonight, the shot's a bit dark, but I didn't want to frighten him with the flash. It reaffirms my decision to try not to use any nasty chemicals in the garden every time I see one of these!

This is on my mind...

Rhonda from Down to Earth (you can see a link to her blog down on the right hand side) has started a Friday post I'd like to join in on. You can read her posts to get the full background but essentially it's where we all talk about the things we've been wanting to do. For me it's been a long work week & I can't wait to get back to my little island shack! I don't think I've mentioned on this blog yet that my little blue shack isn't yet my full time life, just my little bit of hope for the future at this stage. I'm looking forward to a stroll on the local beach at sunset (the view above) with a cup of tea in hand after a fruitful day of gardening, knowing I'm planning and living at least a little in my dreams of tomorrow. One last day of the real world today & then off to paradise!

We were lucky to inherit some established plants with our shack when we bought it. However we've slowly been building up a collection of fruit trees over the last year in order to have our own good supply of fruit in the future. It's hard being patient, knowing that these little seedlings in some cases won't provide fruit for up to five years. Looking back at pictures of the Jaboticaba & the Lychee, these don't seem to have grown at all! But to my surprise, my nectarine, which has only been in a year has blessed us with our first fruits (a grand total of 3!) And one of our little apple seedlings is trying valiantly for it's first apple after only a year in the ground as well. Some have given us small rewards, the mulberry has managed a few berries, even though it's barely more than an upright stick with a couple of leaves, the raspberry did the same & then died off, only to shoot up again this year. Others like the Cape gooseberry has provided us with lots of berries & is covered in fruit again already. Of the vines, the kiwi fruit started off strong, but went into hibernation for winter & have only just started to show leaves again. According to the info I read on them, we may not see fruit on this for a few years yet. The grape cuttings given to me by a local friend failed miserably, with me only succeeding in keeping just one alive, and just recently planted out in to the garden. The grape we bought got off to a great start & then disappeared into the belly of the most amazing grubs and didn't really recover again last season, but this year it's been reborn & has lovely green leaves promising hope. The purple passionfruit gave us a dozen or so fruits last year while the red panama one barely grew. We've also put in the shrubby type fruits like blueberries and pepinos, which have given me a one off harvest. Recently we've added a collection of citrus trees, which for the time being are in pots while we decide where they'll live best for the long term. When asked recently what we have now I found it hard to remember them all so here's the list of what's permanent in the garden now;

Lemonade tree (existing when we moved in)

2 x Mango trees (existing when we moved in)

Macadamia tree (existing when we moved in)

2 x subtropical suitable Apple trees

2 x subtropical suitable Pear trees

Lychee

Jaboticaba

Black Mulberry

Brown Turkey Fig

Black Fig

Peach

Nectarine

2 x Cherry trees

Kiwi vines

Banana passionfruit

Red passionfruit

Mandarine

Tangerine

Navel Orange

Cape Gooseberry

2 x Banana trees

3 x Pepinos

3 x Blueberries

1 x Meyer Lemon

1 x Lime

1 x Cherry Guava

1 x Loquat

1 x Tamarillo

2 x Grapes

18 x Strawberries

Many great fruit salads ahead I hope!

A busy little day

Today was another quick day, with just a limited time spent in the garden. Most of the time was spent putting in another couple of posts for our new fence. A fence to keep the vegies in & the chickens out, without all the mess of mismatched odd bits of chook fence, an entire collection of assorted shapes & types of stakes holding it up all attached by bits of wire, cable ties & left over bits of string. I really would like to think I can have a vegetable garden & a neat back yard as well, and I'm hoping this fencing will form a great frame work for making that happen.
There was a lot of thought that went into the design of the new fence. It needed to be fairly cheap as money to spend on it was limited. It needed to be able to be adapted to allow the chook pen to still move in & out as we rotate it around the finished garden beds. It needed to look good as the finished product occupies a fair bit of our land space. And it needs to last a while. After a bit of of compromise we came up with the finished concept, and I'm really happy with it.

At first I wasn't keen on using treated wood for the framework and posts, but hardwood was going to be too expensive, quite heavy & not readily available nearby to purchase, and we couldn't really spare the extra to do a metal fence this time around. The design was based on our external fence, which is a Bunning's DIY job. It was great for giving us the feeling that the yard remained open, but kept the visiting children in, safe & sound. The new fence consists of panels in the same way, which can be bolted on or taken off fairly simply to allow easy access to bring the chook pen in. It's been fairly inexpensive with each panel being made up of just 3 180cm fence palings, one cut in half to form the sides & the other two used as the top & bottom railing. We then stapled the existing chook wire to the frame work. These panels are then attached to posts. The panels were aligned with the existing garden beds, and are just wide enough to allow the chook pen to fit through the gap when removed. Between the garden beds where there were existing trees instead of garden beds we've made a couple of fixed panels & also a couple of gates for easy access daily.

In addition to this I started to sort out all my old seedling and plant pots. To date I haven't used them for a while as I started to find it just as productive to plant most of the seeds directly into the gardens, but I may have another little project coming up & if all goes well I might just need these again.

Yet another rainy garden day!!!

Today marked another day off for me, and yet another day in the garden while it poured rain the whole time.

We started the day with a trip to our favourite nursery where we purchased a Tahitian Lime ( a dwarf grafted variety) and a Meyer Lemon (another dwarf). We also picked up another Blueberry taking my total now to three. I also got another six pacific blue eyed fish to go into the pond, as the last lot I bought coincidentally disappeared with the appearance of two Ibis strategically resting beside the pond ($60 worth of rainbow perch, an expensive fish dinner).

The citrus have now been potted up along with the left over as yet unpotted Mandarin from a few weeks ago, complete with some strawberries & alysumm around the stem, and the Blueberry put into the ground in front of one of the 'fixed' panel parts of my new garden fence.

In addition to this I picked up & planted a dozen corn seedlings right near the pond area. My success with corn hasn't been great, the first lot didn't get enough water, the last lot grew well, and really healthy looking, formed what looked to be perfect cobs, only to find that they were hollow inside after little bugs (I guess they would have been something related to weevils) had moved in & gobbled up the insides. On a positive note, a large number of tiny green frogs also were living well & happy amongst it, even though we didn't have a water source nearby. So my hope is that this lot of corn will provide at least some protection for the tadpoles as they emerge as tiny frogs, and give them somewhere to hide from the local fish eating Ibis. The corn if it works this time, will just be a bonus.

I've put in some Cos lettuce (my favorite especially for Cesear salads in summer) and some Bok choi in what was the sweet potato bed that had been overun with cherry tomatoes. The sweet potatoes had all been removed & dug up. Actually that's an overstatement! When I say 'all', it was actually just one! An entire garden bed, thriving shoots above ground, plenty of time to grow and almost nothing to show for it. I did however find at least a dozen or more big (really really big) witchety grubs living there, so I'm wondering if the lack of potatoes may have something to do with these guys? I don't know enough about them to be sure.

Finally, I planted some basil out in the front herb garden, near the Artichokes I planted a while back. My first basil plants grew to gigantic proportions in the 'no dig' layered garden bed, but I've not had the same success since. After some research it would seem that Basil isn't partial to chook manure, which would explain why it hasn't thrived in my 'chook maintained' garden beds. I've put it in near the Artichokes as I've found out a few weeks back from watching ABC's Gardening program, they like a feed with sheep manure & potash, so hopefully it will appeal to the Basil too. Also this garden isn't part of the chook rotation & doesn't get 'turned over' by the chooks when they free range around the yard.

There were still some more punnets of seedlings I didn't get too, but they have to wait until my next day off, along with the promised photos!

A Rainy day's gardening

We spent my day off this week making some new plant purchases, followed by lunch with my parents and then finally when it began to pour rain, we got around to putting the plants in. I was determined, rain or not to get everything we purchased planted as often I buy seedlings and then don't get around to planting them, and come my next day off they are laying dead, eaten or gone to seed!

We had a fairly big buy up this time, as I am behind in my gardens & spring has already well & truly sprung! Knowing that time would be limited I decided not to raise my own seedlings from scratch although I have had ok success with this before (some people have said that they find it really hard to grow from seed), and just bought in a variety of bits I wanted.

Last week on my day off I managed to get my seeded sebago potatoes (these have been waiting to plant out so long that the pontiac's I bought at the same time have actually already been harvested!) I don't know how successful they'll end up being after all this time, but they've grown about a foot in height in the week & are looking good. Last week I also put in 4 zucchini & 4 squash seedlings (I was hesitant as I've failed miserably with these to date!) which are still surviving although not looking like they've grown any. Part of the reason I think I've failed with these before is probably lack of pollination, because the flowers grow, but no vegies result. To assist with this, I've planted some alyssum and a couple of nasturtium seedlings around them in the hope of attracting the bees.

Near this garden is a big ghost gum in front of which I've been piling up a bit of a compost heap. Into this I've dug a couple of small holes that have been filled with a mixture of worm tea soaked coir & rich potting mix and then planted with cucumber. Again I've popped in some nasturtium seedlings to keep these company. I'm not sure whether it will be successful or not, as the tree does seem to leach goodness away from anything near it, but the ground has slowly been getting richer so fingers crossed! On the other side of the tree I've popped in some rosella's. My nanna use to grow them & make jam, but the last of her bushes died off & she had no more seed left, so it's a bit of nostalgia more than anything that's behind this.

Along the fence line I've put in 4 rockmelon seedlings, two either side of the raspberry canes. Eventually I want this space exclusively for raspberries, but in the meantime I figure I may as well use the area.

To the herb garden in the front yard today I've added; lemon thyme, coriander, a curry plant & 4 butter lettuce seedlings ( I have had good success with lettuce amongst the herbs out front before so I figured I'd give them a go there again).

We bought a tangerine, an orange and a tangelo tree & have planted them into big black plastic tubs for the time being until hubby finishes the garden fencing and then they'll probably be planted along what will one day be the driveway to the garage. For the time being the pots should be big enough to give them plenty of room to grow. I've underplanted two of these with a couple of strawberries and some alyssum to attrack the bees once they start to flower.

I've also put in more rhubard ( this is my third lot & it keeps dying off). This time I've put some into the herb garden and some more near the lemonade tree and some into my original eggplant patch. Now we wait & see...

Unfortunately no pictures because of the rain, but hopefully when the weekend comes I can get some shots of everything progressing nicely.