Around the yard this week..

Strolling through the early morning light is such a peaceful joy.

I love to watch the shadows play across the grass and paths.

In the vegie patch outback, the garlic is growing well and bursting into bloom.

And we have already been eating delicious Spring Onions for a few weeks now.

Rhubarb is about to go into home-made pies and hopefully some sauces to store away.

And the softest roses are continuing to delight us with their delicate presence and grace.

Everywhere I look, I see something in our backyard to be thankful for!

Life..

Isn't it wonderful!?

*

He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate,

bringing forth food from the earth!

Psalm 104:14

Catch-up and a Question

Wow! It's been quite some time since I last posted here!

The Woodman and I have been having fun pottering around our little patch.

We have had some successes and a few failures with our fruit and vegies.

It's all still a big learning curve for us :-)

 But we are really enjoying getting our hands dirty and seeing what grows well in our small back garden.

The peach and nectrine trees were attacked by leaf-curl, which meant we ended up having to spray them.

The dutch carrots grew beautiful lush leaves and looked so promising - but were badly  deformed and wrapped around each other.

(Hubby now realises that he planted them much too close together!)

We are now in Summer here in Australia..

 but you'd never know it with all the rain we've had recently.

This has caused the silverbeet to suddenly shoot up like it was on steriods!

 But that's ok - the chooks are loving the bits we don't use.

Speaking of chooks..

I read recently that you shouldn't wash the eggs if you can avoid it.

Is that true?

I just automatically washed our eggs and dried them before storing them away.

The debate I read was something about them not lasting as long, and spoiling because of some film being removed by washing them.

Any advice out there for a confused "wanna-be backyard chook farmer", lol! ?

These silly chickens are obviously getting to me.. big-time !!

If you knew me well, you would know that I love country-style decorating magazines.
I used to buy them regularly and have a huge collection which I still enjoy re-reading and relaxing with.

Well, last Saturday I found myself in a quandry as I stood in the newsagent looking at the magazines on offer.

I simply couldn't decide if I wanted to buy the 3-for-1 country decorating pack..

 or the lovely glossy poultry magazine that had articles on how to build the most splendiferous chook houses!!

My hubby stood in disbelief and laughed at me incredulously...
so I bought the 3-for 1.

It wasn't nearly as interesting as the chicken mag :-(

Guess I'm in love with my chooks, lol!!

Simple Pleasures~ Growing life

This week finds me concentrating on making some changes around our home,

 and thinking much about gardens and plantings which nurture body and soul.

I've been watching the lovely signs of an approaching Australian Spring in my garden..

 and I have to say - I can hardly wait for it's arrival this year!

Winter still seems to want to stubbornly linger on for a while in our part of the country,

and in fact rallied a blast of cold air and more light snow on our mountain this week.

Nevertheless, I see our herbs and vegie seedlings are definitely having a little growth spurt,

thanks to the slightly warmer days that have visited us recently.

The Woodman is very happy to see the lettuces and silverbeets coming on.

He is really hoping his Dutch carrots are" doing their thing" and will be sweet to eat pretty soon!

Everything is stretching up from the earth and reaching for the warm rays of the sun.

Even the peas which sprung up unannounced from the pea-straw mulch are doing a happy dance today :-) 

The promise of new life is growing plump along the branches of the peach and nectrine trees.

Soon the blossoms will appear and will be dancing their duets with the bees..

all to the tune of balmy breezes and cheery sparrowsong.

I love the "in-between-seasons" of Spring and Autumn!

Watching the cycle of the year turn in all it's glorious colours and perfumes

 invigorates my soul and gives me so much joy.

Perhaps by this time next week the Woodman's axe may finally stop to rest..

and the watering-can and hose take up the baton in it's stead  :-)

And I will be right  here smiling on the sidelines -  eagerly cheering them on, lol!

Trish

***

I'm joining Dayle to give thanks for the simple pleasures of the seasons and newly grown life.

Signs of Spring

The Magpies and Pied Currawongs are getting ready for Spring.

The other day I found a dozen of them feasting in our front yard on the berries of this bush.

They have also been visiting my backyard and raiding the vegie patch for straw.

This one found a Virginia Creeper vine offcut was more to it's liking.

So it carried it up to the carport roof

and onto the garage

and flew off with it's ill-gotten gains!

The next day she was back trying to pinch the plastic framework that supports my climbing Geranium :-(

That must be some nest she's building lol!

They can be fun to observe but Currawongs are predators who will kill and eat small birds.

I don't want to encourage them around here as we have a wonderful large wren population that we dearly love and would hate to lose them to these 'brutes'!

On another note...we have peas growing in the herb box!

They have germinated from the peastraw mulch that we used to help build the box up.

I've read that these peas are not so good for human consumption as they are generally small and hard and are mainly used for stock feed.

Has anyone had experience with harvesting and eating these peas?

I'm not sure if we should try for that or just use them for extra mulch.

Any advice would be appreciated :-)

blessings..Trish

Herb box

Take one large wooden crate and line with wet newspaper and straw.

Add a layer of enriched soil

and alternate with more straw /soil layers

until the crate is almost full.

Then plant seedlings

of your favourite

kitchen herbs.

Water gently and sit back

and watch them grow.

Weekend Gardening

The weekend arrived, cool but with sunny blue skies, and we puttered around our backyard and started to transform it into what we hope will be a more practical and healthy space for growing food.

The Woodman decided to literally "hoe into" the vegie garden after making a wooden frame from timber we already had stored away. 

One good thing about being married to a man who loves wood, is that you usually have stacks of it piled up in various places around the house :-)

.

We mixed humus through the soil and planted some seedlings of garlic, dutch carrots, lettuce, silverbeet, rhubarb and broad beans. It will be interesting to see how they fare as we head into Winter.

I was a little dubious about the height of the timber framework and it's ability to hold the soil in properly..but hubby assures me he will raise it up later on if necessary :-)

This morning we put some bamboo poles around the lemon tree to drape a  protective cover over it,  as we are having very frosty mornings this week.

The Lisbon lemon is supposed to be frost-tolerant so hopefully it will not get damaged.

Perhaps the 'guardian statue' will be enough to scare the frost away, anyhow lol!

It was a perfect weekend to be relaxing in the fresh (and I do mean fresh!) Autumn air, while watching the silver-eye finches and blue wrens darting about in the Buddleia bushes.. and dreaming of how we hope the garden will turn out. 

At the moment it isn't too pretty I suppose..but there's a nice feeling that comes with knowing we're using materials that we had on hand and not paying a fortune just to get a "look".

Trying to live simply and more frugally means making adjustments in our way of approaching things.

Being content with using humble materials is just a small one.

The biggest transformation that I see happening here so far, is actually in my Woodman!

Somehow, the garden has suddenly become an exciting place for him to work in.

He's always loved having flowers about, but never was one to weed or spend much time bent over a rake or shovel lol!! 

It's so nice to see him now..happily plotting and implementing new ideas to bring us closer to the earth and self-sufficiency.

At the end of the day, I have to agree with King Solomon -

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:" Eccles 3:1