As much as I am both enjoying and making the most of this unseasonably warm start to Spring I must be honest and say I don’t like it. Surely, 23 degrees in early September pushes some weather records. 😦 And not for the better. But as I said, I AM enjoying it and have been making the most of it too. Today we were out in the garden from about 10am until after 6 and I am suitably exhausted.
Farewell Renault. You were a wonderful car and we are sad to see you go.
I arose this morning, determined to get some things done. I’d done some housework and inside jobs yesterday, and after having spent Monday down with a second migraine in as many days I was determined to get out into that sunshine and achieve some things. And we sure did. 😀
Black flowering broad beans (and weeds)
Crimson flowering broad beans
Aquadulce broad beans – the tallest of the lot and the ones I plan to grow next year at this stage. The others are pretty but not so tall.
One of the things we needed to do in order to be able to finish off the shed is move the cubbyhouse and dismantle the crappy decking that is there. When I say crappy, I’m not kidding either. It’s a few hardwood sleepers whacked down on the ground with some fence palings on the top of it. But the cubby had to be moved first. Armed with Martin’s impact driver the tech screws came out in seconds and the cubby was dismantled. 🙂 I am definitely much stronger since we’ve moved here as I remember struggling to move the individual wall pieces. I still found them heavy, don’t get me wrong but the difficulty moving them was more due to the fact that it has been quite windy and gusty today. Carrying a large flat panel in wind is not a particularly smart idea. Still, I didn’t drop any and the cubby is reassembled with new awnings sawed from fence palings and then screwed in place. Happy. 😀
My leeks look vaguely like leeks now. If you squint.
Onions and weeds
Garlic. This bed is the least impressive.
Whilst the kids ate their sandwiches outside their newly located cubby I set up the protective wire around our kiwi fruit vines. We have 3 (2 female, one male) which will be trained to grow to cover the underneath of the house and up across the decking area too. It will eventually obscure our view but that’s a small sacrifice for the shade it will provide our house from the summer sun. 🙂 And when it starts to fruit in Autumn and winter we will only have to step outside onto the deck to harvest the freshest of the fresh fruit, chock full of vitamin C and deliciousness. Does it get any lower in carbon miles? 😉 The wire needs to be there though as I want to be able to let the chickens out to free-range the garden again. We’ve had to keep them locked up as they were roaming in areas we didn’t want them to go. And as I also secured the areas underneath the deck of the house and also at least some of the shed to prevent their access to the underworld under the house and from there to the front garden. The job is not yet finished but it’s getting there. As I ran out of wire I had to buy some more so maybe on Friday or the weekend, when the weather forecast is once again favourable for outside work, I can get the job finished and let the birds loose in the garden. 🙂
My asparagus seedlings, grown from seed given to me by a friend in Gordon (sorry for the blur).
One of the other objects that needed moving along with the cubby was the barbecue. It wasn’t set up in a location we could use it but with the finer weather here, barbecuing will once again become a part of our lives so I grabbed 6 of the pavers from the front path and repurposed them into a small completely unprofessional paved area on which the barbecue can sit. It’ll do for now. 🙂
Old location of cubby and barbecue
New location with bikes and trucks tidied up (I did say in the cubby but oh well)
Once we’d done all this and the kids had finished their lunch we hopped in the car for a trip to Crossroads, our local animal feed store. They also stock fencing, gravel, red gum, sand, cement and all that sort of stuff but for us, the fencing wire and bulk compost was of interest. I grabbed a trailer-full (¾m³), 2 rolls of animal wire (in between chicken and bird wire in size) and then headed home with a sleeping little girl. We sat in the car for 15 minutes whilst I made a couple of phone calls and opened some mail then got out to get down and dirty. The kids were armed with small spades and their wheelbarrows whilst I got the compost onto the hugelkultur beds out the front. I replanted the 2 remaining relocated rose bushes and planted out the last few bulbs that I hadn’t yet found a home for or time to plant out at the ends of the hugelkultur beds and a few under the pond overflow too. They will add a few more bee invites come next July/August I hope. 🙂 And Erlicheer are my favourite flower too. 😀
Shocking photo I know but the stick with a leaf is one of my female Hayward kiwi vines bursting beautifully into leaf. With all the weeds behind it.
Erlicheer really does bring me hope that winter is at an end. And they smell heavenly.
Millions of peaches… Well, maybe not this year but we have leaves!
A rose by any other name… One of the relocated roses is demonstrating its tenacity and my (so far) inability to kill it.
I got it all finished up with 3 happy kids and before the sun set too. I even had time for photos although the light was definitely not ideal as I’m sure you can tell. 😉 I am no photographer, that I well know.
Garden beds under soil and ready for more strawberries (rear bed) and 2 Diggers Gold yellow raspberry canes (front bed) that I hope to purchase tomorrow
It looks so pretty, all that lovely dark soil.
And my little raspberries with their petticoats covered in rich black compost.
We siphoned the pond the other day which we were a little preemptive in filling. I hope to get some pond plants and fish in the near future and to collect some stones from a friend with which to line the plastic. Maybe Saturday?
So in for pasta bolognaise and it is time for me to put my feet up (before they fall off). Thank you Martin for helping with dinner and bedtime. A real blessing there I tell you. 🙂
Rabid Little Hippy 
You can’t kill roses Jess unless you are a possum. They just keep on keeping on and are usually to be found at abandoned homesteads. The only thing to remember about roses is if you take a rose out, don’t replace it with another rose, they do something to the soil with their roots and roses just don’t do well in another roses hole. We don’t have to worry about roses here, the possums prune them every night… One of the small maples we planted out yesterday got eaten last night by wallabies but hey, whatchagonnadoeh? Not like they were hard to plant and at least it died with it’s feet in the soil. You must be sleeping well with all of this activity 🙂
Sleep? What with an uninvited bed guest (Orik in case you were raising your eyebrows) at 2am and again at 5:30, not to mention being too hot and spending the night in a strange dream world yeah not so well. I ache this morning though so I know I worked hard. Martin is proud of what we achieved (as am I) although he was less than impressed having to haul me bodily out of my chair to go to bed last night. 😦
As for killing roses, I HAVE managed to kill one. I have also managed to kill not 1 but TWO comfrey plants and I am waiting with baited breath to see if the one in the greenhouse is dead or alive. Yes, I am a true green thumb. The only thing I can be counted upon to grow is mould! 😉
No idea how you killed a rose! Was it a standard old hybrid Tea? They tend to be indestructible so kudos if you did ;). You might be surprised at what grows back from the roots though. Comfrey is deciduous remember so you will probably see it coming back from the roots unless it was in pots…then you killed it ;). Love this garden sharing stuff, it is really motivating me now 🙂
It’s in a bed in the greenhouse. Still, I rock at plant murder I tell you. I can kill the unkillable. And without an ounce of poison too.
Might need you to tackle our blackberries then 😉
Easy one there – get a goat!
There is a large white wooly goat with big horns up the hill from here. Earl and the goat eyeball each other whenever we walk that way. It’s amusing to see how little fear the goat has of Earl. It just stares at him as if to say “whatcha lookin at sunshine!” We should ask our neighbours twice removed if we can borrow the goat. Earl would be most amused 😉
Oh Puh-LEASE film THAT encounter! 😀
I have NO idea who would win…my money is on a tie 😉
Oh, and I plan to plant cherries where the roses were. Being both of the Rosaceae family, will that be a problem? I NEED to do a horticulture course I think.
Nah…just roses are the problem. They don’t like each others holes (LOL).
lol
Jessie, you definitely need a week’s holiday after that little lot. And I hope you are being paid overtime…
Yes, overtime for the salary of being a full time SAHM. 😉 It’s double the going rate of $00.00 per hour. 😉
23 degrees in September?? It has now been over 30 degrees here and already too hot to garden in the middle of the day. Methinks it ain’t normal and would be good to have a government who believed in climate change.
Kali
Wow, over 30C! I take it that’s no more normal for your location than 22 is here in a supposed cold climate area. I dread to think what temperatures we may reach in Summer…
And yes, a government that not only believes in climate change but is also prepared to do some seriously hard work in preparing for and dealing with it.
Jessie, I think, after reading your post, that I must lie down and have a nap . . .
No, truly, I am very impressed and you are making me homesick not only for spring, but for gardens and outdoor work. I love that I can follow you and the other ‘villagers’ as you go along. Vicarious living, that’s the way to go!
I love the front of your home, with that lovely covered porch. What a view you will have one day soon.
I’ve never heard of anyone killing comfrey; you must tell us how you did it. That would be handy to know if it ever got loose and took over the garden . . .
Your weather is also impressive, as we have been up to nearly 30C as well . . . too hot for my taste, but all too soon I’ll be whinging about the weird white stuff again, so, as Narf7 says, “whatchagonnado, eh?” I’m thinking it’s really global warming when both hemispheres are heating up at the same rate. Hope that doesn’t foretell an extra cold winter.
Well, back to the FeedReader; a sadly neglected fellow of late. ~ Linne