I took this picture on Monday. We had the foggiest day I’ve seen since we moved to Ballan. The fog moved in late morning and stayed until after dark. It moved in again the next afternoon along with the rain. I expect we may see more fog this afternoon. My water tank already has enough water to come out of the taps. YAY! 😀
A foggy day, in Ballan town… It just doesn’t have the same ring as London town now does it? Can barely see the back hill, let alone the houses that are there.
It’s hard to believe it’s spring on a cold day like today but things are growing in the gardens and they would be sprouting in the greenhouse if the mice would stop digging up and eating the seeds. 😦
Can you see the tiny little green seedlings popping up between my potato onions? Carrots!
I’ve planted baby carrots, purple dragon carrots (full of those wonderful purple anti-cancer antioxidants) and another whose name escapes my memory. I will plant some more seeds in a month or so. I also don’t plan to thin them as I don’t care what shape my carrots are. 😉 I can pick as we go to thin which will give us plenty of baby carrots for salad season. 😀
Carrots to the top of the frame (weed in the middle) and parsnips to the bottom. Not sure they’ll reach maturity in time for Christmas though. Thanks for the seeds Narf.
Community is an awesome thing. These parsnip seeds are from parsnips in Tasmania, posted over by a friend and I’ve shared many of the copious amount of seeds with at least 2 or 3 others. I think I’ll scatter a few seeds or patches thereof through the garden beds out front too. 🙂 If I miss them they can go to seed and become more edible weeds (remember a weed is a plant growing in the “wrong” place) in my garden. 😀
My beautiful broad beans.
Who says that veggie aren’t pretty enough for the front garden. 😉 These are in the veggie patch down the back but there are more in the front garden too. Think outside the square. 🙂
Broccoli in full flower.
Again, whose to say you can’t grow broccoli as an ornamental as well as an edible. I hope to save the seeds from these as I highly recommend growing the sprouting broccoli and the purple of the florets makes it (marginally) more appealing to small kids who don’t eat greens. 😉 Picking these small florets means less cutting up work in the kitchen too. 🙂
A very soggy silkie hen. This is Blackie.
I just had to share. Most hens look slightly silly in the rain but a silkie hen that is wet looks sillier than most absolutely ridiculous! 😀 And it appears that Dandelion is either in hiding from the roosters or, more likely, sitting eggs. I’ve popped 2 more under her and depending on how many are laid today by the other hens I might gift her with a few more to sit on. We need our next generation of hens to keep up the egg production. C’mon Dandelion you funny little white fluff-ball. Hatch out those babies! 🙂
Anyway, just thought I’d share a few photos from around our place.
Rabid Little Hippy 
Very peaceful. Glad to read you have a water tank too:)
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Goodness, fog this late. You really do live in your own microclimate there, dont you. There was a little bit hanging around the coast yesterday but not like that. I love how relaxed you are with your garden. No straight lines for you. Im trying to break free (she yells) but its hard.
We get fog regularly as it rolls in from the sea and down the river and then again later on (about an hour or so) when it rolls back down the river and out to the sea. It’s like the tides here. Love the photos (still green about that water tank 😉 ) and wet hens are not a pretty sight and they don’t smell that great either ;). Glad the parsnips grew and they came from Bev at Foodnstuff and were just a few of the massive amount she sent me and that I have kept and shared around locally as well. Community is the bomb and allows us all to share gratis natures bounty and spreading the love isn’t just great for community, it’s great for plant diversity and survival as well. Plants would be all for us sending their babies off into the ether and if they could wrap their green little sappy minds around it, more of them would stick velcro on their babies to make sure that they go as far away as possible (take forgetmenots as an example 😉 ). Love the unstructured carrots. I am going to throw all kinds of seeds into my new garden beds. If they grow good-o, if they don’t, bollocks. Such is life and at least I will get a chance to have a go 🙂
Tidal fog! Love it! Tell Steve he needs to do some time-lapse photography of that! 🙂
The water tank has been with us for several years but I am envious of your 4 acres, even with its summer dryness, wet weather chasm causing driveway floods and local wildlife that snarf anything vaguely resembling food. The grass is always greener over the septic tank hey. 😛
Community is the bomb now and well worth the cultivation but in future it will be far more I believe. More along the lines of as necessary as the water we drink and food we eat as both may well for many be reliant upon that community.
And if the seeds came from Bev then thank you to both you and Bev. 🙂
Yes, forgetmenots and cleavers both! They love us (and our furry socks) so very much. 😉
I read once about someone who, with unforgiving soil, would go around, dig a hole about 9 inches deep, fill it will beautiful friable sieved compost/sand etc and plant in each hole a few carrot seeds. Small patches of carrots that had the soil in which to grow straight and true and which would have looked absolutely gorgeous too with their very aesthetically pleasing foliage in small pretty clumps throughout the garden. I think my gardens might well benefit from some carrot holes too. 😀
I would love the ability to dig a few holes for carrots but everywhere we attempt to dig here is rocky. I figure we must be the epicentre of some extinct volcanic range or something as they all seem to gravitate here. We found a perfectly round rock in the back yard the other day. It was just sitting next to the back door and neither Steve nor I put it there. We decided that as it obviously wanted to stay we put it next to the door. Rocks like us 🙂
You’ve managed pole holes though right? Then again, raised beds work well too.;)
A round rock! Picture on Wednesday please. And round like a 2D circle or round like a ball?
I received a little cement bird once that arrived on my front door step. Must be 15 years ago now. I still have the bird and still have no idea who gave it to me either. It moves around my garden a lot now. The kids love it. 🙂
The rock is 3D ball round and as we have a fence all around the compound area there is no way it could have gotten into the back yard without someone hoisting it over the fence (or some other magical entrance 😉 ). NO idea how it got there but “there” it got so we put it next to the door. Did you ever see Catweazel? If you did…do you remember the woglestone episode? If you don’t forgedaboudit and if you did “woo-woo” time 😉
Sorry, I think Catweazel might be before my time. 😉 I think I’ve heard of it but nope, never seen it.
Sometimes there are things that we need to have for whatever reason and it doesn’t matter how impossible it is, they WILL be given to us. 😀 Thank goodness for miracles, even if they’re stone delivery ones or cement bird ones. 🙂
Exactly and if worse comes to worse and we ever lose our keys we can gain entry via our collective collected found objects 😉
I haven’t noticed fog here, but was away from Saturday until today so perhaps I missed it. I am getting a little tired of the cold and wet though. Come on spring! My greenhouse is looking the goods though, my beans are going great guns and the zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin are getting there. My tomatoes, capsicums and eggplants are only just popping their heads through now so will be late in the season once they’re big enough to plant out. Thankfully I was given some seedlings by a friend. Love the look of your broadbeans. Are they a purple variety, the flowers look red, very pretty. And I agree about sprouting broccoli, it’s great green or purple in my opinion.
The broad beans in the back bed are of 3 varieties, Rd flowering, black flowering (both from Diggers) and Dulce (means sweet), a variety I bought of eBay. Out front are the red and black flowering ones again. They really are beautiful. 🙂
Sprouting broccoli is just easier in my opinion but purple does appeal to purple loving princesses (although she still isn’t real keen to eat it :() Sprouting broccoli is perfect for singles, plant a couple and pick as much as you need for 1 meal. Or perfect for families where you can pick heaps or less and there are no complaints over whose is cut which ways and it’s faster to pick a few, rinse, cook serve. Also just rinse and serve with dips. It’s the asparagus of the broccoli world! 😉
We only had fog those 2 days, Monday and Tuesday I think. It was rather eerie but incredibly beautiful. When it comes in heavily we can only see our neighbours house behind and the seclusion and peace are incredible. All the neighbours across the valley and river cease to exist in the fog. I love it!
I envy you your plants. I have a few small tomatoes but sadly everything in my greenhouse is considered to be food fr the mouse living in there. We have several around at the moment and we often find a few drowned in Anna’s water bucket (bleuch). It’s very frustrating to know they dug up and ate all my pumpkin seeds, rhubarb seeds and more. I have no choice but to plant direct and see if a neighbour has some 2L plastic bottles I can cut for mini greenhouses. 😦
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