The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah, Hurrah...

I took these pictures yesterday, at the same time I photographed the tree. It was around 6.30am, and it was really eerie outside, foggy and mysterious. It was pretty special, foggy and mysterious doesn't happen that often in Brisbane.

This photo made me think of rows of soldiers, marching in unison.
Attention!
The above photo is the beetroot I planted a few weeks ago, you can see the seedlings here. If you are in a hot climate like Brisbane, the planting season actually ended today, so run out and grab your seeds or seedlings right now! If you are in a warm climate you have from now until March, and cool climates can wait, start planting in February. You can see what type of climate you have here. That link is for Australia, NZ and the UK. For other countries I found a pretty generic one here, but you'd be better off googling your own country individually. I put in "climate zone for vegetable growing".

The photo below is what I am going to make when all of my lovely beetroot are ready to pick. Beetroot dip, yum o. Can't go past a good dip. The photo and recipe are from here, but I'll post it again when my beetoot are ready to go.
If you would like some facts about growing beetroot, take a look at the plonk and watch fact sheet, but be warned, it's a work in progress :)

And the Mad Phase Continues

No, not the close up... the SIZE... I can make my photos BIG! Hmm, big but cutting off half the photo. Let's call this shot an artistic angle.

This is an eggplant flower... they are really pretty hey. Lucky that, because all my eggplant plant actually does is flower, it only seems to continue on to produce actual eggplants on very special occasions, and those occasions seem to only take place around three times a year, possibly based on the alignment of several planets.

And the flowers tend to face downwards... I am down on the ground, lying on the cement for this photo. Now that's dedication to gardening for you.

I'll let the eggplant know it's featured on the internet. It might count as a special occasion slash planet alignment.

Brisbane's Foggiest Day

It was just a beautiful day today... it started off with this fantastic fog which had burned off by midday, and then it was warm, almost hot, and humid! But with a gentle cool breeze, it really was just wonderful. All this in the middle of winter.
So this is our tree in the backyard. It's a poinciana, so is just covered in red blooms in summer, and loses its leaves in winter. Most of the time, anyway, it has still got quite a few leaves on it right now, I have read that it's not to do with the cold, but to do with rainfall. I could be wrong on that though. What's great about it though, is that it shades the yard in summer, so in the middle of the day, when the sun is baking hot and only a nutbag would venture outside, we can use our yard, it's all lovely and shady. And then in winter the leaves fall and it lets the sun shine through... nature has got smarts.

The photo above is the view from our deck. We don't have a roof on it, and are waiting for the tree canopy to cover it for us. It's about one quarter of the way there so far, and that quarter covers the stairs and the landing. In the middle of the day when we eat outside we all have to crowd into a little corner in the shade. Lol, it'll get there.I do love our tree. I think it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, all mossy and gnarly and twisted, it's really quite magnificent. And just asking to be climbed. The boys haven't noticed that yet, but I am sure that it will not pass unnoticed forever.
At the moment they are content to climb on the garden beds.

The Benefits of a Mad Close Up Phase

Everyone should go through one of these phases. It's amazing what you discover. I was taking some photos of these plants outside, when the close up urge just took over... and...
I saw this...
It's baby zucchini... which is extremely interesting, because I was under the clear impression that these plants were squash.

I think this one below not only furthers, but concretes my this is a little unlike squash opinion.
You can see I took quite a few more close ups, the urge took over, and was then rewarded with the discovery of a fruiting vegetable (is that how you say it), further feeding the urge to do more close ups. It's a vicious, vicious cycle.

Well, long squash or short zucchini, whatever they are, I will love and eat them just the same as any other vegetable that grows in my garden. Actually, these did not take long to get interesting at all, they are in one of my lazy garden beds, and so were only planted as teeny seedlings a few weeks ago.

Goodness... maybe I've found something that I can grow?

Lettuce Dance

I hope you get my incredibly witty title joke.
In an effort to ramp up my photographic results, I have gone a little close up mad. I hope it's coming across as tasteful and artistic rather than hurting your eyeballs through squinting to focus.

Anyway, let us (get it?) not digress... Do you remember these? Well two weeks later, surviving chickens, children and above all my loving care, here they are again. Haven't they grown!

My neighbour's Cos lettuce are enormous, just huge, so I hope I haven't planted these too close together. I actually have grown lettuce before with success, and from memory I didn't pick them whole, I just harvested the leaves as I wanted them. I really love super fresh lettuce, so this worked for me, as I'm the only one in the family who really eats it. And it's great to be able to pick a few leaves and pop them onto a sandwich, and not worry about keeping the rest of the lettuce fresh, nature is keeping them fresh for me.
Here we go, another close up... I am thinking that it might look better if the lettuce leaf were wet, and that centre vein needs to be straighter on the horizontal. What do you think? Be gentle :). Watch out people, I am going to get creative!

Strawberry Patch

Hey, I've got some strawberries! I've never had a strawberry plant fruit for me before... and they are YUM.Above was my attempt at an artistic close up, I am really enjoying documenting the garden and would love to take some good photos... hmmm... I think I have some way to go yet.

This one below seems to have some sort of bug that has tunneled its way around the top of the berry. Still seems okay though.


Another tunneled one... I chopped off the top and ate it, and wow, the freshness really makes a huge difference. It was much softer, not mushy, but without any supermarket crunch to it. And it was delicately sweet, I guess the more they ripen the sweeter they get?
There are four main plants in total, but they have shot off some runners and there are probably around 10 plants now. My mum gave them to me about a year ago, and I kind of halfheartedly dug a few holes straight into the hard ground and plonked them in. No nice chicken soil, no manure. I don't think I even watered them in. I'd had no luck with anything growing for so long that I didn't really put any effort in. And of course because I didn't put any effort in, I wasn't really rewarded with anything either.
So what's different about these? I think, I could be wrong, but I think it's because I got enthusiastic about growing things and started to plant and water everything around them, I'd give the strawberries a little water too. And I think that's what it is, water.

Needless to say, with my newfound enthusiasm, they are now in danger of being drowned :O.

Sweet Bird and Leaf Apron Mudpie Giveaway!!!

CLOSED, CONGRATULATIONS AUNGIE!!!

Well it's now Sunday night and it has been miserable weather all weekend... I had some lovely new mulch to put out, but it kept drizzling on and off and it was cold and cloudy and for once I just didn't really feel like being outside. So... I stayed inside and sewed instead!
So to celebrate my wonderous sewing achievement, I am giving away this little Bird and Leaf apron that I made over the weekend. I was in Spotlight on Friday looking at material for a dress I wanted to make, and when I came across this pink material with the little birds on it... I just fell in love. I do adore pink, and the birds are really cute. I was looking for something to contrast with it and thought the brown material was just perfect, it matches the brown birds and the blue is the same colour as my favourite buttons, the ones I always buy when I go to Spotlight.

The birds and leaves reminded me of seeds and growing, and it inspired me to make an apron to keep my seeds in while I was gardening. I rarely wear things with pockets, and am forever traipsing back upstairs to get seeds.

I have made it small so it doesn't interfere with movement, especially getting up and down, and the front pocket is divided into two, I would put seeds on one side and paddle pop sticks in the other (I write the names of what I've planted and mark my seeds with them). You could also use on of the pockets to put your mobile phone into, I usually leave mine upstairs, but if I am expecting a call it's good to have with me.

I slaved over this apron! It really tested my poor little pea brain out. Anyone who can sew will be laughing at me right now, but this is the first thing I have ever sewn (I lie, I sewed a patchwork cushion in high school), and I was so bursting with pride and wanting to show it off. I took a lot of care over it too, so hopefully it won't fall apart too quickly.

And may I just say, that I had no idea that sewing machines had a function to sew buttons on. It's possibly the most exciting discovery I have made all year.

To enter yourself in the giveaway, all you have to do is either leave a comment on my blog, or link my blog to yours. Or you can do both :)

Good luck!!!

Ugni Molinae

Little Ugni was very hard to photograph, which is why the second photo has a big green watering can serving as a background. Actually that watering can has a story of its own, but let's not digress just yet.

So this is Ugni Molinae, which I believe, is a Chilean Guava. Dad gave him to me last weekend, he got it from Digger's as a part of his membership package. When he said guava, I pictured a guava like this, but according to Wikipedia, my guava is more like a cranberry, and the fruit will look like this.

The guava took four of us to plant it (lots of shovel leaning and discussion of where to dig the hole and who was going to dig the hole). We decided on a part shade position... we popped in lots of mature horse manure (courtesy of my parents, or at least their horses) and some lovely mulch around it. There was also quite a bit of discussion as to whether to water before or after mulching. I say before, but no one agreed with me.

So far little Ugni has really been welcomed into the family. Felix has tried to decapitate it several times, and the chickens dug it up twice, earning themselves at least another week's worth of time out.

Good luck Ugni Molinae.

Family Feast

Looks like the whole family will be eating tonight.

Don't Be Afraid to Decapitate the Sucker

I came across that title here when I was researching bananas. Excellent hey. My other favourite banana related quote is from a Terry Pratchett book, it goes something along the lines of,

"bananananana... Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling banana, she just didn't know when to stop."

Well seeing as I have supplied two quotes and this is going along like an essay, let me share my tenuous knowledge of the two types of banana sucker.

This above photo, is, I believe, a water sucker. The leaves are broad from a young age because it is not getting its nutrients from the mother plant, and is having to manufacture its own.
Whereas this little treasure, a sword sucker, is sucking the life out of its mother, and doesn't need to develop broad leaves just yet. I guess it will get them after its mother kicks it out. Anyway, although the water sucker is the prettier of the two, the sword sucker is the one to pick, having been nurtured by its mother, it will grow up bigger, stronger and produce more fruit.

I'm am so sure that there is some sort of lesson there.

Ali's Most Wanted

A banana tree was easily number one on my list of most wanted plants. I have always really loved them, I think they are just so beautiful, such lovely sweeping leaves and their big fat juicy trunks. They remind me so much of home, I feel quite nostalgic when I see one. Anyway, you can't buy them in Queensland, or you can I think, but you need to have a licence. So when we bought this house, and I saw banana plants in the backyard... well, my excitement was hard to contain.

Since then I have replanted them around the yard, and am yet to have any actual bananas from them. I am kind of beginning to despair, everyone seems to have different opinions as to when they fruit. I've read that they fruit after 9 months, but some of mine are over a year old now. My neighbour has told me they waited for 3 YEARS for theirs to fruit, but surely not.

Come on bananas.

Heads and Shoulders Peas and Beans...

Want to see how the peas and beans are going?

They are looking good hey... They all seem lovely and healthy, although there's not a whole lot of climbing going on yet. I've got stakes in for them to climb up, and my neighbour assures me that they'll feel their way right, so I'll just see how they go.

I'm really quite hopeful that maybe, just maybe, these little babies will result in more than just one pea or bean.

Can I confess something?
I planted these out and then threw out the packaging, with all the pictures and stuff on them... and... to be honest, peas and beans... looking at them now, I am not all that confident as to which plant is which...

When Chickens Go Bad

I am a sucker for our chickens... they live in the back corner of our yard, in a lovely big coop all to themselves, and when I go down into the yard they walk up and down the fence line, making that burk burk sound, wanting to be let out. They LOVE being let out. They scratch around the yard and follow me like mini road runners when they think I have food for them. I really enjoy watching them, scratching at the dirt with their lovely bloomered chicken legs, then taking a look at the ground to see what they've come up with. It's a bit like watching television, kind of hypnotic... but are they happy with just a scratch at the ground? Oh no... they want more...

They want my veggies.

These were broccoli and capsicum...

Here you go... chickened capsicum.
And the broccoli.
And here are the offenders... they don't have names, although it has been suggested K, F and C, which I did think was pretty funny. So this is the black and white spotty one.
The red one.
And our lovely little silkie. She is just beautiful, so gentle, and a great layer, I get almost one egg a day from her. Sweet little teeny eggs too. She is the only one the boys can catch, and they put her in their prams or trucks and push her around.
Anyway, I'm not letting them out again until I get over this current attack... I wonder if chickens understand when they are on time out?

Not Quite Feeding the Family

This is the front cover of one of my Digger's magazines... I know the scan hasn't come out that well, but that barrow is absolutely chockers with vegies, and the word "abundance" would not be out of place when applied to the garden.

Opening the magazine there's an ad for a book by Clive Blazey, who shows you how to "be self sufficient with only 10 square metres of space". There are other ads in the magazine, "10 packets of seeds to yield 108kg of vegetables", "two tonnes of food in 13 packets of seeds".

Hmm... after a few months of enthusiastically digging and sowing, this is what I've got to feed the family today. A bean. One of them. And I just realised, this bean of mine... it's actually hanging over the fence... so that bean, technically, is my neighbour's.
Sauteed bean anyone?

I Cheated

I had promised myself no more seedlings... seeds only. But as the boys and I drove past the nursery at Closeburn (I can't remember the name of it), I cracked... I looked at the seeds, I really did. But I just can't visualise a lettuce growing from that little speck of a seed. Or a strawberry. I just can't see it happening for me, I already have enough trouble trying to keep things alive, let alone grow them from scratch...

Do I have seedophobia?

I did manage to push through the guilt of my seedling purchases though, and the boys and I had lots of fun out in the wind planting today. It wasn't the greatest day for it, but it was warm wind which helped. The only problem was with the mulching, I seem to have decorated the neighbours lawn with it instead of my garden, so What I Have Learnt Today, is that mulch and wind don't mix.

So here is the I can't believe it honestly grows from a seed lettuce. I bought the cos variety because from memory I just picked leaves as I needed them from the plants last year. Actually now that I have gone on and on like a pork chop about the seeds, I can't believe that I didn't buy them out of curiosity. I really do want to see how a lettuce grows now.
A bit less exciting, this is squash. I've had lots of success with pumpkin, so I thought I'd give squash a go.
This is mint. I didn't actually check which kind, I just smelt it and it smelt like mint, the sign on it said mint, so hopefully it is mint. I have a feeling it's Vietnamese Mint, but I don't really have any basis for that thought.
And last but not least, this is beetroot. I've got high hopes for this beetroot, the lady at the nursery told me that you can eat the leaves of it too, I actually didn't know that. I love beetroot on a hamburger, and a few people I know have really talked up roast beetroot, so I'm keen to try that out too.

So that's it for today. The excitement never stops.