Tuesday garden journal

First of all, I want to say thank you for the replies on the blog and by email to my post yesterday.  It is lovely to hear peoples words of support and stories of others in the same situation.  I think it is wonderful to be able to choose live our lives this way, and hope that others understand that their choices are theirs and ours are ours.

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Onto today's post.  Linking up again with Squiggly Rainbow for a garden journal!

I've decided not to tell you about all of the work happening in the vegie gardens or on the pizza oven this week, and instead to share with you some little things that make me smile out in the garden at the moment.

I love the borage that is growing wild in my herb garden area. Stu hates its wildness. I love its wildness, its pretty blue flowers and the bees that it attracts. When its wildness gets too much, I rip it out and add it to the compost where it helps to speed up composting.

We have two Virgilia trees in our front garden that we planted there about 6 years ago.  They grew rapidly and now give our home its beautiful leafy look and our front garden lots of privacy from the road.  Each Spring they change from leafy green to delicate pink as they flower profusely, though strangely, one at a time.  The first is pretty pink now.

Our beautiful hen Specks hatched her adopted eggs this week!  We have 6 adorable fluffy black and speckled chickens.  They are safely enclosed in a pen near the vegie gardens and we are all loving watching their antics.

Hoping your Spring garden is making you smile too.
xo

Tuesday garden journal

Linking up again this morning for the Tuesday garden journal with squiggly rainbow.....

This week has been typically spring like - perfect sunshiney warmth one day, wintery wind, rain and cold the next.  This would be fine if the weather would work with our plans, but it isn't.  We get a beautiful day for a family visit (which we spent much of inside drinking tea and chatting while the baby was sleeping), and then rain and wind when we want to build the pizza oven!  Needless to say, we haven't got as much done outside as we wanted to.

We have started the pizza oven plinth though.  We built two of the levels of besser blocks before the rain set in and it all had to be left covered with a tarp.  We're getting better at it as we go, but I will just say that I am not making a career change to brick laying and I wouldn't hire me to build your next home. :)

In the vegie garden, I've continued to plant out a few seedlings as they have reached a good size.  I have been giving them a dose of seasol and popping a cloche over them and the growth following transplant has been huge, from 2 true leaves to 4 or more in a few days!

Yesterday I pulled out a couple of shrubs along the front fence that were weedy or struggling.  They were also right next to the veg beds in the part of our garden that I one day hope will be all edible.  I am going to plant sunflowers and other beneficial flowers and things along there, I am just holding off as I want to buy the seeds when we visit the Garden of St Erth in a couple of weeks.

In chook news, our last remaining "old girl" (a rescued ISA who was about 6 years old) got sick.  We decided that given her age and the fact that our treatments weren't working to help her, that it was kinder to put her down.  Stu helped me as I found it tougher to put down a sick old girl than a rooster for the pot.  We feel we did the right thing and she went peacefully.  In happier news, we have gone from getting two eggs a day to getting four as the weather is warmer.  We now get a brown, a white, a cream and a mini bantam egg each day.  Love my chooks.

 

That's about the wrap up.  I apologise for barely getting here to post, but as you can see, we're rather busy at the moment, so I post when I can.  I hope you're having a good week too.

 

Tuesday Garden Journal

Rach from Squiggly Rainbow stopped by here on the weekend and invited me to share in the Tuesday Garden Journal linkup she has started.  I'm a big fan of linkups :)  and I have started to browse through her blog and it looks like another good one - stop writing such lovely blogs people!  I'm running out of time to work LOL

So I'm going to try and join in with this Garden Journal on a weekly basis......  so here goes.

We've been very busy in the garden this week.  Its Spring, of course we have!

I have just finished making this arch in my vegie patch which I will use for growing cucumbers over.

I found these cheeky little tomato seedlings sprouting in the veg beds, and have plucked them out and potted them up.  Based on their location and what was growing there last year, these will be a delicious cherry tomato.  A few plants for me, a few for mum.  By the way, can you see the chicken wire loosely covering them?  That has to be all over my garden beds as we have cats and they love nothing better than well tilled soil for digging in.

The seedlings are going really well in the cold frame.  I love seeing the first hints of green each time a new variety pops through and cheer them on while they grow first leaves and then true leaves.  The zucchinis and pumpkins are nearly ready to go out and then will be protected from frosts by cloches in the garden.

Out in the chook area, Specks is all settled in the old dog kennel with 11 eggs from my mum's farm under her.  With a bit of luck we'll have little chicks in a couple of weeks.

Materials are piling up for the building of the pizza oven.  These concrete blocks came home yesterday and Stu will be getting more supplies after work today.  The concrete we laid on the weekend is dry now, so we will hopefully start the building tomorrow evening.

The sun is out and everywhere I walk I find animals enjoying the sunshine - chooks, bees, dogs, insects, snails (they don't get to stay though) and cats.  They all love our springtime garden as much as I do.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else is up to in their gardens this week.