Another weekend in the garden

Another busy weekend in the garden. There is so much to do and it is exhausting but rewarding. It's a nice time of the year to be outside and get some dirt under the fingernails. We finished off transplanting the roses out the front of the house, and moved some pretty geraniums into the entrance to the front door.

We also has some spring cleaning inside - the windows got a wash and we moved the furniture around. The lounge is great

We bought a trailer load of rich mushroom mulch and used the rotary hoe to dig it in to the vegie garden. Last year the kangaroos came in and gobbled up the vegie garden in one night, so we will need to try to keep them away this year. We planted silverbeet, chilli, cucumber, zucchini and pumpkins.

And for those of you who are interested in the lawn - yes - it did come up. It is still a little patchy, but there are lots of luscious green shoots and it is looking great. We are also planting some couch grass runners and that seems to be working too. They are cute little blades and it is more fun than I thought, watching grass grow!

That's all for now. If you are reading my blog I would love to hear from you. Who are you? What do you think? Is there anyone out there?

Helen

Slave Auction

Last night we went along to the Public Hall to attend a Slave Auction. I haven't been to one before, so I didn't quite know what to expect. I knew that there were lots of good and services donated and would be auctioned and the aim was to raise money for the local Fire Brigade and Public Hall.

Well it was a great night. There were some badly dressed slaves, including ball(oon) and chain, and they were there to respond to your every need, for a price. There were over 120 goods and services available - some really unique like a gold panning lesson or a drive in a 1930s fully restored fire truck, and lots of vouchers. Local residents also donated their time with gardening, sewing, ironing and mending, and local businesses offered car services, meal vouchers and gift pack items. Jim loves the auction and he gets so caught up in the excitement of it all. So we came home with 10 bales of straw, 2 x 60kg bags of wheat and a couple of meal vouchers at the local pub.

Hmm. What to do with all that wheat? Do we plant it, make bread or feed it to our two little chooks. It's never dull around here.

Cheers

Helen

more gardening adventures

Well spring is here and that is definately time to spruce up the garden. There is so much to do now that the renovation has finished. We have had lots of visitors and lots of advice about what to do and today we got started with one section in the back yard. Jimmy got out his rotary hoe and churned up the ground. We had been watering it all week to try to soften the ground, but it was hard work. This is the first time we have used the rotary hoe, and it was fun, in a hard work kind of way. It certainly was much easier than digging by hand.

Once we raked over the area and tossed some lawn seed about we were ready for watering. With a bit of luck, in 10 days, we will having the makings of a lawn! I'll let you know how we go.

Cheers

Helen

weekend in the garden

Another busy weekend in my household - after some recent renovations there is work to be done to get the garden in shape for the summer. I have relocated the pelargonium - at least that’s what I think it is. It’s a cutting that I took from a bush on the side of a road, and stuck in a pot and a couple of months later it looks lovely. Let’s see how it goes in a big, grown up pot. It should love this spot and even flower for me in a couple of weeks. We’ll see. The pelargonium is in a special pot, a pot with lots of years under it's belt and lots of sentimental memories.

We are going to try to plant rhubarb again. Rhubarb is an old fashioned plant and I’m not sure if I even like to eat rhubarb, but I had a plant and it died so I am determined to try harder to keep one alive. Rhubarb grows from a crown, and apparently the leaves will die off but the rhubarb will shoot again in the winter rains. My experiment has proven this to be untrue. A dried up, crispy rhubarb crown will not shoot up after the rains. Anyway, I have a kind friend that has donated another rhubarb crown, and I promise to take better care of it this time. And even water it occasionally. I am in need of a miracle and I will let you know how I go.

Next project - lawn and rose garden. So much to do - so little time!

Jim's CFA 20 year long service medal

Jim received a CFA 20 year long service medal. It’s a real honour to receive the recognition for effort and volunteer service for 20 years. He was dressed in his blue uniform and looked so handsome and proud. It’s disappointing that the organsiers neglected to invite the award recipients to the medal presentation so they could bring along their family members and maybe someone to take a photo, but this particular bushfire brigade is often lacking the organisation skills and forgetting the detail. It’s a shame, because it is an opportunity that is now lost forever - a moment of time that has passed, and can’t be re-captured. Anyway, here is the medal.

A stone cairn

What a great weekend. The first sneeze and it reminds me that the hay fever season is here. The flowers are bursting out of their buds, the bees are buzzing and gums trees are vomiting their seeds everywhere. It’s spring. I love this time of year – when the sunshine is warm, and the nights are cool. Actually, the nights are still freezing, and that is just the way I like it.

This weekend we were working in the garden, trying to establish some lawn with the hope that we would be able to keep the dust down this year. We got the area leveled off and as I started to sprinkle it with the hose – the water just ran off. It was so dry, almost like bulldust, and the water just ran off and couldn’t be absorbed into the ground. Looks like this is going to be harder than I thought.

We build a stone cairn. We had all of these left over rocks and wanted to find something useful to do with them. We especially wanted to move them before it gets too hot and a slithery reptile decides it is a nice place to set up digs. So we moved the huge pile of rocks (well Jim moved them mostly) and I placed them down, one after the other, to form a wiggly garden bed edge. It looks a bit like the slithery reptile I was trying to avoid. But what to do with the leftovers? We had a few options, then decided on building a stone cairn, like the explorers did in the outback. I haven’t built a stone cairn before and it is harder than it looks. Those explorers must have had a lot of time on their hands, a sense of determination and persistence, and a sense of humor. I don’t have much of any of these, and soon got frustrated. But Jim kept going until the job was done and created an awesome stone cairn. Not sure what it symbolizes yet, but once we recover we will come up with a really cool story to explain it all.

Hooroo

Helen

Welcome to Helen and Jim's Meanderings

Welcome to Helen and Jim's blog. Our first adventure is learning how to use the blog tools - easy so far and it is an exciting time. I feel quite pleased that I have managed to get this far. Anyway, it's a nice day outside, so I am off to enjoy it.

Helen