In the garden - October

In the garden, in September, there were tomatoes, broad beans and rainbow chard! Lots of each! E has been eating cherry tomatoes like they are lollies and we are picking a full handful every day or two. We haven't done anything more adventurous with the broad beans this year than eat them straight from the bush, or in salad, but there are plenty for both.

The blueberries are still laden but with only a few ripe ones so far.

I thought about building some sort of fruit-fly preventing structure out of poly piping and big sheets of netting to protect the apricot tree but time got away from me so I went with what we had and dragged out the mesh sleeves and paper bags from the shed. I also couldn't quite figure out how I would deal with the fact that the tree is grafted and one half always flowers/fruits well before the other - so far one half has big enough fruit that it needed bagging, and the other half is still mainly flowering with only a few tiny fruit.

And the roses are back, and glorious.

Family meal times - household rules

We had a particularly galling lunch time on Saturday, that involved E refusing to use a fork or spoon and so smearing lasagne all over her (new) blue and white dress as well as the chair (despite it's protective cushion), me taking her plate away several times and then relenting and giving it back, and lots of raised voices and general unhappiness from both of us. Sadly these kinds of episodes are not uncommon at the moment. 

After I had calmed down, cleaned up and sent E to her room to listen to CDs, I decided that we should write a list of family meal-time rules. She is a creature of habit and whilst she does not respond well to arbitrary authority, if she thinks something is a "rule" then she is generally more willing to comply with it. So later that day we sat down and wrote our list. This is what we came up with:

* Stay still;

* Sit on your chair with legs forward;

* Eat over your plate;

* Use knife and fork;

* Don't talk with your mouth full;

* Always ask by saying "please";

* Be grateful for the meal;

* Afterwards, put your dishes in the sink; and

* Wash your hands before and after.

Interestingly, E came up with almost all of them, so she clearly knew what we expect of her even if she isn't always willing (or able! I need to remember she is only four!) to comply with our expectations. Hopefully this will help - it will at least mean we can say "remember the rule about sitting on your chair" rather than issuing seemingly random demands.

In the garden: September

I am declaring the first of each month gardening post day, for my records if not anyone else's interest. It has been a slow winter in our garden as baby C's arrival meant we did only the essential. The roses got a later than usual prune and at times we have had not so much lawn as forest. This given, things are looking pretty good and I am looking forward to spring and hopefully a little more time to spend outside.

A quick summary of what is happening outside:

The blueberries are ready to ripen:

The lime tree is very happy - a bumper crop that has only just finished and in flower again. (Blueberries in pots to the left and right).

The orange tree is also blossoming and smells wonderful. We're hoping for a few more than the two oranges it managed to produce this year.

 

The pile of sticks you can see behind it is due to...

... this! No more sad and sorry Geraldton waxes suffering for lack of sunlight. I am now scheming what to plant here. The overhead shade sails means it gets very little sunlight - a few hours in the morning down the right hand end, almost nothing for the rest of it. Dithering between ferns of some kind which will look good without much effort and something like azaleas which will be brighter but require more care.

In the vegie patch...

... there is a broad bean jungle. And a few snow peas to the left.

Plenty of rocket at the front, plus self-seeded tomatoes at the back. They came up at the end of summer and I left them in as an experiment. Once they were large enough I moved them into slightly better spots than they had chosen for themselves and was pleasantly surprised they survived winter. I was even happier when little green fruit appeared and am quietly stoked now they are ripening! 

To the left of this photo are "purple" broccoli - planted from a Bunnings punnet in April (?) and yet to show any sign of being purple or of anything edible. Probably going to get turned into food for Grandma and Papa's many chickens sometime soon. The rest of this photo shows: a single artichoke, also planted from a seedling as an experiment - has grown significantly but no sign of flowers; more tomatoes; a squillion nasturtiums that have come up from the seeds I threw around last summer in the hope of enticing bees. Seeing as they only appeared recently they did nothing to assist with the pollination of the summer zucchinis and cucumbers and I fear I will be pulling self-seeded nasturtiums out of the rest of the garden forever more.

Last but not least, my favourite sign of spring:

Maybe this will be the year I figure out what to do about the blighty little fruit flies and we get more than three apricots.

And now we wait

Before (from about July 2011):

First step: get enormous pallet of limestone delivered. These are actually the leftovers, photographed to be advertised on Gumtree. Fortunately a nice man came and gave us $30 for them shortly afterwards.

Second step: wait a good two months or so for Perth to decide that it wasn't necessary to turn on temperatures of 30 degrees plus every day such that the thought of hefting around 65kg blocks wasn't completely ridiculous.

Third step: enlist a few helpers and convince them to spend two mornings of the Easter weekend doing some seriously heavy lifting:

Thanks Craig! Thanks Cillian!

Not all "helpers" were as helpful as each other.
That plastic crocodile (the beloved Tom) you can just see in E's hand?
He definitely didn't pull his weight ... ha ha.

And ...

... voila! 

We have a wall! Compare the first photo to this one and see how crazily the passionfruit vine has taken off between last June and now:

Then we got a huge load of dirt delivered, managed to get it into the new garden bed with just a wheelbarrow and shovels, and just in time. That night was the wettest weekend we've had since last winter.

And look what we've done since!

The seeds are from Eden Seeds. From the shed onwards they are: broad beans at the back and dwarf sugar snap peas at the front; in the next section, pak choi and red Russian kale; in the third section, rocket and rainbow silverbeet; in the fourth section, nothing yet but plans for carrots, potatoes and radishes. About half the seeds are protected with the miniature greenhouses that worked so well last year - the rest will be as soon as we drink up enough soda water to make some more! 

I am very excited at the prospect of having our own veggies in a few months time. I am even hopeful that we have planted enough that D and I might get to eat a few - one of E's favourite games over summer has been "finding 'matoes" and needless to say D and I barely got to taste one!

Suburban Day

A play at home. A two minute walk with the pram to the shops half a block away. A hair trim for E so her fringe would not constantly be in her eyes. Other than running around the hairdresser when we arrived yelling "running away!" she behaved perfectly. She sat on my lap and the cloak went around both of us. She was fascinated by the actual fringe-cutting (fortunately only two minutes' worth) barely moving throughout.

We then crossed the road to the lovely local cafe, where I had promised E we would have morning tea if she was good during her haircut. Seeing as she had been very good, I relented to her demands for both orange juice with a straw and a biscuit. They kept her busy for long enough that I got to have a pot of tea and most of a newspaper. I love tea at this particular cafe; they use tea leaves in a little teapot, and fine bone china cups that look as they belong in a display case rather than in a modern cafe.

We then crossed the road again to the playground. When E first started enjoying playgrounds this one was too big for her as it involves a ladder rather than stairs and has a rather steep slide. She has always lacked both fear and sense so far as playgrounds are concerned, and is now big enough that the ladder is no obstacle at all.  

Lots of slides later she requested "going home?" and I was ready to oblige. At home we spent the rest of the morning in the garden, she in her "little pool" and sandpit, and me attempting to handwater the berries, tomatoes, herbs and hydrangeas. So far this summer the twice weekly sprinkler plus handwatering on the days I am home seems to be keeping them happy. For lunch I offered "Daddy pasta" (bolognese made by D) which was rejected despite initially being demanded, and a toasted cheese sandwich, which she ate about two bites of. I decided she was full of orange juice and biscuit and could just have a big afternoon tea.

"Sleepy time" involved 15 minutes of patting and wriggling, but did eventually take place. The afternoon involved more of the same in the garden and inside with books, puzzles and "watching Bop."

A suburban day. The kind in which we didn't venture more than 200 metres from our front door. The kind I hoped for when we left our inner city apartment pre-baby. The kind I definitely enjoy now (albeit in moderation).

* There are photos on my private blog for anyone interested.

A very berry new year

To see in the new year we planted three berry plants that D's brother gave us for Christmas - from left to right: raspberry, silvanberry, boysenberry.

I've never been game to buy berries myself out of fear that they either wouldn't cope with Perth summers, or if they did, that our winters wouldn't be cold enough to produce fruit. So far I am pleasantly surprised; despite a few pretty hot days they seem pretty happy. And the thought of home grown raspberries next summer is berry berry exciting!

Mini vegetable greenhouses

A while ago I started experimenting with growing vegetables from seed. Last winter, fairly unsuccessfully, I attempted broad beans and this winter, with far greater success, runner beans and snow peas. I put the difference down to the miniature "greenhouses" I used on the snow peas and runner beans, which help to retain moisture and keep slugs and snails out until the seedlings are big enough to stand a fighting chance. They are just empty 1.25L soda water bottles with the labels removed and cut in half, but they made a remarkable difference with the snow peas and runner beans.

I'm now attempting to replicate the success with tomato seeds. I ordered three varieties from the "Green Harvest" website:

and

Our vegetable bed is in hiatus at the moment as I am hoping we will get organised enough this summer to extend the limestone blocks and therefore have the ability to properly improve the soil. So the yellow and red cherry tomatoes seeds have gone into big pots and the romas will follow as soon as I acquire another pot that is large enough.

Tomato and herb corner,
complete with guardian greenhouses and ceramic angel

Tomato greenhouses up close, complete with grubby feet!

Have a pleasant Sunday evening, wherever you are.

What to do with yet more mandarins

1. Pick up all the ones that fell down during the rain, plus anything off the tree that looks vaguely ripe.

2.Start peeling.

3. Enlist a bit of help.

4. Keep peeling. Smush a few down your front if you want. Don't worry, there's plenty to spare!

5. Eventually you'll have peeled them all. 

6. Take them inside, whizz in food processor, put pulp in sieve over a big bowl. A heaped bucket = 1.5L of juice. Tastes good mixed with soda water and ice!

Book of the Week: Usborne "Look and Say" Garden Book

This is an enduring (well, a few months anyway) favourite at our house. It was a library find that we liked so much we bought.

It is a sturdy little board book with tabs down the right hand side of each page to make them easy to turn.

Winter garden

About a month ago I loaded the vegie patch up with bags of compost and blood and bone. Digging is hard but satisfying work! Then I left it to sit and fester for about a fortnight (convenient timing, as it took me that long to get to Bunnings to buy seedlings and mulch, and the blood and bone bag said to wait at least 7-10 days before planting anything).

Then in went runner beans, snow peas and rocket. We also have an enormous feral pumpkin, an unidentified feral melon (possibly re-germinated from the watermelon seedlings that died a speedy death in our unforgiving summer but could also be rockmelon sprung from buried scraps), a few leftover herbs and the passionfruit vine that is in its second year and which I really 
really hope will give us fruit this summer.

Winter vegie patch: planted, mulched and ready to go! (or should I say grow?)

Recently, just to the left of the end of the photo above, we installed two compost bins. Prior to this I was burying all our green scraps but it's too hard to do that without disturbing the new seedlings. I'm trying to alternate layers of green/brown/scrap/dirt, with a different layer on top of each at any one time. So far they mainly seem to be producing flies and midges in prodigious quantities, probably because the most frequent thing that goes into them is fruit/vegie scraps. However E and I just took advantage of what has turned into a beautiful afternoon to add a layer of dirt to the most offensive one which will hopefully reduce the problem.

And we still have about a million manderines. The flesh is closest to an Imperial in texture and now that they are properly ripe they are quite sweet. The skin is somewhere between an Imperial and whatever those other ones are called (the ones with the thinner, harder to remove skin). Yesterday I peeled what felt like a hundred but was probably only about a dozen, juiced them and froze the juice. Somewhere between six and 12 seem to fall off every night and E's new favourite game is to toddle around after me with her beach bucket, carefully picking up each one and depositing it before moving onto the next. Good for toddler entertainment if nothing else!

The Great Mandarin Glut of 2011

It's on, folks. And it shows no signs of abating any time soon. This has to be the most tolerant, generous tree on the planet. It barely rains all summer, we vaguely remember to turn the hose on it a few times, we do absolutely nothing else. And look what it bestows on us:

We've been through a couple of dozen already and I'd say there's another couple of hundred to go. So earlier in the week I decided it was time to attempt some mandarin-heavy recipes in an attempt to dispose of a few.

First off the bat was mandarin jelly:

500mL mandarin juice

100 gm sugar

10 gm powdered gelatin

... all stirred together over low heat until the sugar and gelatin dissolved, and then refrigerated for several hours. It used up about 20 mandarins, which I juiced by whizzing them in the food processor and then straining the pulp through a sieve. It's tangy and sweet and was declared a success.

Next attempt - mandarin muffins courtesy of this ABC recipe. I did them in cupcake containers and they also turned out well, pretty much just butter cake with mandarin juice and zest, but nothing to complain about.

I have in mind a mandarin chicken dish but don't have a recipe, I've  googled for one but to no avail. I was thinking a stir fry kind of thing that uses mandarin juice, if I can't find a specific one I might adapt a lemon chicken recipe.

So today I"m grateful for citrus, citrus, citrus! How are things at your place this weekend?

Our garden, aka baby Funland

Our garden is starting to resemble a Fisher Price advertisement. See?

 

Plenty of plastic, all in bright colours. And all since Christmas! I console myself with the thought that it all makes entertaining Little E that little bit easier and that is surely a good thing.

The red plastic water table on the far left is the latest addition, scabbed from the Mosman Park verge collection on the way home from Mum & Dad's this afternoon. It came straight home, got a good squirting with the hose, filled up, and Little E spent the 20 minutes before dinner happily pouring water all over it, the lawn and herself. Thank you, rich people!

Summer garden update

We have finally cleared the vegetable bed of its winter hangers-on and planted most of the summer vegies. So far these are: tomatoes (cherry and roma), pumpkin (feral, sprouted from vegetable scraps), zucchini, watermelon, capsicum, corn, parsley, basil and chives. The passionfruit we planted last autumn is taking off with the warm weather. I also have a few savoy cabbage to add when I get a moment. I had not thought of these as a summer vegetable (a friend who had too many seedlings gave us her leftovers) but apparently they will grow year-round in Perth - we shall see!

D, with the help of our two Dads on respective weekends have now, we hope, solved the reticulation problem. (One of the lawn sprinkler cycles was not coming on, and unfortunately the wires for it ran through the vegetable bed.) With the digging-up of wires and pipes complete I was able to finish the last of the mulching. To help our crummy sandy soil, I dug in vegetable scraps as I removed the last of each of the winter plants. Then, as we planted the summer ones, I added cow manure and soil improver. We had laid a thin layer of bark mulch a month or so ago but we have now largely dug that in as we were told that straw based mulches are the best for Perth soils. The last of the mulching involved spreading a thick layer of sugar cane mulch on top of everything.

The last thing I will do before sitting back and waiting for it all to grow is to plant some cucumber seedlings. We bought some a few weekends ago but I then held off planting them because of all the digging I knew was going to occur. Whilst I was waiting for that to happen they died. Oops.

I am thinking of joining Diggers so that I can order a bigger variety of vegetables, and experiment with growing them from seed. So far everything has been from seedlings, aside from the feral pumpkins, broad beans, dwarf beans and a few lettuces. Now that the lattice is up, the vegetable bed cleared of all non-vegetable plants and the soil improved enough that we can just keep adding to it each year, I feel as though we will have more time to be adventurous.

But as for the great broad bean crop of 2010, the least said the better...

Mystery plants sprung from vegetable scraps

Anyone got any idea what these are? Possibilities strike me as pumpkin, zucchini, potatoes, beans (although they don't look like the other beans we have going), capcisum, something else....?