Lately

Wow, don't post for a bit and those photos really pile up!

We've been away on a brief driving holiday to Sydney and back. 

Saw loads on Olearia in full bloom through those endless mallee lands. Naturally I had to pull over and have a good look. 

Stayed in a funky (and very dilapidated) old pub in Ouyen both there and back. Oh, if I had a few spare million to restore it to its former glory... 

If you have an opportunity to visit the Australian Botanic Gardens at Mt Annan, NSW, you really should do so. Free entry, free parking too, glorious flowers; I was in heaven.  

Went to the other botanic gardens in the Blue Mountains too. We only had a spare hour, I so wish I had more time to really explore. 

Came home to launch full steam ahead into spring. 

Put the girls to work doing my neglected weeding (they refuse to pose nicely for a photo). 

They are paying their board with so many eggs I've started selling the odd dozen when I get overwhelmed and can't bear the thought of another quiche (and I'm trying to cut down on the sweet baking). 

Gave the lemon tree a pretty thorough haircut and picked a few lemons. There are so many I might need to pop them at the gate with a 'free' sign. 

And the potato tower that had done so little at my last post has gone 'kaboom'. How fabulous! 

How I love spring xx

Sorrel vs Chickens

Those chickens: fiends for anything green! 

This was June the first... Little sods!

But the French Sorrel is returning, ready to feed the chickens again the next time they get loose. 

Pity I can't quite say the same for some of the other plants that got eaten/dug up/trodden on. 

Santa Rosa and friends

Eating Santa Rosa plums (have loads)

And the Moorpark apricots (not many this year)

Here are the lotus seedlings with their 'coin leaves' in their temporary growing-on home

Small boy in a big garden  

Yellow cherry tomatoes best for throwing, apparently (variety label lost)

Three x new-ish chicken bottoms (actually four, one not in shot)

New pond from the old bath. Sorry about the green, wrong setting on the phone! 

Seven things I'm proud of.

Please ignore that enormous blank space above. I don't know why it's there, and I can't seem to get rid of it. 

How has it been over a month since I last wrote? Babies: little time thieves... 

In lieu of real blog posts about individual things, here are seven things from the garden which I am proud of. Photos were taken with an iPhone in one hand, and a grumpy baby on the other arm, but in all their daggy (and dodgy) composition they make me happy. My urban backyard is becoming my very own Eden... So, without further ado or waffle, here are my currents joys:

1. My baby fruit trees are in their second year of fruit! Here is my beautiful, not-so-little Moorpark apricot, loading up with fruit due around Christmas, and a representative from my posse of six plum trees, whose fruit should ripen in mid-summer.  

2: We finally have chickens! Introducing our three Isa Brown pullets: Marilyn, Rita, and Audrey. We brought them home around a month ago and are averaging two eggs a day already. 

3: My raspberries! I ate the first two today from this very bush. All the plants I've put in are going bonkers with flowers and fruit. I have seven different cultivars now, in both the garden and in pots, and 'Sandford' here is the first to ripen. Since its not even supposed to flower until November, I am pretty impressed (unless climate change is causing this very early fruiting, in which case I am concerned). 

4a: My roses, because I adore them and everything is just starting to bloom. This pinky-orange fluorescent delight is 'Summer Song,' which I have moved to a cooler position (I hope) on the eastern side of the water tank. It hated it on our hot north-facing patio, so fingers crossed for a happier plant this summer. 

4

4b: More roses! Posing here from front to back are Munstead Wood (a burgundy newcomer to my garden), 'Golden Celebration' (yellow, obviously) and the ever-blooming, pink 'Sophy's Rose.' That last was bought on a whim 18 months ago, and had flowers right through winter until I finally steeled myself and pruned it about a month ago. The violet flowers at the left, by the way, are the Local Lovely, Ajuga australis. 

5: My 'hard to grow' natives: the bluer-than-blue Lechenaultia biloba, and black-fuzz-on-lime-green Macropedia fuliginosa (black kangaroo paw). Honestly, not really that hard to grow. Both need really good drainage (ie put them in a pot), lots of sun, plenty of water, and a quality native potting mix. And an expectation that they will probably not last particularly long is also useful. 

6: The sweet peas, because they are just so pretty. These are 'Matucana,' and doing a valiant job at attempting to cover up the shade cloth I've put all along my west-facing fence. 

7: Last but not least, my lawn! I am very proud of this lawn. It's far from perfect, golfers and cricketers would be appalled, but last autumn I piled loads of gypsum on that patch of compacted clay, spread out some brought in 'loam' (brown sand -ahem-), scattered a mix of lawn seed, watered it diligently until the winter rains were consistant, and lo and behold: it grew! And it didn't even drown in the swamp our backyard becomes in winter. It's daggy at the front, but will be paved there eventually so who cares?! And why is this last photo smaller? Well I have no idea, but never mind. 

Happy Spring, everyone xx

Chicken fortress

Continuing on the mammoth updating sessions I have been posting, here's tonight's: Our Chicken Fortress! It's still a work in progress and nowhere near finished yet (as you'll see), but you can see the bones of it at least.

We've never kept chickens before. The total sum of our chicken care experience is one week a few years ago house - and chicken - sitting for friends. Nonetheless, they're on my 'must have' list, and nearly everything I've read about chickens makes me want them. I even know what kind I want (I want to say 'cultivar' because I work in a nursery... what's the word if it's an animal, 'breed,' right?) Anyway, I'd like to get some Wynadottes if I can, because they're apparently quite docile, good layers etc, and pretty too (I'm not really an animal lover, I like 'em small and manageable if they're close up, anything bigger than a cat I keep at arms length).

I've been reading books on chook care, but the part that worries me the most is foxes. Most Australians will know they're an introduced pest, but the amount of environmental damage they have done to our native wildlife and agriculture is staggering. It's estimated that foxes are responsible for environmental and agricultural impacts valued at $200 million each year. $200 MILLION! (Click here for reference). Ecological impacts aside, there's nothing a fox likes better to eat than a chicken, and I've read and heard far too many stories about foxes eating urban chickens lately. Driving around our area at night we will often see foxes scurrying off into the undergrowth on the side of the road so they are very much an active presence in our area.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, we're attempting to build an impenetrable coop for our chickens. 'How to fox proof your chicken coop' was one of the most useful articles we read with regards to choosing appropriate mesh for our fortress. Although a lot of our coop (so far) has been built with recycled materials we did have to buy all the wire, and it has not been as cheap an exercise as we'd hoped, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

The coop is going in the back right hand corner of our yard. It will have a boxed in part for sleeping and egg-laying, and an enclosed open part for the chickens to roam about in when I don't want them destroying my veggie garden. As much as possible, I want to let them roam about the yard too but appreciate it's not always practical (I value my seedlings too highly!)

So, here goes: progress so far!

Chef D measuring up (note ginormous peastraw bale! It's slowly shrinking as I make inroads on the mulching). Can hardly wait until the piles of renovating rubbish can go... ahem.


Chef D cutting recycled hardwood timbers: (These timbers are part of the batch our neighbour gave us to use to say thank you for getting rid of the pine tree. The straighter ones are under our floorboards, and these were the leftovers.)


Miss SP 'helping' with the building:


Just to prove I really exist, here is a rare photo of me. I'm only putting it up because I look relatively normal in it...


This whole structure will be eventually enclosed with wire mesh. It's quite big, but we hope to keep between 4-8 hens in it at one time over the years.


And here's the beginning of the fox proofing. Don't worry, the wires go more than partway across the base! The mesh size, by the way, is 100mm squares and 2mm thick. It goes roughly 30cm past the edge of the coop (like a skirt) and we're digging it into the ground so that the chickens can still scratch around over the top. We've started putting the wire 'walls' in with a smaller mesh size but I haven't got a picture of that part yet. Probably because it was a total pain to do - literally! - as the hardwood is so hard to hammer the nails into (odd, that) and wiring the floor wire to the wall wire was much harder to do than I thought it would be and I ended up hot, bothered, scratched, and grumpy by that endeavour and I'm only halfway around so far.


So that's where our chicken coop is so far. I don't know when we'll get time to continue work on it, Chef D tells me he's working every day from now until Christmas Eve, and I have an 'active' toddler to look after who makes doing anything other than running about after her near impossible. But, since we're not back home yet, our chickens-of-the-future don't need a completed coop until next year some time (early next year, fingers crossed!)

We're back and gardening!

Actually, we've been back for almost a week and yet seem to have spent very little time at home relaxing. I haven't even managed to sort out any photos yet, must get onto that...
Chef D and I both had a few more days each off from work and we've spent that time constructively (and constructing) in the backyard which was totally overrun by weedy grasses while we were away.

Our house, which we'd hoped to be back in by the end of the year, is nowhere near ready. This is no surprise but still disappointing. We have been consoling ourselves by attempting to build a house for our future chickens. However, SP is going through an especially clingy patch with both of us and progress was predictably slow, and so although we would have liked to have finished the coop by now that's not yet ready either. Nevermind, the chickens will not be moving in until we have, so there is plenty of time left to complete it.

Now I'm off while SP is napping to try and sort out some pictures for the promised travel photo posts.

PS. I love Jackie French and have been reading this book as part of my chicken-research. I'm in no way affiliated with her, but since I think she's pretty cool - as are her books - I thought I'd pop up a picture :-)