Africanaussie

 I have been helping my stepson and family move into their new house.  Lots of work, but luckily they have a bit of overlap where they can live in the old house, and then do all the upgrades they want to in the new house.   Lot of cleaning and  painting, but the thing I have been enjoying the most is of course the garden!  They have a pond,a nd I have never had anything to do with water features.   One day driving home I noticed my neighbour getting ready for his garage sale, and washing out his little pond.   I nipped over to ask if he was selling the pond, and he was, so I bought it on the spot!    It is a two part fibreglass system, and in his garden had the top part resting on the lower pond.   Once I separated them out, and put the waterfall section on a stand it seemed so much bigger.    Projects always look worse before they start to look better, dont they?   I originally had this ...

We had a local garden competition and our council managed to negotiate Costa from Gardening Australia to be one of our judges!  My gosh - heart palpitations!!!   I knew I had to enter, but was away just before that, leaving the garden in the hands of my non gardening hubby.  Added to that we were in a drought when I returned, and the bandicoots were wreaking havoc in the garden. I got stuck in, and tidied up, mulched, and planted new seeds in the wicking boxes (which were just microgreens when he arrived!) The first thing you see when you enter my garden is fruit salad alley and we began to chat about getting kids interested in gardening.  The volunteer tomatoes in the mulberry pot have had a wonderful side effect.  I tied the stakes up into a teepee and this protected the mulberries from the birds., plus it is also fun to go scouting around looking for a plump ripe mulberry.  The strawberries were also just starting to ripen, since then I have en...

As you know I grow most of my veggie garden from seed.  That can be a slow and frustrating process, but when it works, can be so very rewarding. I do like growing greens in broccoli boxes as it keeps them contained and the soil seems to stay moist.  I had a bunch of black seeded lettuce seedlings, and potted them up fairly close together into a broccoli box, filled with potting soil mixed with five in one, and they did very well, I will buy those seeds again.  My little wicking bed of mint just keeps going, through drought and wet. One thing I added this year was a little greenhouse, and I think that has made all the difference.  I often read on the seed packets that certain seeds need to be planted in situ, but I struggle with that - I am often not able to water the garden as I leave in the dark and often arrive home in the dark.  The greenhouse has been a huge asset because the plants in there stay warm and moist with a spray of water a couple of times a...

In my last post I talked about how much I love to entertain in the garden. Recently I hosted an afternoon tea, and this weekend a dinner party.  Both of these were outside in the garden.  I made sosaties and tried a new recipe for samoosa pancakes found  here  .  I changed it quite a bit - added waay more spices, and they were a real hit.  I will post both these recipes onto my recipe blog for safekeeping, as I will be making them both again. This is what you look out at when you sit in the gazebo.  We had lots of sunbirds and honeyeaters splashing about in the birdbath - they seem unconcerned by people.  You can see all the fallen blossom on the ground - they get quite aggressive sucking out the nectar from the flowers. A close up of the lady slipper orchids.  My guests response when they saw the orchids up close was amazing.  That just makes me fall in love with my garden all over again. Are you the same?  When...

Months, it has been months since I last posted.  admittedly I was away - wandering through castles in France with one daughter and her husband, and then in the USA with my younger daughter, husband and grandson, then some time in Sydney with my hubby.  Wow - it sure is hard to get back into some kind of routine! Luckily my garden survived but I have had very little free time to spend in it lately, and have just been watering and weeding.  Also just plopping spare cardboard on top of weeds - my quick way of weeding! I have tons of weeds and they are all going to seed.  Ahhh! Here is my poor herb spiral - if you look carefully you can see some herbs.  One thing that is doing well is the citronella - not sure if it keeps the mozzies away but it smells nice. My philosophy is to create a vibrant, healthy garden, full of good things to eat, lovely flowers to admire and a place where friends and family love to gather. I never quite harvest a huge amount to ...

I have a couple of linkys that I am joining in to do my weekly menu plans - It is great as I can get tips and it also keeps me doing it These are the places I am linking to organized junkie darling downs diaries at home with Mrs M Here is my weekly menu with costs. Week 1 Lunch Dinner Shopping list Mon  Lentil soup Leftover curried chicken with rice and dahl. oats .99, granola 3.85,greek yoghurt 5.00, chocolate chips 3.10, milk 2.70 Tues prawns with salad Indivual meat loaves, sweet potato, salad Wed Tuna patties with salad Pork chops with Jamies stir fried vegetables Prawns 4.76, Frozen pizza on clearance 3.00, T bone steaks 7.48, Porterhouse steaks 11.28,  eggs 3.50,   Thur Curried lentil soup Chargrilled chicken drumsticks with tabbouli Fri Leftover chicken with salad Frozen pizza with salad Mushrooms 2.98, slaw 2.25, leek 1.98,...

This was posted recently on social media Cutting food waste by a quarter would mean enough for everyone. It just makes me so sad that people are suffering from hunger and we are wasting food.  I found that menu planning has really helped in our household with controlling the grocery bills and also with food waste.  We still buy things not on the shopping list, but our food waste is minimal.  If something is not salvageable it goes into the compost.  I think we all have ideas though that might help others to budget, plan meals and use up leftovers.  I am going to post our weekly menu, shopping list, some recipes and costs and then do a re-cap to see how we fared.  Are you willing to join me in this? For now I will just post mine and follow along with anyone who wants to join in - then if there are enough people interested we could do a regular linky. I normally shop over the weekend so start my menu from Monday - this was an example of last weeks sho...

I have had visitors so am a little late for this post. Here is Lizzies post where you can see the other bloggers talking about the size of their gardens   Garden share collective. Over the weekend I paced out my garden and it is a triangle 12ft long by 10ft wide.  This photo is taken looking roughly South, so gets the morning sun, and afternoon shade.  To the right I have climbing snow peas and beans with lettuces and tomatoes in front.  Also a few volunteer pawpaw trees.  To the left I have (from the front) spring onions, barbadoes cherry tree, rocket, cucumber on a frame, eggplant in wicking beds, lettuces, volunteer sweet potatoes, tropic tomatoes and a dwarf mandarine lime tree. This photo is taken from the herb spiral where my veggie garden comes into a narrow point, looking West.  The first bed is a herb spiral that over the years has flattened out and merged into the surrounding area incorporating some gerber daisies as that is one of the few s...

As you know a while back I decided to remove the remaining grass and create a new garden bed and path.  I didnt want it to stand out as separate , but the path was to provide access, so I mulched it the same as the garden bed.  Right now it is spring and the scrub hens are looking for places to lay their eggs.  They dont sit on their eggs - they gather together a huge pile of leaves and then the eggs are laid in the warm composting mulch.  Somehow a silly scrub hen thinks she can gather together enough loose mulch in my garden to build her nest.  I hung a very colourful kite above this area to warn her away. Once this lavender takes off and forms a little hedge and the hippeastrum behind put out their georgous flowers, there will be a defined edge to this new path.  Update:  Hubby found her digging right underneath the kite!  I think once they get used to something it becomes part of the garden as it did seem to be working for a  wh...

The little section which I think of as my fan palm forest is coming along nicely.   I wanted to be able to look out and not see any fence.  I also wanted to look up and see the sun shining through the beautiful shapes of the fan palm leaves.  One of the most beautiful tropical sights in my book. I also have a fluted fan palm.  They both seem to have shot up this last year. I purchased this plant at one of the orchid shows, and it has multiplied and I need to reduce it in size once more. The foliage is so interesting. It does get some yellow flowers right at the base, but the interest is in the leaves. Of course my favourite bit of colour at the moment is the lady slipper orchid - sorry if you are getting tired of seeing this from every angle.....  the sunbirds are always flocking around sipping nectar from these flowers and often get a bit rough and I find these little flowers scattered like confettiti under the tree. The vine is climb...

One of the suggestions landscapers have is to provide plenty of places to sit and admire the garden or have a rest.  Sometimes I think I may have overdone this feature since my garden is tiny.  This canvas chair is very comfy, and a marvellous place to settle into with the paper.  Having a few random hibiscus blooms on my shoulder is an added benefit. On my list of things to do one day is to sand it down and varnish to match these two chairs which  are on the other side of the front verandah.  Just in case you need a rest, within three feet is another place to relax, and wow do we make use of this swing.  Evening cockail hour with the hubby, place to assess the garden and plan more projects.  Place to just sit and admire what  georgous space we have created out the side. This swing has moved around the garden but is now back where it orginally started out, providing a long view all the way to the back corner of the house.  It is also ...

A while back I made room in my little bromeliad bed for the strelitzia, and after languising for about four years, it seemed to like its new spot.  Alongside was the only little patch of lawn I had kept.  My little ceramic sheep were not doing a good job of keeping the lawn cropped, and then when hubby put a play pool for the grandkids on the lawn I knew I had to reclaim that space for my own!  No blue pastic pools in MY garden! The only thing to do was to let the water flow out of the pool all over the grassy area.  That made it easier to dig, but my gosh, was it messy.  Instead of showing you the mess, I just have a few photos of some prettiness.  Rex begonia flowers.  Rex begonia leaves. Is anyone else having problems that blogger is turning their photos sideways, and then they are impossible to turn back again?   grrr.  I am posting this anyway in the hopes that when they are posted they will once again be the right way up. ...

I have mentioned before that my path into blogging started with an organization called KGI .  It was really a series of forums, and I learned so much about building up the soil, growing organically, how important comfrey was, why to cut the lateral branches off tomatoes...  It was a whole new world of gardeners I had discovered.  There were hundreds of helpful gardeners that I could ask questions of and share my success and failures.  For the first time I was exposed to the world of blogging and cautiously started my own blog. Then............ Roger Dioron said things had to change - well!  was there ever an outcry!  "the old bunch" started up our own forums on the new site, but it was never really the same.  I got involved in my own blog, and my followers, and the blogs I was following, and occasionally would venture back to KGI, but it just did not have the same feel, and I couldn't ever connect back with my old friends.... I got the monthly newsl...

Growing up we always used to eat dinner sitting at the dining table.  Dinner was at 6.40pm and whoever was around was welcome to join us. We always said grace; taking turns, For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful Amen. I can't say that as a child I was truly grateful for every meal, but I do look back with nostalgia at the family discussions, with no TV running, every evening, without fail. Lately I have been feeling truly blessed by the fact that I do have enough good wholesome food to eat, and have been making a point to silently give thanks before every meal.  A minute too, thinking about those less fortunate can make me more aware of different ways I can help the many hungry poor in this world. I have learnt some wonderful grace's over the years: God is great God is good, let us thank Him for our food. thank you for the world so sweet thank you for the food we eat thank you for the birds that sing thank you God for everything....

I have mentioned before how comfrey is a hugely important part of my little garden.  In some areas I understand that you cannot get rid of comfrey, but I ofen lose plants during the wet season, so always have some that I keep in a pot and then I can add plants in areas that have died off.  I like growing it against this fence behind the herb spiral. Because of its long root system it mines minerals from deep in the earth and stores all this goodness in its leaves.   I keep cutting the long side leaves off and add them to the compost, the inlet to my wicking bed and then also into my comfrey fertilizer factory.  I dont like to soak the comfrey leaves in water as they get very smelly and then my hubby and my neighbour give me strange looks and wont come near me for days. What I do is make a concentrate, and this can be diluted down and used as a (non smelly) foliar spray. I use the 2 litre empty milk bottles, but you could use whatever size you want.  You wil...