Blog catchup #2 - home improvement

We've finally had some progress on our renovations at home.

Hooray! The concrete is gone from the driveway. I see more space for fruit trees and veggies!

This is why I love gardening:

~ because I've been able to transform our front yard from a drab (and weedy) lawn edged with boring box hedges ...

... to a bountiful, rosemary-lined feasting-ground for bees and butterflies, in just 12 months!

(ah, but I still have plans for much more!)

Veg out

Our little winter veggie garden has been good to us:

... unfortunately now that the Spring showers are here, we have to compete with these hungry little fiends:

ugh!

Abundance

Our small veggie garden has gone into overdrive this summer - last week we still had several zucchinis left over for ourselves every day despite giving away over 23kg (around 40 pounds!) of zucchs. The previous weekend we gave away 18kg's worth, while also stocking our freezer with zucchini soup and making lots of zucchini pasta dishes. It's a zucchini bonanza!

 

 

Fresh tomato pasta and basil pesto were also on the menu this week - so delicious! I don't think you can ever have too much basil in the garden ....

Our neighbours' fruit trees are heavily laden too; each night we're serenaded (?!) by the chattering and squabbling of fruit bats as they feast on figs, quinces and stonefruit. It's funny ... although Gus barks at possums he doesn't make a fuss of the fruit bats in our trees, even though they're much noisier. Maybe they intimidate him - some of them have wingspans of around 70cm (35").

Oh - I just found this pic of a fruit bat (they're known in Australia as flying foxes) - what an odd, yet endearing, little face!

(pic from here)

Happy gardening, folks!

Bee feasts and the home harvest

On Saturday I immersed myself in the furious buzz of insect activity that can often be found in my mum's beautiful rose garden. I've never seen so many bees clamouring for pollen in the early hours of the morning!

 

 

 

Gus chased rabbits (don't worry, he never catches any...) and then found a tub of slimy, muddy water to splash around in with abandon. Sometimes it seems his one aim in life is to get as filthy as possible, and he sure has fun while he's trying!

We're still harvesting delicious, sweet veggies every day from our little raised beds - they never fail to delight and I can't wait to expand our garden to double or triple its productive space.

 

By the way, I wrote a little guest post for the US Urban Homesteader blog the other day too. Urban Homesteader is a lovely, inspirational site, full of wonderful ideas for living the good life..... why don't you pop on over and take a peep?

I'll take muddy boots over paper cuts any day

I've been taking pictures of our front garden so that I can keep a record for myself as I watch it grow and change. I know it looks very sparse at the moment, but it's a huge improvement - when we moved in, in October, this space was just filled with weedy lawn, some box hedging and six iceberg roses (snore). I had the lawn and hedging removed, planted lots of perennials, and mulched like crazy.

I hope my new plants don't shrivel in this intense summer heat ....

The ugly concrete urn on a plinth was also left behind by the previous owners. I'm planning to get rid of it when I find some help (in the form of extra muscles) and a tree or tall plant for some vertical interest.

Are you getting fresh with me?

This is just one of the many reasons why I love gardening:

- delicious, fresh produce, grown just a couple of metres from our door. We make compost with our veggie scraps, so the cycle of goodness goes round and round and our worms get nice and fat.

This week we're harvesting zucchini and cucumbers (many more than we can eat), tomatoes, beans, rocket (arugula),  lemon verbena and basil, and our sweetcorn looks as though it will be ready for picking next week. I'm keeping my eye out for some warrigal greens and sorrel seedlings and wondering if we'll have room for all the pumpkin plants that have self-seeded in our veggie beds...

 

 

 

 

 

~ all this in a little urban garden that's only 8 weeks old!

Love it!