Sounds like you got a reprieve just when you needed it Juhill! I ended up with a reasonable bit of rain today. 12 mm by my dodgy backyard measure. The frogs started singing the instant the first few drops hit the ground! Hopefully there will be more tonight.
I'm so happy spring is here! In winter my balcony has a tiny strip of sun that only lasts a couple of hours, and I have all my plants crammed into a corner to keep them alive over the winter... But now it's staying longer and reaching further, so I've got marigolds, cyclamens and my succulents all flowering, and my carnivorous pitcher plant has a beautiful bloom too! Oh, and I have so much lettuce I don't know what to do with it... (I should really improve my staggered planting method) I've got a blueberry plant that's crawled out of dormancy and it's got some blooms on it, so I'm hoping that I might be lucky enough to get some fruit off it... I'm sooooo excited whee!
Green smoothies - sounds weird, but it works. I like coconut milk, banana and pineapple as the base - then toss in a pile of lettuce (it'll smoosh up so much you can use a lot) and some herbs and you have a super potent vitamin supply.
Think I will have to pysch myself up to put lettuce in my smoothie LOL! Spent most of the day removing horrid passionfruit vine (rootstock gone feral not real passionfruit!) of some years growth from what will be a shadehouse. It was actually a cat house for a few years but am now converting to a shade house to grow salad leaves, lettuce and stuff in our hot, dry summers. It is already three quarters covered with shade cloth. There must have been a gazillion big brown snails in that thick growth.......grrrr Will need to do a few weeks of nightly snail patrol before planting anything. The ducks and chooks welcomed the extra protein though! Tomorrow I am going to make a rocket stove - the easy girl's way - as per an article in Earth Garden magazine. Took the writer an hour with sixteen bricks, a flattened food tin, fireproof base (I have a large cement paving stone thingy) and something to elevate the structure to a workable height (in my case the bottom third of a 44 gallon drum.) Hopefully it will work, anyway I'll have fun trying!! Last weekend I went to our local market which is run once a month and is fairly small, but joy of joys, I met a couple living a simple, self sufficient type of life on a beautiful bush block. It was so nice to talk to people with similar goals and mindset - usually feel very isolated here in the heart of big agribusiness! My No 2 son brought me home two lovely plastic rubbish bins full of yummy, rich stuff taken from the gutters at his work place - looks like they hadn't been cleaned out for a while. Wow - was that stuff amazing. No worries about pollution - this place is in a rural hamlet. The material looked like finished compost! His boss thinks he is a bit kooky! LOL Anyway, I'm on the brandy (hey, it is Saturday evening sundowners ) so better stop rambling now and cook something!
The rocket stove stands triumphant!!!! Will try to get a photo uploaded sometime soon. She aint pretty but she works like a charm. And I just discovered my Aztec corn has started germinating. Yay! Also planted Purple Climbing beans and bush beans today. Life is good. What is everyone doing at their place?
Well I've braved the compost/mulch heap (didn't see any snakes today) got 2 barrow loads of beautiful mulch and mulched the chokoes I hope the white one starts to look better soon, also did the zuchs, cucumbers and tromboncino. Took cuttings of Lemon Balm, Lemongrass, Mint and Lemon Thyme.
'didn't see any snakes today' - so you've seen some recently? Yikes...... I am cautious around our compost heap too at the moment although I haven't seen any snakes so far. Our little bantam chook is sitting on eggs. I suspect that her closest companion, a large white hen, has shoved some of her own eggs under her too!! Has anyone seen this happen? We have seen a few times the white hen race off on being let out in the morning, straight over to where the bantam is hiding on her nest and fussing about her pushing at the eggs as if to make sure they are safely under her derriere LOL.
I've seen several snakes since the weather has warmed up, last week there was a 5ft Eastern Brown in the compost after mice I think and saw a Red bellied black crossing the driveway, beautiful carpet snake sunning itself near the bush a few weeks ago.
I cooked our first meal (fried rice! - okay I cooked the rice in the conventional way) on the rocket stove last night! Great fun Then this morning I got up a bit earlier, lit it up and boiled my kettle for a cuppa. Tomorrow I am going to have a go at damper in the morning in a cast iron dutch oven - will it work do you think? I guess the novelty might wear off in a week or so lol, but hopefully we will continue to use it regularly well into the future. Watch out for those snakes juhill! I do like to see them about, just not too close!
