Monday 19 November 2007

Lemons on a stick and a blank canvas


It was a weekend full of gardening goodness, Mum and Dad came down on Saturday and blitzed through the backyard, fixed the front gate, put the bbq up. Well, ok Dad did all those things, Mum and I went to the nursery and purchased greenery for the getting there garden. Biggest hugs and kisses to them both for doing so much around here too....helping us move as well as the garden!!


Hubby’s long time buddy Dave unearthed a little Lemon tree on his farm for us, after my drunken ramblings on Friday night about wanting citrus, bless his little cotton socks. Ok, at the moment it’s really just a stick with a few leaves, but with a bit of TLC, we’ll be harvesting lemons in no time! I can feel a batch of lemon curd coming on. There are plans for a lime and maybe a blood orange too, nothing like sipping a good vodka, lime and soda whilst munching on a straight out of the oven piece of blood orange syrup cake....but I can’t do everything at once!



So the mushroom compost has been dug through and there’s been a bit of daily watering happening, the newly created blank gardening canvas will start to get planted out this coming weekend, weather permitting. Now the thing's empty, I have a whacking great 1.4 x 3.3m to work with!!


Can't wait to start harvesting all the fresh herbs and getting my hands dirty again....I’m getting a bit excited!

Sunday 11 November 2007

Our House




Tomorrow marks 2 weeks since we moved into the new place and it’s been all go, go, go ever since, not only are we unpacking, but there was so much cleaning and fixing and tidying up that has to be done to get the place more livable.

Living in brand new units has cocooned us in certain ways, but it’s also raised our expectations when it comes to the state of where we live….and let’s just say this new place wasn’t entirely up to scratch when we moved in! It’s getting there though, and it’s been great actually getting up and doing things.

Today we got out and cleaned the front out of potential roach motels and mowed our “lawn” (well, hubby mowed), as well as tidyed up a bit in the back yard and getting about 4 loads of washing out on the line….that fresh smell of sun dried clothes is something I’ve missed dwelling in stacked concrete boxes.

I was thinking about what we would have been doing if we were still over in Wobbly Creek and the short answer would have been sitting on our arses, on the computers or knitting in front of Foxtel….well, I would have been knitting, hubby would have still been computering. So even though the place is a lil tired and needs lots of TLC, it’s so good shaking off our sedentary states and getting out in the sun for some photosynthesizing and vitamin D.

I’m really excited about having a garden again. I’m still in the planning stages of what I’m going to do, mostly because our bins keep getting filled up with “unpacking” things and there’s no room to piff the manky plants that are taking up precious space. I’m going to go mad with the herbs and some smaller growing vegetables, like tomatoes and capsicum, oh and strawberries!!! Joined Diggers Seeds finally (been meaning to for about the last 15 years now!) so I’ll be giving some of the heirloom varieties a go. My sisters (and their niblets) are keen veggie growers and Dad’s never without a tomato plant surrounded with basil, so it means I’ll be able to share all the seeds with them too!!


Above is a shot of what the garden looks like now, I’m going to use that big empty terrible-cotta (sorry, that’s a dad joke) pot for the strawbs, just dig the pot down into the soil a little and I’ll get a similar pot for a couple of varieties of mint, so it doesn’t take over. The plot’s about 1.5m deep by about 2.5m wide (once I dig out the mystery plants) so of course my heads going a million mile an hour thinking of all the herbs I can plant. I mean, do I really need things like lemon verbena or bergamot, possibly not….actually they’re only on my maybe list at the moment. I’m going to be sensible to begin with and get things that I’ll use plenty of established first, like thyme, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, parsley, chives, basil, chillies, etc, etc, etc….all the obvious culinary things. There are also plans afoot to get a multi-graft citrus going in a big pot, oh and I just thought, a bay tree might be nice.

So once I get things going out there, I’ll post some more pics….and I’ll have something other to talk about other than the knitting. (I’m not even going to bang on about the ball winder I finally went and purchased today, or the fact that I’ve picked up the pointy sticks again, getting 2 whole straight repeats on the Clappy done last night. Yay, I’ve got my knitting groove back, oh and I bought some teeny knitpiks needles for the Baby Casmerino project, but enough of that!!)

One gorgeous thing though, is that our neighbours have been very thoughtful at some point and have planted a Frangipani, Jasmine and Murraya alongside the shared fence, so I can’t wait till they’re all in bloom and their heavenly scents are wafting through our back door.





Anyways, I’m off to carve up the rack of lamb, that I just happened to stud with fresh garlic and lemon thyme….playing house is starting to agree with me.

Sunday 4 November 2007

Moving Sucks....but at least it's over!

Well, almost! We've been in our new place now for about a week, cute little house that it is!

It's a bit of a reality check moving from shiny and new where we've been living for the last few years into an old cranky terrace that's been severely beaten with the DIY stick. There's also the becoming reacquainted with nature that's proving to be a bit tough, because nature comes in the form of GIANT black cockroaches that have a habit of scampering across your path in the half light or come flying in through open windows whilst your pouring yourself a stiff whiskey to recover from the last altercation with a 6 legged beast sibling!

I got all evil on their arses during the week and went postal with a can of fast-knock-down-lure-and-kill-till-dead-dead-DEAD roach spray and we were greeted by a sea of carnage the next morning, all over the front yard, all over the footpath and up the street. There were corpses strewn everywhere, I felt so happy surrounded by so much roachy death. I'm having to watch my back though, I know they're plotting revenge most foul!

The whole knitting thing has gone by the way whilst I'm still elbow deep in boxes. I had all my WIPs set aside all ready for the move so I could find them straight away, but I just can't get into anything that it contains at the moment (including the clappy). I've tried, but while I'm still surrounded by chaos and it does my head it trying to count rows, it's just not going to happen. I need everything in the right place before I can feel at home enough to knit again.

I'm looking forward to getting the sewing machine whirring and the needles clicking and the beads a'beading....and everything shall be as it was, just in a different location.

Oh....almost forgot the best bit....I have a garden, it's only small, but there's plenty of room for all the herbs I could ever want to grow!!