Once again I have no idea what this is, but I’m 100% sure it’s regularly classed as a weed and a damn nuisance. But it is pretty though!
Alas, it is no more. Once I’d taken the picture it was ripped out before the flowers turned to seeds. Well it was choosing to grow on the pile of compost that’s waiting to go into a vege garden. Not the best thing to infest with weed seeds!
With thanks once again to my overworked and underpaid hand-model, meet the sum total of our 2011/12 fruit harvest.
Yes, that’s right. A single fig! We did think there might be an apple or two earlier, but the earlier grass-grub infestation ended that quite quickly.
But at least all the trees have had a good growing season to get strong without the burden of producing any fruit, so hopefully next year they’ll be all the stronger and ready to go. And we’ll know that when Pinot starts chasing brown beetles at night it’s time to spray the trees again.
As we’d got so busy ripping things out of the garden today, and as there’ll be a fair amount more when we pull out the corn patch, tomato and all the other summer veg, I thought it was about time I got around to installing the second compost bin to join its predecessor. Having already installed one, the second was a breeze!
So it can sit there for now until we rip all the garden stuff out which can go in the bottom of it, then I’ll have the fun task of shovelling all the stuff from the first bin on top of it all so it all gets a good bit of pressure and hopefully heat. Must go track down my How to Cook Compost book first. Or I guess I could try talking to Lauren. Who we used to give a bit of grief to for being interested in such things… Knew that might come back to bite!
With the welcome return of some warm weather it has been a bit of a gardening chore-day today, removing all the produce from the garden that was either on its last legs, or had grown well enough but had been neglected. Unfortunately, the carrots had been one of those veges that had grown well but had just been left to, well, do it’s own stuff. Until today we’d really not noticed just how well it was doing it’s stuff!
This whoppa weighed in at 800g – so I guess we can grow carrots. We’ll just have to remember in future to eat carrots! I’m not sure the photo really does the sheer mass of this brute justice. Let’s just say you could make a LOT of coleslaw with it!
And this little beauty somehow turned into some kind of Dr Seuss carrot ‘submarine’ or something. Made us chuckle, anyway. But starting an odd shaped vege theme is always a bit dangerous. Just ask Baldric.
In other gardening news I picked my first decent sized home grown aubergine so we can use it for tea tonight. We have picked small aubergines already that have not taken off and put them in Thai green curries, but they don’t really count as real ones (more like stunted growth ones), but they were nice enough too.
We also harvested all the borlotti fire beans that were taking up half a square bed as they slowly dried up and went crispy…
That’s right, half a small mustard jar worth of dried beans was all we managed today. Not the best use of space to date. But at least there’s enough to try again with next season, and maybe then give them a bit more care and attention and hopefully get a better crop. I guess with a decent sales pitch we could try to trade them for one of the local cows…
And then there was another 2.5kg of tomatoes harvested again today for some different tomato sauce, along with the required thyme and chillies…
Out in the hot house the tomato plants have just been chugging away, doing their own thing for the past few months. They’ve really been rather neglected, and most have taken to just sprawling out over the floor as they’ve wanted to with little in the way of guidance as to which way it could be awfully useful if they could just bring themselves to decide to aim in that general direction. Like upwards, for example.
I’ve been dragging the odd 5 or 10 off for salads etc, but today we went on a bit of a well overdue hunt for any ripe (or over-ripe) ones with the hope of not wasting them too. So 2kg of plum tomatoes later…
Bit of a rinse, bit of a “wazz-up”, bit of a boil up, bit of a spice up later, and we had some spicy tomato ketchup.
Not a lot of ketchup for 2kg of toms! But I’m sure it’ll be the very essence of summer and spice in a jar. I’m just giving myself a couple of days before trying it so the flavours meld and settle. Better be worth it!
But in other hot-house related news, there’s now a big, empty void where the cucumber plant used to be. Yes, I know. A very sad day yesterday when it was removed from the premises. For us and all those others that have been partaking of it’s prodigious product.
It had finally stopped producing any more flowers and was getting a bit over-run with some sort of nasty mite that we’d rather not have infest the whole crop so it was time to go. On the upside we did manage to harvest a last six cucumbers as we were dragging it out the door, so it will live on in the fridge for just a bit longer!
Having felt the warm glow of success when we managed to get the first spare bedroom kitted out with blinds we couldn’t wait to get on and apply the same treatment to another of the rooms.
Excuse the photo. Backlit scenes really do suck to capture!
Slightly different design needed as we were dealing with already backed fabric of a slightly different size, but with only a few hours head scratching making sure we were getting things right they were constructed and installed. (Neither of our maths is what it used to be, and we are still yet to construct the perfect spreadsheet for this. But we will. Oh yes, we will…)
As for the actual sewing, not a bad effort but still room for improvement. Perhaps that will come with the next bedroom we decide to upgrade
So now when you come visit you’ll probably be installed in the “purple room”, rather than “bedroom 4”. And you might now feel a little bit more comfortable not having to strip in front of the “neighbours” (currently a small herd of cows), and also might have a bit more of a sleep-in.
But on the downside when you wake up in the middle of the night you won’t be able to stare at the stars and try to work out which of them make up the Southern Cross…
Yesterday we finally got around to finishing the last little improvements to the chicken run. Some windbreak cloth around ¾ of the bottom, and adding a bit of ceiling mesh to keep the hawks and magpies out, if nothing else.
Not sure it’s all needed, but the girls do seem to really appreciate the windbreak.
We’re (and that definitely includes Fidget) still getting a lot of entertainment from watching them. They seem to enjoy chasing flies just as much as Pinot does. Glad we’ve got the garden bench nearby to watch them from.
The “wildflower” of the month award this month really has to go to all of them! Seems like February you get the carpet of all of them. Lucerne, thistles, borrage, yarrow, dandelions, and all the others that I’ve yet to feature stretching out into the distance where the heat pump coils were installed.
I just wish I could actually get a decent photo of it. It’s really rather pretty. I guess we should maybe think about trying to find some even prettier flowers and see if we can replicate nature’s efforts…
Picture the scene: New Year’s day morning, 8 something AM. First thing we try to do in the new year goes horribly wrong when we turn on the washing machine and it starts dripping dribbling pissing water out of the bottom of the machine. Bugger. What a way to start the year!
And as it’s the summer holidays, trying to get hold of the commercial dealer guys that we got it through to find out what the warranty deal was took until the second week of Jan, then getting the fix-it guys out to have a look took another couple of weeks, then waiting for the required replacement part took another couple of weeks, then a last bit of swearing and cursing while I wrestled it into place…
So all up we’ve been without a working washing machine for forty-six days. Forty six days! That’s a lot of days! 12% of a year!
Huge thanks to everyone that’s supported us over that time with the loan of their machines over that time. Hopefully the veg has been enough payment for now.
And the problem? A tiny little hole in the main pipe caused by a tiny little mouse that (presumably) got lifted through the cat-door by Pinot one day or night and escaped into the machine and then got a bit thirsty and had a chew. Little bugger. And we suspect it might not be the last time this happens. But at least we know how to dismantle and reconstitute the machine now, so at least we can avoid the fairly hefty call-out fee in future.
Which leads me to digress as little from the initial subject to report that at around 5am this morning both kitties bought in a mouse. To our bedroom. That’s two mice at once, not both hanging on to the same one. Sigh. A bit of excitement and dancing around later we managed to get them out the door. Both the kitties and the mice.
We’re well used to Pinot bringing them in, but Fidget’s been a bit, well, slow to catch on to the whole catching them himself thing. Not quite sure how to feel about him finally working that out, but if the noise he was making when he came in was anything to go be he was very excited to have finally worked it out.
I think in the interests of open and unbiased reporting I should probably point out that his mouse was about a third of the size of the one Pinot dragged in.
Fidget found something new to watch today. And I’ve been keeping just as intent an eye on him. Yes, we finally have some chickens in the chicken run. And they look just the right size for a kitty to try to have a lot of fun with!
Meet the girls (clicky for more clarity). Three Barred Rock chicks. Well, not quite chicks, but close. About 3 1/2 months old apparently. So still a fair bit of growing to do yet. Which is just as well if we want to end up with any decent size eggs!
Fidget’s still not quite sure what to make of them. As yet he hasn’t made any real attempt to get up close and personal with them. But actually it’s Pinot that I suspect we’ll have to watch a bit more closely once she finally gets off her chair and goes for a wander outside. Given the amount of mice, birds, and baby hares that she’s still been bringing in as gifts lately she may well think on of the girls is a prefect gift.
So now we’ll just have to sit back and try to keep them fed and watered until they’re ready to reward us with a few home grown eggs now and then. Bring them on!
