garden visitors

Yesterday I was out in the garden planting peas and beans, when a couple of visitors arrived. Here they are: a pair of beautiful crimson rosellas. They had no fear and flew straight past my head, to land on the window sills. I thought they were lovely untill I realised what they were doing - eating the grouting from the window frames. I had heard that cockatoos do that, but had never heard that rosellas will.

Okay, the pictures aren't great, but they were the best I could do with my cheap digital camera. I was pleased I found the zoom button!

I have lots of beans up, and because of the rain in the last week, my zucchini are fruiting again. There is even a nice bok choy in the middle of the back yard. Better use that before hubby mows next.

The sunchokes and peanuts need to be pulled up this week. I wonder what the crop will be like. I will post pics when they are up.

Went to visit a friend at the weekend. She has recently moved from a house she has lived in forever, so her entire garden has been put in pots and taken with her. Her old landlord wanted the entire garden put back to lawn. What a silly man, but what an amazing sight. She would have needed a 2 tonne truck just for the plants!

Finished my course

Well, I finally finished my Permaculture design course, and even have the shiny piece of paper to prove it!

Of course, that just means there is still more to learn... I have also been doing Pat Collins Herbalism course and have been having a ball. Pat is a fantastic herbalist working out of the Total Health and Education centre in Musswellbrook. She has written some wonderful herb books which are available from Pat, or from my market stall. She also sells her own herbal preparations from her own centre or from Organic Feast in East Maitland. Her web page is http://users.hunterlink.net.au/~mbbplc/

I have also just taken over as the market co-ordinator of the the local Farmers and Artisans Market, and am enjoying that too. I have a stall at the market, mainly selling herbs (fresh, dried and potted) and useful permaculture plants, with some handcrafts and kids clothes on the side.

I have been adding to my garden, with galingal, lovage, a deep red frangipani (for hubby), pineapple sage and lemon myrtle being some of my new additions. I am now trying to decide whether to remove my quince (which has a very severe case of coddling moth and fruit fly) and my loquats, which I have recently been told attract the fruit fly to the garden.

Speaking of the loquats, they always fruit in November/December, which they did last year, yet the weather has them so confused, they are in full fruit again now!!! Of my two mandarin bushes, one has ripe fruit now, and as it fruited so early, it has been badly hit by fruit fly. The other mandarin tree (3 feet from the first) is running to it's usual schedule and should be fruiting late June, early July. My Feijoa is still not fruiting (damn), but I have grown peanuts for the first time this year. I will be lifting them this afternoon and we will see what sort of crop I achieved.

I pulled up one of my sweet potato patches last week and got a reasonable haul. My zucchini are still fruiting occasionally and my 7 year bean is a mass of flowers and beans. I was told last week that the plant is also known as "climbing spinach" so I need to do some research into that.

I have been juicing citrus all morning - mandarins and limes, and I have to say, it's no fun when you have a cut on your finger. Thank the gods for disposable gloves!!! Now to turn it all into cordial for the markets.

My cordial recipe is:

1 litre water
1 kg organic raw sugar (Our market is as organic as we can make it)

Put in a pot over heat to disolve the sugar. Once sugar is disolved, add 1 litre of juice. Shake and bottle. Keep in fridge till used.

When I make watermelon cordial (ambrosia in summer) I only use 500ml water and 1.5l of watermelon juice.

Enjoy!!!

dances on snails

You have heard of "Dances with Wolves"?. Well, around here this morning it was "Dancing on Snails". probably a good thing the neighbours are out! It is a beautiful drizzly morning, with just enough rain to soak the ground, while still being able to walk to the mail box without getting drenched. The snails are out everywhere... and now they are all snail paste!
I planted heaps of seedlings this month and the &^$^& snails got the lot! Today I got revenge, Hopefully I will have reduced the population a bit before I replant.
It always amuses me that they only eat the seedlings in the front yard, while the back yard is relatively untouched. It is also interesting to see what they eat. They won't touch any of my herbs. They don't eat sweet potoato, potato, garlic, beetroot, broad beans or the cabbages, but no zucchini, cucumber, lettuce, or bean plant is safe. I think it's time to steal some of hubby's beer and set some snail traps.
The bramble wattle seeds are sprouting, as are the thyme seeds. Passionfruit are coming up too. The Grandfather sage seedlings are still doing well, but I lost the last of the Darling Peas in last week's hot spell. One of the Ice Cream Bean trees is still going strong, and one is thinking about surviving. Pat Collins (THE Centre, Musswellbrook) has given me a Rue seedling which has taken off well. I have tomato plants everywhere, mostly self seeded, and most are starting to produce. Not enough to bottle, but enough for a bit of tomato in lunch each day. A good start. Still trying to source more tagasaste seeds.

garden

I finally got back into the garden last week. We have had so much rain, the ground just squelches, and the rest of the country is in drought...

I had to remove one of my bean pyramids as it had rust, but the others are going strong. My 7 year bean has pods on it - and it's only been in for 9 months. The flowers are beautiful, adding colour to my winter garden. Another thing adding colour to my garden right now is the mandarin tree. It is covered in mandarins, just coming ripe now. We lost some due to excess water, but most are still on the tree and almost ready for harvest. We do have one mandarin which looks a bit funny...

Everyone is commenting on the pumpkin vine out the front. The silly vine (3 actually, all twined together) gave me a lovely crop of about 30 butternut pumpkin, and now seems to be growing Jap pumpkins... The zucchini is still hanging in there. and giving the occasional zucchini, but this current cold snap may finish it off. My broad beans are up and there are some chokoes coming through, again not bad as I only planted the vine in spring. I have spinach growing in the garden and bok choy growing in the lawn. There are tomatoes on their vines and pea pods on the bed base trellis. I have carrots and parsnips scattered everywhere, and have just picked 3 turnips to put into the bacon and egg pie I want to try. Here is a pic of the day's bounty.

My Mum used to make a fantastic bacon and egg pie whenever we went on picnics, which had thinly sliced fresh turnips in it, which helped cut the grease from the bacon. I asked her for the recipe a few years ago, and she couldn't remember ever making it! If anyone knows a recipe for this, please let me know. In the meantime, I will try to fake it, which gives me a chance to try some more pastry recipes which do not involve wheat, corn or potaotes and my daughter and I are both allergic.

I have had some amazing comments on the garden. I am surprised by the number of people who recognise that it is a permaculture garden. Even the lovely older ladies from the Jehovah's witness recognised it. So far it has saved us heaps of money, and even made some cash from selling excess zucchini. Apparently my husband thinks you can have too many zucchini!!!!

My hubby made me a lovely circular garden bed around the bottom of the clothes line, which I have planted out in herbs, to help the clothes smell fresher. I have planted lemongrass, which is trying to take over, perennial basil, oregano, lavender, savory, hyssop, stevia, parsley and some others. It's looking really good. Then the clothes line broke so it now will not go up. At least I can reach it easily now.

I have just started making a new batch of potting mix. I have the coco-peat soaking in recycled water and once it is all moist I will add the sand, vermiculite, perlite and worm castings, then plant up some more cuttings. I sold so many plants at the last LETS picnic that I need to set up some more. I also need to plant out some seedlings which are outgrowing their pots. In the meantime, I need to do some study while Miss 4 is at preschool, so I can get this Permaculture Design Course completed. I am almost done, but I keep finding new areas to investigate.

Bye.

Back to bellydance

I finally got back to bellydance class this week after a very bad bout of allergies. Feels so good to be back in class and pushing myself. I go to a double class on Monday night, in Maitrland, run out of the Simplee Jazz studio in High Street. The class is run by Mikola, who is a great teacher and a lovely dancer. She does a beginners class at 6.30 and an intermediate class at 7.45, both running for an hour. As money isn't an object (she accepts payment in LETS Mollies) I go to both classes. I figure it never hurts to go back over the basics and as she teaches differently to Sharon, my first teacher, I am always picking up something new.

This semester, Mikola is teaching the Intermediate class all about drum solos, and it seems she is intending us to do a demo of one in July at a bellydance festival in the vineyards. I love the drum solos, but am unsure about doing a demo, as the last one was a fiasco.

The last demo we did was at a Seniors Wellbeing expo at the Maitland Town Hall. I felt like we didn't do enough practice. All the other women had done the dances at a demo before, and had done extra practices to ensure they knew what they we doing. I didn't so I wasn't sure, and in consequence, I felt like I had done really badly.

The medieval dance classes I run are going well. We have a good solid core group who regularly turn up to the Saturday classes in Newcastle, and we have been asked to do some demos in the next few weeks. This Saturday we are doing a demo for a 60th birthday party in Rutherford. Steve and I will lead and Evelyn and Andrew the Bearded have committed to dance too. We will stick to the simple dances which look good.

Next week is "Cultural Stomp" a multicultural event held in Civic Park, Newcastle where we will be doing a demo instead of our usual dance class. Come and have a look if you are in the area. We are supposed to be dancing from 3.30pm. There is always lots of entertainment, and plent to see. I think Evelyn is also organising a LETS stall for the day.

In July we have been asked to do a demo for the Hamilton CWA, and maybe actually get some of their people up to dance. That should be fun. Some of the dances are so simple, anyone can join in.

Glouchester

Last weekend my husband and I decided to have a day to ourselves. We dropped Miss 4 off to her Oma (Grandmother) and then took off on the bikes. It was my first ride with hubby on his new bike so we were unsure how well the Vulcan cruiser would keep up with my Z750 sportsbike. It handled rather well. Cornering was slightly slower than mine, but as we don't ride uber fast anyway, it made for a pleasant and leisurely trip. We rode out through Raymond Terrace to Bucketts Way, a fantastic riding road, and a great scenic drive.

We were heading to Glouchester to pick up a birthday present for Miss 4. Recently a new couple had joined our LETS group (http://www.auslets.org/hunter/) and were selling gnomes for "mollies", our LETS currency. As we have plenty of "Mollies" and not much cash, this seemed a great idea. Miss 4 loves quirky things for our garden, and this seemed to fit the bill. Here is the website http://www.crystalcreekproducts.com.au/gnomes/index.html.

10km out of Glouchester we turned off onto Barrington Tops Road, a narrow scenic road up into Barrington Tops. The countryside was beautiful, although I was concentrating on working out where we were supposed to be going. 15 km in, the road turned to dirt. The sportsbike didn't like this, but the cruiser handled it all with aplomb. I think if I had been riding the Z750 unmodified, it would have been a disaster, but since it was lowered by Scotty, the bike handles significantly better.

5 km further on, Barrington Tops road turned left and the road we wanted went straight ahead. We were close now, but I couldn't remember the block number. We pulled over to check the address and hubby noticed a woman come out of one of the homes and wave to us. We rode over, and introduced ourselves. Yep, we had found Linda of Crystal Creek Products.

Linda and her husband Ted were lovely friendly people who made us most welcome. They have a beautiful block of land, with a small creek on 3 sides of them. It was very beautiful, like a fairie paradise. Apparently they have platypus in the creek, a family of water dragons living on the block, echidnas, wallabies and wombats all visiting on a regular basis!

Miss 4 had already chosen her gnome, so all we had to do was collect it but when I saw what she had on offer, I thought there was an opportunity for us to work together, so I chatted to her and we worked out a suitable arrangement. I now have some of her gnomes to sell on consignment amongst my plants at the next Linuwel Markets. They fit the criteria, hand made by a local artisan, and will fit in well with my herbs and plants. Hopefully the arrangement will be mutually beneficial.

While she was showing me her current stock, and some fantastic quirky items she is working on (she is in the process of completing a gnome chess set), she showed me a "Green Man" plaque she had just completed. Both hubby and I love the "green man" concept and Steve has done some green man decorations on some of our pine furniture, but this was in another league. It was stunning. We fell instantly in love with it, and ended up buying it too. Could you resist?

Linda has a lot of gnomes around the property, and when I commented, she told me that they are there for paint testing. Apparently she rigorously and personally tests all the paints she uses on the gnomes to ensure they do not fade over time. If any of them do fade, she won't use that paint.

We were very reluctant to leave such a beautiful spot with suich pleasant company, but knew we needed to get back to collect Miss 4, so off we went. The trip out was a lot faster than the trip in aas we knew where we were going. I also got to look around a bit more and enjoy the scenery. Even the cows on the road were picturesque!

All in all, we had a great day, with an enjoyable ride, fantastic scenery and lovely company. Thank you, Linda and Ted.

New brooms sweep clean

I bought a new broom this week. Yes, it is exciting. No, I didn't go to my nearest Bunnings or Big W. I found a local broommaker, tucked away in a little dead end street. For those who live in the Hunter Valley, go to Morpeth, cross Morpeth Bridge, then immediately turn right to go back alongside the bridge. This laneway leads to some houses selling hay and fresh veges and one old shed with a faded sign saying "John Wright, Broommaker since 1937" He makes Millet brooms from millet grown locally.




For those of you trying to tread lightly on our planet, you will know how important it is to buy things locally rather than mass produced rubbish. These broom are NOT mass produced. He makes them by hand. There are ordinary brooms, children's brooms and cobweb brooms, all of excellent quality. Yes, they are pricey ($22 for a cobweb broom) but they are beautiful as well as efficient. Well worth the money.