Garden Update /2

Since moving to our new place, Ben helped me set up a new vegie garden. I was sad to say goodbye to the old garden but I made sure to save all the little sprouts and transplant them to their new home. You may remember how my friend Lowy introduced and helped me set up my first garden well he did offer some sage advice on setting up this new garden but I may have ignore him. I can now confidently encourage you to listen to others or at the very least, learn from your mistakes :p

So lowy's wise words were something along the lines of "I don't think the spot you have picked will get enough sun" to which I said something like "but but it gets all the water run off, which is more important because we're on tank water and last year there was a drought and I couldn't water the garden daily!!!!"

We've now had rain the last month or so and the garden bed is in no fear of being under-watered in fact I think it's now getting far too much and yes, not enough sunlight! Ben has kindly offered to help me move it one more time which I'll probably take him up on. Despite my stubborn ways the garden hasn't been a complete failure it just has had very slow or little growth. I thought it was worth showing photos of the things that have grown though :)

A couple of pumpkin vines have down great, obviously lovers of water! And I spotted lots of bees buzzing around to pollinate :)

The humble garden bed and behind you can see the table we did our mosaics on :)

Another happy report was our mango tree.  The season is now over but I'm still happily having mango smoothies daily from a bunch I froze :)

I've lost count of the number of avo seeds I've planted but I'm super excited to have two successes!

Unfortunately all my seedlings haven't sprouted, possibly from the 'too much water/not enough sunlight' debacle  :(

If you have your own garden, don't throw away your spring onion stems - they grow so easily and keep on regrowing!

And some capsicums which are almost ready for picking!

I really do love gardening and especially picking things to eat from the garden and I know I'm always learning too. I'll keep you updated if I do move this bed and see if some more sunlight will get things growing a bit faster :)

read more "Garden Update /2"

Year of Blooms - January

One month into my project and I found myself noticing flowers everywhere - such a lovely addition to my life!

Ben and I had a walk around (our place backs onto a horse paddock) collecting a bunch of flowers and were shocked at just how many we could find! A fun crafternoon activity of collecting and arranging flowers!

Ben also bought me a bunch of flowers which was the perfect excuse to pull out my silver backdrop and get cheesy!

These seeds were waiting to go, fingers crossed I have some flowers to show you guys in three months time.

Our backyard came alive with these tiny pink wildflowers

I went out and took a little video to show you!

I bought a jewel mix of nasturtium for my veggie garden!

And I started making sure to save petals and seeds

Shots of the pretty roses, in our new garden.

Discovered some little orchids tucked away in corner!

I also made a little ceramic flower holder so I could start having a flower on my desk each day :)

The pink wildflowers (from the video above) dropped off and in their place, seeds pods emerged. Our landlord was coming around to mow our yard and I got a little sad that all the seeds would go to waste. I could see the majority of the pods weren't ready to be picked yet but it seemed a better option then being mowed over. Miraculously all the pods, even the green ones, dried out and eventually opened up and I was able to collect all the seeds and plant them :)

Our frangipani tree was in full bloom this month - such a nice fragrance to have on my desk :)

And my new garden bed that I made to plant all the flower seeds in each month! I've already spied tiny sprouts which is making me excited for the months to come!

Forget me not seeds that I sowed.

And my clay seeds balls in production! 
Any spare seeds that don't have the potential to be a weed, I've been rolling, and throwing.

How pretty is the Dessert Rose's pod, with it's wispy seeds!

So excited for these cosmos flowers to sprout!

A photo update on my African violet with its flowers now in full bloom. 
You can see a before shot, in my last post, here.

A cactus that is growing in our yard sprouted 100 amazing & huge flowers (which the bees absolutely loved!). Lowy is pretty confident it's a dragon fruit plant which I'm super excited about!

January thoughts: I'm feeling super inspired and happy about this project and I can't wait to see where the year takes me! Also throwing seeds bombs out the window of the car, whilst Ben drove around town, made me so so giddy :)

read more "Year of Blooms - January "