What Are These Flowers?

While the rest of Victoria and all of South Australia are suffering from horrible weather, black outs and flooding we have been blessed enough to have escaped most of the rain.

Look at that blue sky! Brodz and I enjoyed the sunshine yesterday.

I just love looking at all the flowers when Brodie and I go for our walks.

I have no idea what these plants are but they look very pretty.

Flowers

I'm thinking I may need to expand the area where I walk so that I may be able to find more pretty flowers to photograph. Here's another plant that I spotted on a walk.

I wish I was better at gardening so that I knew what these are.

Mushrooms

We've been growing mushrooms under the laundry sink. Its cold & dark there. We've harvested a few mushrooms. Sometimes I think its awful slow growing but at least we've been able to have super fresh mushrooms! Not that it makes Angus very happy. He would rather we didn't have ANY of them in the house. Add them to the list of foods he hates - corn, peas, beans, tomatoes & mushrooms!! Silly kid he doesn't know what deliciousness he is missing out on!

Our Veggie Garden

It doesn't look like much at the moment but that's because we've only just replanted our veggie garden. I can't even remember the types of the seedlings we planted. At least not all of them. I do know that we have cabbage, cauliflower, spring onions, silverbeet and lettuce. Other than that I have no clue what else we've planted. I know I have a blonde brain or I'm having yet another brain fart! At least we have veggies in our garden & its mulched with pea straw.

My Garden

I went to a hardware/gardening store yesterday afternoon after the school run. We specifically went looking for a submersible pump for this drum we have in the back yard. Mark set it up to collect the water from the washing machine so that I didn't have to carry our buckets or watering cans full of the washing machine water to pour onto the garden. Any way we bought this pump and once we got home Mark set it up.

OMGosh I don't know why we didn't buy one sooner!! It was bliss to water the garden using a hose and not the watering can. This is certainly going to make life easier for me with my wrist (which has been playing up a bit recently I might add) the veggie garden wont know what hit it!! Darn it would've been useful to have had this over the summer we just had. At least I now have it for the next one.

All I will need now is one of those signs that says recycled water used here.

The Veggie Garden

I thought I would take some photos of what our veggie garden looks like right now. I cleaned it up about two weeks ago and put in a new crop with Angus's help. Gosh now to remember what we put in the garden ... cabbage, red onions, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, mint and parsley. Today we bought some round carrots, I'm not sure of the exact name of them, and we also got a jalepeno plant.


We still have the silver beet I planted last year. It's still going strong and I'm still picking pieces off it for dinner. In fact we used some tonight with our pasta. It was rather yummy too.

Gardening

Over the weekend we've been busy in the garden digging gypsum and organic fertiliser into the soil preparing it for the new vegetables that we finally got around to buying and planting today. I was thinking that Angus wont be too though we didn't wait for him as he was wanting to help out but we haven't planted the beans yet. Mark said that we can leave them for Angus to do. He should love that ... he HATES beans rofl.

Let's see what veggies did we get....

• red cabbage
• tomatoes - two types but I can't remember what they are called .. oh well lol
  
• capsicum
• celery
• silver beet
• string beans

At least this year we have a little more experience with growing veggies and we (hopefully) planted them with a bit more room than we did last year. I don't think they will be over crowded. I've also added some osmocote type fertiliser that is a slow release one and I've put the snail bait down already. There is no point waiting until the plants get half eaten before we put the pellets out. So within a couple of months we should be harvesting some fresh vegetables! Yum!!

The Vegie Patch

As you can see from the pictures my little vegetable garden is coming along nicely. It's been a couple of months since we planted our little seedlings and we have been collecting some of the benefits from out garden already. At least with the Silverbeet. Mark and the boys aren't that keen on eating it but I make them eat it anyway rofl. I am such a meanie. It is good for us after all!!

In the second photo you can see our beloved little furbaby, Trip. He was sneaky enough to 'escape' the house that day while Mark was at the door so we let him wander about the garden for a while. He decided to help me with the weeding. Well he was eating some grass. It looks like he is just busy sussing out the celery and tomato plants.

Since having our garden I have noticed that the little dude is tending to eat more of the vegetables we put on his plate. Especially the fresh vegies from school at least. The kids have been growing vegies there for the past few years and every now and then we get some fresh produce brought home.


I do know one thing with out garden it seems to be thriving on the grey water I use. Every time I do a load of washing I use the water from the washing machine. It seems to work a treat for the vegies. Well I think it is. Next door said that it might not be all that good for the garden if I do it too often but so far so good at least. I used to do the same thing when I lived in Adelaide and I had no problems with the plants getting the wrong nutrients. As I said so far so good!

I can't wait to start harvesting other vegies! Hopefully some of them will be ready for us to use when Dad gets here in a couple of weeks. He'll at least love the silverbeet!

Good Soaking Rains!

What lovely rain we had yesterday it rained solidly ALL morning and it's done wonders for my vegie garden!!

I don't know if I mentioned that the boys and I planted some vegies a few weeks back. We planted

• broccoli
• celery
• capsicum
• silverbeet
• zuchinni

When Mark had his shed put up last weekend one of the broccoli plants was snapped near the base and didn't survive but that's okay we have plenty more of them growing. The snails got to most of the plants in the first week that we planted them. So I bought some snail bait. Thankfully the plants are safe for now even though I had to put a second lot of pellets in the garden.
We've already been harvesting some of the baby silverbeet for some casseroles that I have made. I know that ALL my boys don't like it but they eat it to please me. Well at least Mark and the big fella do. The little dude tries to hide his 'greens' and throw then in the bin!! Sometimes he eats it though so I can't complain too much (or can I rofl).

I hope that the rain was in the water catchment areas. We could sure use the top up in the reservoirs.