I can't believe it's over a year since I posted in this blog. *sigh*
Quick catchup - the ladies were taken by foxes while we were away for Christmas. Moderately devastated, but very glad the beggars didn't leave carcasses around for the kids to find.

Front garden has been mulch-matted and is slowly becoming a perennial food garden, have asparagus, artichokes, a couple of chilean guavas, muntries, blueberry, raspberry, stevia (which hasn't died!) dwarf pomegranate (which almost has, but I haven't given up hope), and a few annuals that I haven't had the heart to get rid of yet.
Boys each have their own raised bed which doesn't get tended much and is right down the bottom of the jung...er backyard. Found a pumpkin a foot across hidden down there yesterday - loving the surprising nature of letting a garden go a bit wild.

I've also mulch-matted the side garden and will put strawberries down there this year.

Planning to sheet mulch the back yard this year! Collecting fruit box inserts for the purpose.

Who Killed Dave?

I read a first novel today written by Linda Cockburn (the author of “Living the Good Life” – book and blog), and published by tOgether Press, who are dedicated to printing books in a sustainable way, using 100% recycled paper, vegetable inks and a chlorine-free printing process, managing waste in a sustainable way, and offsetting emissions through tree planting. And if that isn’t enough, the book was a good read!

“Who Killed Dave” was a light, thoroughly enjoyable murder romp with sexy bits, serious bits, and many, many funny bits. The storyline careens from one revelation to the next, stretching credulity at times, but the characterisations are dexterously drawn, the settings are deftly depicted, and the narration carries you swiftly through the bits where you shake your head in disbelief without removing the smile from your face.

From the first chapter (which can, by the way, be read here), you realise that no-one in Kaos Court will be particularly troubled by Dave’s death, everyone has a motive for killing him, and many of the people on the Court are pretty much crazy enough to do it. When the media gets involved, and a popular vote begins on the identity of the murderer (“kind of Big Brother does bad, bad things”), Robyn Miller decides to take a hand in the investigation. Of course, due to circumstances which were, frankly, somewhat within her control, even the henna-headed heroine isn’t absolutely sure that it wasn’t her.

What with budding romance, pandemonium, and policemen getting wax jobs, this is more than a murder mystery, and well worth reading.

New Year, bush food and other edibles

I don't know that "New Year's Resolutions" really describes the goals I've set for myself this year. I just want to be more accountable to myself. This includes eating patterns and exercise, also being on top of study commitments, work, church, family, not necessarily in that order. It also involves not spending masses of time on stuff that doesn't matter.

I've been shopping again. I think I might be a little obsessed. Today I made my second foray into bush food - the native raspberry was doing well, but it's in the chook pen so it may get eaten. I guess what I really need to do is to designate it "chook food" so they leave it alone. But today I bought two new things that I haven't tried before: muntries and yam daisies. I didn't realise till I found that link just how much the yam daisy looks like a dandelion... It'll probably get pulled up by a well-meaning friend.

The first square foot garden is up and growing. The main thing I do differently is that I don't use peat moss in the soil mix (it's not renewable; at least not in the short term. I believe it takes a couple of thousand years to compress down. Sphagnum moss *is* renewable, though its properties are different to peat moss, and is being harvested sustainably in NZ, but not in Australia.)

In the new garden are tomatoes (lemon drop and yellow pear), chillis (fire), silverbeet (rainbow chard and perpetual silverbeet), pumpkins (potimarron), watermelons (sugar baby), cucumbers (crystal apple), basil, leeks, celery, tatsoi and saffron crocus. I have absolutely no idea how it will go, but so far it's survived two hot days with a very few baby seedling casualties, so it's a start. I'm a little stoked about how well the lemon drop tomato (started from an advanced seedling) is doing - I've eaten a tomato from it already; fresh and a slightly lemony and tangy taste. *I* liked it, and I'm not known for eating tomatoes at the best of times. I have also planted a yellow seedless watermelon, with a pollinator gourd with it - this is all new stuff for me, but they were sold together thankfully - and I'm letting it climb up the wire on the fence.

I also need to get more perennials going; presently they're all over the place and not necessarily doing very well. I love asparagus, and have a couple of 3 yr old plants, but feel guilty about picking them when they're only a couple of mm thick. I'd also like to start some mushrooms. And that almost covers it till the next seed catalogue arrives...

Christmas, digging up the no-dig bed, and broodiness

Christmas has been and gone - just us four at home; no travelling, no accomodation issues, no interpersonal scrimmage. Lovely. The boys were a hoot - Reilly loved his bed ("I'm tired. I go to bed now." "I'm awake!. Oh-oh, I'm tired again").

G's favourite present of course is the Ben 10 watch from his little brother. He even leaves it alone when asked so we don't take it away from him.
Got my granite mortar and pestle, which I love. 'Green eggs and ham' for lunch today with Christmas left-over ham, scrambled eggs from the girls and some finely pounded (pestled?) silverbeet, parsley, thyme and sage mixed with a little water to make a gorgeous green colour.

D gave me a beautiful knife block, which I've been wanting for ages. Heavy, and only one place that I don't have the right knife for. Have to buy a new knife...
I got him a turntable to convert his albums to MP3s, so we were both perfectly happy.

Have realised that my fundamental quality is laziness. Well, sort of. I reckon 97% or so is poor time-management and the other 3% is wanting to go back to bed. (On a good day, anyway.) I read recently a book called "On Guerilla Gardening", written by a bloke in England who is part of a worldwide movement of people who sneak out at night (or brazenly by day, often with official-looking fluoro vests on...) and beautify wasteland areas or small neglected and unloved parts of their environment. I thought "Oooh, yeah, chuck a bunch of seeds at a place and if it doesn't grow it doesn't matter - no commitment". On reading rather deeper, I realised that the initial bunch of flowers, vegies, trees, whatever is only the crust of this phenomena, and that maintenance of an area is just as rebellious, if not more so. Straggly flowers smothered by grass and weeds don't cut it when you're launching an attack on neglect and ugliness - they make it worse. So my previous rebellious thoughts died inside me when I looked at my own garden patch. I bought a good hoe today and got stuck into the place where the no-dig, no-maintenance grass-filled vegie bed is. I cleared along the fence for a section of it, and out to about a foot, where I discovered a small line of bricks buried quite deeply in the bed; apparently there was an edged garden bed there many years ago, before Dave's mum moved here. Have excavated around the line, which is still straight and level, and will use it for a path inside the new garden bed. I also planted a large rhubarb, put a small makeshift swale around it and gave it a bucket of water. I will also monitor the chooks' gate carefully. This time, I want the rhubarb to have the best possible chance at life.



Thinking of the chooks, I think Ruth may be broody - she's spent the whole day on the nesting box except when I turfed her out to get some of the good scraps I'd brought up. She was back on later. Doesn't appear to have any other symptoms, so I don't think she's ill. Will find out as we go along, I guess.

Summer

Summer is here ... sort of. Grey, muggy and cloudy. The garden was doing pretty well - seedlings up of beans, pumpkin, tomatoes (both purposeful and rogue), a few other things. Corn is doing well. We went down to Warrnambool & Port Fairy for a couple of days to visit the folks, got back and discovered that the chooks got out of their carefully constructed enclosure and ate through everything but the corn, which was behind a fence. Fortunately, I have the lettuces and a few more tomatoes in the front garden, so all is not lost.
Potatoes died off in the star-picket and chookwire so I harvested them. Twenty, and all small. I think maybe I should have been a tad less frugal with the water. More baths for the boys?

We got a new bed (for the bedroom, not the garden) a little while back, so the old one is out in the shed in pieces. When put together its like a box, so seems to me it's going to become a garden bed. Nice size for a square foot garden actually - about 4'x6'. Will try one. Our neighbours across the road were discarding some wooden venetians, so they'll become part of the bed as well, laying out the grid.

It's nearly Christmas, and I'm not as prepared as I hoped to be. Reilly's getting a big-boy bed, and I have to find the thing, buy it, have it delivered and set it up on Christmas Eve. Would *like* to do it and transfer him into it from the cot while he's asleep, but he doesn't sleep that soundly. If it was Gareth, I could hammer the thing together in his bedroom and he wouldn't notice till morning, even if he got up to use the toilet. Still have to organise Ros's subscription too, and maybe a voucher for Mike's glasswork. We'll see. *I* want a permablitz for my Christmas present, but it ain't gonna happen this year.

Have re-read Linda Cockburn's "Living the Good Life". Skipped the botulism story this time. I love the fact that even though they didn't manage to reach the goal of no expenditure, they kept going and did a ripper of a job of it. Makes me feel like it's a perfectly normal thing to want to do. Biggest issue is the expenditure building up for it - solar power, big tanks. But it's something we both want to aim at; even if we don't become self-sufficient (we're not likely to here on our 1/16 acre with Edwardian house and 60% of one income for the setting up of it) but the stories of the blowouts, the failures, buying goat food and saying "bugger it all" on a relatively regular basis make the whole thing more human and less 'out there' somehow. Plus, anyone who likes Vanilla Coke and Black Forest chocolate is allright by me.

Spring Fever

Every year I think I've mythed Spring Fever, then about this time I start feeling like the air is lighter and easier to breathe, and the garden has a siren voice all of its own. Calling me to put in the things that I really love to grow; clear, scrape, dig, pat, even weed.

Planted some apple seeds from supermarket apples last month. Forgot to water them. Tipped them out and they'd started shooting, then shrivelled. Felt like a murderer.

I have done a bunch of little things like tidied up the garden beds a little and started putting summery things into pots. Back yard needs cleaning up bigtime.
Love our chookens - I've been throwing them slugs and bugs and earwigs. They even ate a spider, though I didn't mean for them to do that. They get very excited over wriggling things and jostle for the first one they see, ignoring the others that are escaping into the grass. Have started to throw things one at a time. Hehe.

Work has been weird; too many deaths in a short time. Need to get out with my hands in some live soil and plant growing things. Nothing like a garden to perfectly complement palliative care. (Except when I forget to look after apple seedlings.)

My list of stuff from yesterday has been sidetracked by a small person with a temperature of 39.6, and enough booger to cement the wall around the veggie patch, and by his brother who may not be as sick, but is very, very clingy. They have finally taken themselves to bed, bolstered by panadol, fortified with a warm drink, and peace - of a sort - is reigning.

And I want junk food. This is where it gets tough. The MOTH is up in Benalla for a gig, and will be there overnight. I am feeling crabby and sidelined, and would really love to get some chocolate and other nasties. Hmmmm...

(Later)
I am *proud* of myself. I shopped at home. Bacon sandwich, followed by a coffee scroll of D's that he didn't eat, and rounded off with a hot chocolate. All from our fridge and cupboard.
Not, perhaps, a meal that makes me proud to blog it, but junk food a la pantry nevertheless.

On the plus side:
I did get the lettuces and broccoli planted, and also put the peas in. And now I have two more good polystyrene boxes with to plant more stuff out in