March Photo A Day Challenge - Day 8

Window.

My Dad planted these seeds when he was here way back in October.  They are Illawarra Flame Trees and the pair in the back of the photo sprouted not long after he left.  This one in the foreground however just sprouted this week, when I moved the pots to a sunnier window!

Garden

I've been threatening to start a garden for the last few years and never seemed to find any time or energy to actually do it. Add to that the fact that my thumb is not green, it's black, so me getting anything to grow is pretty much not going to happen. Until now! It was a bit of a late start getting everything into the ground but I should have a crop of about 16 different things. SO excited! I'm even getting ready to start pickling and canning in case I end up with more than we can eat or share this year. I tried to stick to all organic and heirlooms because I think the flavor is so much better. If everything grows we're going to have cucumbers, red peppers, jalapenos, pumpkins, honeydew, cantaloupe, tomatos, buttercup squash, zucchini, basil, rosemary, um... and some other stuff. I forgot to label everything and can't remember them all. We should have a few surprises come up over the next few weeks.

Here's a wheelbarrow full of plants and herbs that I actually watered!

Who knew water was so critical to success....

Here's this little guy looking so small and fragile.

He's going to hopefully grow into a wonderful pumpkin patch for the kiddies to visit in October and choose a jack-o-lantern to carve.So far, so good

Cody hates tomatoes, but I love them so we have three plants and I'm considering more. These are all heirlooms and I'm looking forward to all the different colors and flavors.

Looks like we'll have some soon!

in an eggshell

I've been thinking about my vegie garden lately, since I got such a late start on it last year, I want to make sure I get in early and plant a bunch of different herbs and vegies. what could make better baby food than vegies straight from your own garden! I found this great idea on pinterest which has inspired me to start saving up my egg shells and cartons (great I hear Bryce moaning...) and start growing from seed. you can just plant the egg shell once your seedling is ready to go in the ground. Here are some instructions I found in case you're interested.

what's on your vegie garden list?

up the garden path...

at some point, this tired concrete path has to go...

and I must say I am digging these ideas of having grasses and succulents creep into the design to give it a softer yet still modern look while still being water conscious.

photo here

photo here

we're getting there

this weekend we finally got rid of the rest of the broken driveway. we hired a couple of labourers to help us get it done and finished in about 4 hours.

it's so nice to be able to look at before and after photos to get that feeling of achievement which sometimes is overshadowed by all the other unfinished things we need to do...

next we're going to work on leveling this out and filling it in with some of the dirt we got delivered last week, and then we're going to prep the area for this driveable grass. it's a paver that allows grass to grow through, yet still tough enough to drive on.

we piled up the used concrete outside our side fence and put an ad on craigslist - hopefully someone can take our free fill :)

got dirt? (or how to ruin a manicure)

the next phase of our berm is to cover the recycled concrete with dirt, preferably clay based so it will stick to the concrete some and make it more solid. so I found someone on craigslist giving away free dirt and last night they came and delivered for free :)
there was a 12 cubic yard minimum which sounded like a good amount, but when this massive dump truck rocked up, I was a little scared to say the least... I am a metrically speaking Australian, and even though I know 1 yard = 3 feet = 90 cms etc it is hard to visual what 12 cubic yards of dirt looks like... until the pile was almost as tall as me!
I had him dump it as close as he could to the berm to save us some shovelingfor your reference, this is what 12 cubic yards of dirt looks like. our neighbour came across the road to ask if we were building a mountain in our front yard... right at about the time I began to freak out at the amount of shoveling was going to be needed. I assured him (and myself) it was all going to be fine...after a few hours of Bryce and I shoveling, we've already put a ding in this great pile of dirt! (as well as my manicure...) and with a few more days (or weeks) of shoveling we should be ready for the next layer of top soil :)

the curse of the corner block

when we bought our house I was on the fence about buying a corner lot. I'd always thought it was a bad thing to live on the corner, but really had no idea why. what really sold me on this place though was the size of the block at over 7300 square feet (683 square metres). that's a pretty big plot of land in suburbia!

it's also a pretty big space to water - even with most of it covered in concrete... I turned our automatic sprinklers off a few months after we bought the place as I just couldn't justify watering a grass lawn every second day... it really didn't need all that water anyway. in July, it started to turn brown and not look so great, so we turned the sprinklers back on - until I got our water bill! it costs us $50 per month to water that front lawn! not to mention the gallons of drinking water being poured onto the grass...

we've been planning on making the front lawn a meadow and decided we should make a start on it and get rid of that water sucking lawn!

I have been collecting photos for inspiration and Julie drew us up a plan. we talked about putting in a fence, but Bryce was dead against that. if it were up to me I would build a 12 foot hedged wall around the whole property and create a private oasis - but he thinks that's weird... so we decided on a grass covered berm or a mound if you will.

we started ripping out the old bricked garden edging that is all broken and rickety and have been using that to build the base of the berm.

to create privacy on the corner

and then we're going to cover it in this beautiful green carpet of green fescue, which doesn't need much water or even need to be mowedbut you can cut it back every 6 months or so just to tidy it up

and then on top of the berm we will add this mexican feather grass to create a feature and also more height (privacy). this stuff needs zero water and turns greener in the winter when it gets rain.

we bought these little baby fescues a few weeks back and planted them in a temporary location so that they can get bigger, while we do the prep

saving us money by buying the smaller plantsand I've been find it hard to find mexican feather grass, but grabbed these 2 about a month ago
here's a photo of the 2 of them together. I love the great contrast of the green and the yellowy brown

you say tomato

I'm so happy to report that our roma tomatoes are ripe and ready to eat, with still so many more on the vine. our cherry tomato plant has tripled in size since we planted it (it's almost 5 feet tall!) and has the cutest little bunches of baby tomatoes on it - I am just waiting for them to ripen up.

here's a tomato salad I made the other night which is sort of a different take on a caprece salad which was delicious!
I cut up some cherry tomatoes (and the two ripe romas from my plant), baby mozzarella cheese, fresh basil (from my garden) and some sun dried tomatoes, drizzled some balsamic vinegar glaze, sprinkled some pepper and salt, then shook the whole thing in a salad bowl.

so easy. so fresh and delish!

a potted garden

remember that little shelf I rescued from the junk heap? well I have put it to good use as my herb garden/ potted plant spotI was able to rescue a bunch of old pots from around the house that were left here from the previous owners and am happy with the way it's turning out

strawberries

over the weekend we finally got to the nursery to buy some vegies as we'd been planning for a while, and we also got these deliciously sweet strawberries. my nanna would grow strawberries in her garden when I was a kid and it was always fun to find the red ones and eat them straight off the plant, just like hunting for treasure!for my birthday Cathy and Gene gave me this great hanging basket that is perfect for my strawberries so the snails can't get them

and after seeing planters that had strawberries growing from the top and the sides I decided to try it out myself

and it was pretty easy to do. I bought this moss liner and cut holes where I wanted the strawberries to grow from
and after putting a small amount of potting mix in the bottom to support them I carefully fed the plant through the holesthen covered that over with more potting mix
and planted the last 2 plants in the top
and ta-da!

we've already eaten some of the strawberries and they are so sweet and juicy! yum

thanks Cathy and Gene for the great planter, once we have the garage finished we're going to hang it on that with the great hanging piece it came with :)

gorgeous garden design

wouldn't this be a magical place to come home to!

photo here

monday monday

this weekend was jam packed full of fun things for us, like watching dispicable me, frost nixon & slingblade. a poodle parade that was actually a poodle 'and pooch' parade. we started stripping the paint off our 50 something year old garage and finally got around to planting some vegies! in fact I wish I was still gardening right now...

how was your weekend?

photo here

we've got babies

baby lemonsbaby oranges
and baby apples
don't you love babies :)

beautiful agapanthus

I don't think I'll ever get sick of taking photos of agapanthus, and last night when I left work the lighting was just too good to resist... I love how architectural yet organic they are and every time I see them I think of my nanna and poppa