The garden grows

It's Sunday evening and after another weekend the garden has grown. Admittedly most of the work was done by the Cunning Plans Dept because I was being feeble, but its a team effort. The old herb garden got dug over with some compost to make it more habitable for plants. Then a trip to get seeds. We've put in carrots, broccoli and sweet corn. The CPD also engineered a cunning drip line arrangement so I only need to pour water in a funnel on our top terrace and it will run down to a small tank and slowly ooze out the drip line (which is good since I'm not very good with stairs at the moment).

We also have two tomato seedlings (one Rouge de Marmande and one Roma) that are in a pot out the front (north wall, better sun).

Thank you to Anne for pointing me to diggers.com.au. I think I will order one of their mixed heirloom tomato seeds.

The couple of geranium cuttings I took and randomly shoved in the ground seem to be doing well. Plus the Flametree seems to have perked up. It was looking very pathetic for a while. Something had eaten at the leaves then in a high wind they all blew off! I thought it might be a gonner, but lo and behold it has shiny new growth at the top and on the side.

Other highlights of the weekend included Hudson going a round with the neighbours cat and losing, and some general lazy late afternoon weeding. While pulling clover out of the front lawn I got bored and started making daisy chains out of the flowers, like I remember doing as a kid. The daisy chain ended up on Rasputin, the house gargoyle (who is looking a bit worse for wear these days).

Looks like some bizarre pagan offering (which is funny since I'm about as irreligious as you can get). Maybe it will keep the mormons away.

Strawberry

I'm back home. The conference was great, though tiring. Many thanks to B&k who took me touristing through Christchurch on my last day before I had to fly home. Coming home to 30+ degree heat in Sydney and a mountain of work, not great. Having a long weekend to recover though was pretty good.

I've been getting into gardening lately. It started with pottering around trying to salvage some herbs from what was the herb garden three years ago which is now an overgrown mess. Then I got some cuttings from my parents and slowly the collection of pots on the front porch has been growing. There are now plans afoot for a vegie patch of epic proportions in the backyard. Ms D has kindly loaned me some books on gardening. Apparently it's a lot more complex than just shoving plants in the ground and hoping for the best.

Why gardening? It gives me something to do while getting my daily vitamin D dose from the sunshine and with the weather fining up and the days getting longer, I'm enjoying being outside more. It does not generally involve people, so is a good hobby for an introvert. I'm also starting to be a bit more conscious about food miles and would like to grow my own produce. And it really is quite rewarding when your plants don't die, but actually start producing.

I got the Cunning Plan Dept a little strawberry plant a few weeks ago and we've both been somewhat fascinated by the progress of the inaugural strawberry. Every morning I walk out the front door and check the strawberry. Every afternoon I come home from work and check the strawberry. It makes me smile. As the fabulous Ms Belle suggested, I should actually take some photos. Here is today's progress:It's a decent size and certainly larger than the piddly little things I remember trying to grow as a child. Unfortunately this is the only strawberry on the plant so far, though there have been flowers so I assume we'll get more strawberries. We have a second plant now as well, which looks to be getting lots of new growth. Might have to get more plants if the vegie patch comes to fruition.