Front garden- October

Everything's looking quite lush at the moment, with corn, beans, carrots, spring onions and daikon radish that have all come up from seed.  The early garlic will be ready to pick soon, and need their scapes cut off.  The tomatoes have some flowers on them already, and the lettuce is doing pretty well too.  It's looking more like a proper kitchen garden now!

Upcycled dress for the market

A new little upcycled tablecloth dress in size 3 that will be coming with me to the Ashby Primary school market day in 2 weeks, on the 10th of November.  This market has an eco slant, so I'm taking more of my upcycled garments with me.  I wish I could make more tablecloth dresses, it's like finding gold when I find good tablecloths at op shops!  This little sweetie has some butterflies on it, and a little triangle pattern that looks like bunting.

Let your opinion be heard

Just a couple of petition-y things if you'd like to put your name to them:

The people's RET review (renewable energy target)

From the website:

Big power companies and lobby groups who want to slow the development of renewables in Australia are using the RET review process to try and reduce the renewable energy target.
Without the same money and lobbying power as these industry groups it can be very hard for ordinary citizens to have our voices heard.
The People’s RET review will make sure that Australians have a chance to tell our decision makers what kind of energy future we want. Vote Now!

Change.org has a petition to sign if you're fed up with the major supermarkets selling cheap milk, which has prompted 45 dairies in QLD alone to shut down.   We buy Jonesy's milk from our local green grocer, to support independent dairies.

Coles - Up the price of generic brand milk to a sustainable rate of return for all. 

 

Apple Blossom

This big old apple tree came with our house, I'm guessing it's a few decades old.  We had a reasonable harvest the autumn after we moved in, but haven't had much since, and last year, the birds took the few apples that grew.  My dad has given it a good prune a couple of times, but we let it go this year.  I've put a fair bit of chicken manure around the base over winter- fresh, not matured, and just watered it in.  Now that we have the wood oven, we're sprinkling wood ash around it too.  This spring it is covered in blossom, and there are a few bees around too, so with any luck, there will be a good harvest in autumn, while we wait for our 3 new apple trees to mature.  It will be nice to not have to buy apples for a while, Liv's not happy if she doesn't have at least one apple a day.  Wassail, wassail...

Wood oven...almost done

 A few weeks ago- brick dome with no insulation

 Yesterday- with a new insulating box built around it, half filled with vermiculite to help keep the heat in.  It needs two more bags of vermiculite, and a roof on top, and a few more finishing touches to be complete.

Man make fire.

Livinia has been asking everyday if we can make pizza for the wood oven, but this is reserved for Sunday nights.  I've been making the dough in the morning, leaving it to rise for a couple of hours, then putting it in the fridge.  The soaking of the flour seems to make it more digestible for me.  And I use half spelt flour.  The recipe is the magic bread dough from River Cottage Veg Everyday, and it's the best pizza dough recipe I've found.

Spring Sale

From now until midnight Friday night, use the code SPRING at checkout in my Etsy shop for 25% off your total purchase (not including postage).  A great time to get Christmas sorted out, and support handmade at the same time!

Spring Garden

 Orange tree covered in blossom

 Grapevines going great guns and providing shade for the house

 A dwarf pear tree blossoming for the first time

 One broody chicken

 An avocado tree full of new growth

 Front garden veggie beds with tomatoes and capsicum under temporary glass hothouses.  Sorry Jonty, I don't think you'll grow any bigger!

All of our new fruit and nut trees have leaves on them now (and some have blossoms), which is a relief , because they did look like sticks for a while there.  I've started planting by the moon cycles, so it will be a bit of a test this summer to see if there are any improvements.

I have some photos of our family trip to the Melbourne Zoo last week, and some of the almost completed wood oven, which we made pizza in for the first time on Sunday night.  Our good camera is refusing to load its photos onto the computer at the moment, so it will have to wait for now.