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.

Upcycled christening dress

When I saw a European sized pillow case in an op shop, I thought it would be perfect for a little girl's christening/baptism/naming day/flower girl dress.  It has lovely white on white embroidery, and is simple, not too frou frou.  I only just squeezed the pieces out of the pillow slip, lucky, I didn't want to have to find white fabric for the sleeves to match.  I don't have any white fabric in the house, and I'm sure it would be hard to match whites perfectly.  Anyway, it's size 1, and in the shop now.

Upcycled vests

I've been playing around with a few souvenir tea towels, and made some little vests.  I've made a few tea towel pinafores in the past, but I think these work quite well.  In the shop now.

Almost Spring

 Potatoes, back after frost damage

 Broccoli sprouts after the main crop has been harvested

 Buds are bursting (nectarine and grape vine)

 Raspberry canes- I lifted them this year and replanted them in two half wine barrels to contain them.

 Betty is laying her beautiful blue eggs again, we only had one from her about a week or two after she arrived at the start of May.  There was a traffic jam in the nesting box (lawn mower catcher) this morning.  For some reason they only lay in one of the two lawn mower catchers in the chook run, but after one of the plymouth rock's went broody, I thought it was time to persuade them to use the other one too.  Some fresh straw and a couple of wooden eggs from the kids toys, and voila, suddenly more enticing to lay eggs in.

 One cheeky chicken who always escapes

 One of two kiwi fruit vines from Ceres environment park's nursery.  We got two for the price of one as all bare rooted trees were 50% off.  You need a male and a female kiwi to get fruit.

The beginnings of Andrew's spring time project, a wood oven.  The concrete slab will be poured tomorrow, all going to plan.  Stay tuned...

New dresses in the shop

Spring is on my mind, and with that, a few new dress offerings for my shop.

Blue Wren

He was back yesterday!  We had a visit a few weeks ago (assuming it's the same one!)  He flitted around the front yard veggie patch again, under the potato plant leaves, the kale, then up into the bare birch tree.  We briefly saw his mate before she flew away.  I wonder if there's a nest being built nearby.  We don't usually see these birds in suburbia, I wonder what's going on in their natural habitat?

Good reading

Linda from the Witches Kitchen wrote a great blog post about supermarket catalogues (and the terrible processed food that they discount rather than food that is actually good for you), read it here.