Spring Garden Tour

 Budding olive trees- they are absolutely covered this year!

 Little almonds

 Gravenstein apple blossom buds

 Rows of carrot seedlings

 Potatoes- we have planted 11 seed potatoes this year, last year we put in 4 that sprouted in the cupboard.  Hoping for a bumper crop, and some early ones for Christmas.

 Crimson flowering broad beans- I picked and podded a heap on Sunday, and there are more to come.

 Baby chillies

 Baby apricots

 Oranges and lots of blossom makes the garden smell great

 Dwarf pear in blossom

Blossoming boysenberry- this is a rescue from my Mum & Dad's old garden, as they downsized this year.  Good to see it doing well.

Homemade Icecream

It's been a long and tiring week, so I'm posting about ice cream.  The long and tiring part involves Liv having gastro while on a road trip up to NSW to visit in laws, 2 trips to the emergency department, and 2 trips to doctors.  She's having a hard time getting over it, but seems it will just take time.

Anyway, I bought and ice cream maker a few weeks ago, and this is the latest, dare I say it, healthy batch of ice cream.  The recipe is from Nourishing Traditions, and our version is gingerbread cookies and cream.

3 Cups of cream (from grass fed cows).  You can substitute a bit of milk if you don't have enough cream.
3 egg yolks (from the backyard is best!)
1 tbsp arrowroot (real arrowroot, not tapioca if possible)
1 tbsp vanilla extract (homemade by us!)
1/2 cup maple syrup

You just beat up the egg yolks, mix in the rest of the ingredients and pour into the machine.  I added homemade gingerbread biscuits broken up for the cookies part.  They were made with spelt and teff flours, homemade butter, and rapadura sugar, so they are a healthier version too.  With a fussy eater in the house, it's important to create nutrient dense foods that you know will get eaten!

How satisfying

To bake what my girls call "sultana bread", with eggs from our chooks, buttermilk left over from making butter, and very local honey bought at a sustainable house day location around the corner from us yesterday.  Now it can be spread with some home made butter.  The girls have been requesting sultana bread, and with the school holidays coming up, a bit of baking in advance was due.  Most of this will go in the freezer.  I'll get to eat some of this as I have to eat gluten for a month so I can have the Coeliac test.  It's made of spelt, so hopefully it won't make me feel too bad.
The Araucana chickens started to lay again, as soon as the first whiff of spring arrived, so we have gorgeous blue eggs again.  This time of year seems so busy, with lots of gardening jobs to do, on top of all the other things that need to be done, and so many birthdays!  Blogging is a bit sporadic, I'm hoping I'll be a bit better at it next year when both my girls are at school.

Spring in the garden

 Spring has well and truly sprung, with the last week of winter feeling very spring like.  I don't think I've photographed the front garden from this angle before, I'm enjoying the daffodils, calendulas and thyme bushes in the driveway garden.

 I've started mulching the garden beds with sugar cane mulch, I always think the garden looks better with some fresh mulch.

 A new apricot tree went in last weekend- my Dad rescued it from a skip bin at work, a bare rooted one in a bag.  Some leaves have started to open up, so it looks healthy so far.

 My berry patch, things are happening.

 Here's a couple of raspberry canes starting to get some leaves.  My friend Bec gave me these after I drowned mine last year.  I gave her some canes a few years ago. 

My golden raspberry in the middle- I saw this at a nursery, and thought it might be fun to grow.  I have planted perpetual spinach, and alpine strawberries as a border.

Winter in the front garden

As winter draws to a close, I thought it was time to update on the front veggie garden.  The 2 empty raised beds have or will have potatoes in them this week.  There are freshly pruned capsicum and chilli plants (they were still covered in red fruit until the weekend, but they were a bit soft and past it).  A nice row of garlic coming along well.  Broad beans on the teepee, with lots of baby broad beans on them.  Lettuce, perpetual spinach, mizuna and parsley.  A few leeks are left, but most have been enjoyed in soups and risotto.  It must be time to start planning and planting for spring!

Upcycled pants on sale

Upcycled pants on sale for $10 a pop in my Etsy shop.

Let me know if you need specific sizes, as I have a few more here not listed.

Sweet Peas in July?

Hmm, it's winter...