The Might of Rome

or, "How Rome Might NOT have done things"

The flashing moment of inspiration for yesterdays brief moment in the garden (in a nutshell, without all the fluff) goes like this. Wonderful, squirting, cherub-laced fountains with volumes of water . . .

To a small, backyard version featuring a defunct water pump (but only on completion of getting EVERYTHING into place) and a couple of very scared young boys hoping the koi don't take their toes off.

Today I am keeping cool and drinking home-made ginger beer. Deflated, but not yet defeated.

Fridays Garden

I spent some time tidying the shed early this morning. It's an embarrassing mess. Well, it was. Not so much now. Took some pics whilst in the garden. This is the self-sown pumpkin vine that I trained over and arch and up to the shed roof. It's coming along just nicely and with the drop in the easterlies and the mulching of the back bed, has had a second wind and is growing further.

New potted pets grown from shop bought orphans. On the left is a ginger which is growing well, but quite slowly. The right is turmeric which has grown from an organic orphan from a local shop. It has done increasingly well over the last few days and is seen here just starting to begin to open up it's leaf.

This is a bed of radish that came up so very fast over the last week. Also, I have planted carrots in the same bed for a later crop. These are growing on the deck. Speaking of a second wind, here is the same pumpkin vine with already another fruit starting to form.

Growing Uncommon Fruits @ Garden Vegetables in Australia review

Part of my summer reading has been a book picked up by my wife at the local library. My wife will often just grab books that look interesting and put them in front of me. This one really took my attention. So much so that I thought I would mention it on my blog.

Growing Uncommon Fruits & Garden Vegetables in Australia by Keith Smith has some interesting information that has really opened my eyes to some of the exotic plants we have access to in Australia – despite some fairly strict quarantine regulations.

Valentines Day at Petit Paradis

What a wonderful find in the garden today. While topping up the pond water I discovered the first of the tadpoles is now a frog. There are more too. So the little batch of taddies that were only introduced the other week have successfully become frogs - those that survived anyway.

The smaller tadpoles are doing fine in the top pond. The back corner is becoming quite lush now that the easterlies are starting to ease (although the sun has been pretty fierce during the day) and I am hoping that it will become a suitable environment for the frogs to make their home and stay in the garden. We shall see.

The other find, early this morning, was by my wife who went to check on Tuulia. Two little kittens were born during the morning. Both tan and cream in colour with pink eyes. So we are fairly sure they aren't Sami's kittens (who is black and white) and Tuulia instead became pregnant before they came to live here. Which is what the woman selling them suspected.

 

Harvest Moon

The full moon recently has been fantastic. Often, up late, nursing the little fella, the garden has been lit by moonlight that creates a magical effect over it. Like a mid-summer nights dream!

Despite the dryness and the winding down of things in the garden for the re-vamp, there are pockets of plants that are still producing well. Tomatoes being one of the crops. I am storing them in various ways this year. Some are being frozen whole. Others cut and packed into containers and frozen. Others bottled for storage in the cupboard.

As a side note I hope to have resolved the blurry photos that Blogger creates. I am now uploading the images from an internet server rather than my own computer. This is supposed to solve the problem so here is a test!

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!