It's Corn!

This is not a Japan update post, but something we want to remember. Promise there is a Japanese post coming very soon! 

Way back in January, I did some tidying up of the garden bed at the front of our house, taking out things that had live their lives and weeding out the nut grass. It coincided with a trip to Bunnings to pick up a housewarming gift for a friend from church who had just moved in and Rachel asked for some corn to plant. 

Despite the fact that I wasn't sure it would grow in time before our (then still hopeful) trip to Japan, I let her get the seeds. We planted them, watered them and watched them grow. 

Growing food is so much fun. Every day Rachel was giving me corn progress updates. 

As I feared, we were on a plane to Japan before it was ripe, but two days before we left, we did pick one of the biggest to have with our dinner. 

A little underripe, but still delicious. Everyone on the street, however, is enjoying the corn now, even though we cannot. 

Athena

Time for a random side quest into gardening. This is our Kalamata olive tree, planted in the front garden bed. We've wanted one for a long time. I love their silvery leaves. We happened to be at a garden centre one morning and the girls were campaigning hard. 

They named her Athena Sharp-Spear in the car on the way home. For her silvery, pointy leaves. 

Garden Bed

This post is nearly six months old at this point, but why wait when you can catch up now? When we planted the front gardens, we just had two trees in the front right in the lawn. You can see them pre-fence here. Unfortunately we discovered that having two trees sitting in the lawn (albeit in their neat cubes of garden mulch) were annoying to mow around right next to the fence.

Steve and I kicked around the idea of a garden bed along the front, with the two trees from the sides encased in it. I think we had been talking about it back and forth for at least four months, when suddenly we were kicked into gear last October and decided to build the garden bed out. We had some leftover hard wood fence palings that we figured we would repurpose into garden bed edging. 

Thinking to kill two birds with one stone, we ordered some top soil for the nature strip out the front, thinking that when we dug up the Sir Walter grass to make way for the garden bed, we would be able to replant it out on the nature strip. The whole nature strip was so weedy post-renovation and not at all level, so having a good amount of top soil would help things immensely. Unfortunately, the dirt arrived a whole week ahead of schedule, so we had to do a bit of a rush job with the grass transfer. The girls loved playing in the dirt pile though. 

Anyway, we did manage to get the new garden bed boxed in and ready for some plants. We want to keep it pretty simple out there, but it is prime real estate for growing things, so I have been getting a little carried away. 

Initially I just planted flowers and ground cover (herbs and pig face), but I got a stack of free seeds from school and decided Rachel needed a job one afternoon. It was a very hot October when we planted them, and I honestly thought nothing would grow (way past the recommended planting time), but suddenly we had spinach, beans, chilli and coriander growing in full force. I was so surprised at the coriander, since I've never been able to grow it from seed before. 

We also had a stack of tomato plants pop up from the compost (as well as pumpkins, but I've pulled them out since it's really not the place for them), and a random cucumber plant. It's been a very fruitful garden all up. Always so wonderful to eat your own salad at the end of the day. 

Misc Memories

As the year comes to a close, I'm doing a bit of organising and have some final memories to share. These are just the small moments that happened in these last three or four months that I've captured with a snap (most times just the one quick pic) that I'm thankful for now, or they likely be forgotten all together. 

We took the girls to seem Mary Poppins at the Lyric Theatre. This wasn't their first musical there, but it was the first they were genuinely excited about. They had seen a school production of it a couple of years ago but were so keen to see the magic on the big stage. 

Steve's brother's dog had puppies and we got to see them grow from tiny squirmy things to these fun little balls of fluff. They did end up getting twice this size before we had to say goodbye, but it was loads of fun to have cuddles with them before that. 

Sophie got a red stripe at Jiu-jitsu! Red stripes are for leadership and are pretty hard to come by. We were so proud of her for getting this one. 

My school music concert was themed "TV and Movies" this semester, so I dressed in Steve's Jedi costume from four years ago and told all the students I was a "Jedi like my father before me."

The girls went on a guide camp the week before our 14th wedding anniversary, so Steve and I took the opportunity to have two nights away in the city. We ate delicious food and stayed out late, did an escape room and watched the Black Panther 2 movie. Lots of fun just being together in beautiful Brisbane. 

For the first time ever, we actually did our street proud with Christmas lights. Could be the addition of the front fence, but it was so exciting to now put up those lights. Steve got excited and got them all wifi connected timers and also went security conscious with them too. No hacking our lights! 

The girls went to a ginger bread house making afternoon at my parent's church where they were very excited about all the lollies on these little houses. They actually made six in total, four of which were shared with the street kids as soon as they came home, because there was a dance practice for the street party. 

Oh do I love to see the street kids organise themselves, practice and perform their dance at our street party each year. Three years in a row, and it's not getting old. Speaking of performance, these girls also did their first on stage performance with Rachel's music school. 

Proud of their performer lanyards, Rachel played piano and Sophie accompanied on ukulele. They also got their faces rather spectacularly painted. Their music school is moving next year to the other side of the river, but we are luckily retaining the fantastic piano teacher Rachel had and he is now coming to our house to teach both our girls. Whew! 

Sophie's compassionate nature scored her this free pineapple plant from Bunnings. We were walking through the garden section while she finished of a sausage on bread when we happened to see a pineapple that was just lying out of it's pot. Sophie told the people at the front and took them to see it. The Bunnings lady then said that instead of repotting it herself, she would just write it off and give it to Sophie to take care of. Free pineapple for us!

Rachel got a geode rock science kit for Christmas (early present since my parents were traveling) and had loads of fun being a scientist with it. Her favourite thing to do was smash open the geode that came with the kit, but she also enjoyed the other things. This crystal growing one didn't turn out quite as we hoped, but it was still fun. 

I've been reading lots of books. Some to check to see if the girls would like it. Shinji Takahashi and the Mark of the Coatl, Ronia the Robber's Daughter, Enola Holmes and Dragon Rider all fall into that category. I've also read the second Dragon Rider book and am currently in the third. The first was good, but the other two are a bit busy. Still, the author has taken the time to add a thought provoking quote at the beginning of each chapter which I truly appreciate. 

I've done lots of sewing, and cleaning/culling/sorting of stuff that we need to get rid of, and other things that I guess I'll blog about soon enough. The garden is growing and the weather at the moment is beautiful. We are planning 2023 and some fun things to do there. 

I also type this with joy, because when I post it, it will mean I've finally made my goal of posting five posts a month for a whole year. I don't think that means I'll change things up next year. Maintaining is just as important as improving in some cases, but it's good to know I'm there. Maybe next week I'll think more on resolutions but for now, thanks 2022 for all of these little memories and more. 

Here's to 2023, whatever that may bring. 

Look at it grow!

 Not sure I could be happier with this little garden bed! 

Normality Restored: Planting Things

Now that the Nana Flat is done, and the turf was laid, it was time to start thinking about the garden beds. I especially wanted to get things into the ground before October rolled around and the weather turned hot and horrible. We had heaps of plants that we had kept from our garden beds prior to the renovation, as well as two of the four trees that we had saved. 

Excitedly, we ordered some soil and mulch and got going. The garden bed that had been created by the retaining wall that ran around the right side of our property (near the Nana Flat), we filled up and planted small things in. Maria has put lots of ground cover type stuff in the part that runs near the Nana Flat, while out the front where it comes down closer to ground level, I took advantage of the sun profile and planted lots of herbs. 

I wasn't going to plant anything in this garden bed, but this little section at the front actually has the most sun out of all of our garden beds now, and I didn't want to waste it. I also planted a jasmine vine to climb up over the fence. We had a jasmine vine given to us as a house warming present when we bought in 2010, and it had been thriving in that front corner of the yard before we had to dig it out for the renovations. 

In the ground in both corners of the front yard we planted the two trees that had managed to survive (RIP Blueberry Ash and Luscious Number One), the Australian Frangipani and the Luscious. These trees are so happy to be back in the ground and I'm just delighted they made it after nearly eight months of living in the confines of a big black rubbish bin. 

The day we planted, we emptied one and a half of our compost bins and I was practically swooning over the rich black soil. Most of the ground at the front we discovered was all clay, which isn't great for growing things. We had asked our builders to mix in some gypsum to help break it up when they levelled it off, which they did, so that's there, but it's not the kind of stuff that works overnight. As Steve dug each hole for the trees, I worked the gloriously alive, black compost into the clay before the trees went in. 

The small garden bed at the top of the driveway also has the clay problem, but the additional difficulty of only getting about three hours of sunlight a day. In the morning, this garden bed is shaded by the house, and in the afternoon, it's shaded by the fence. We were really not sure anything was going to grow there at all, especially with the damp clay/ground situation. 

But, it was worth a try. Eventually I'd like to plant a tree there (or at the top of the retaining wall) that will grow up and shade the house, but baby steps to start with. Let's see if we can get something small growing first. So I planted some little flowers, chives and a plant that Bunnings assured me was indoors-y and would do well with limited sun. 

Everything loves it's life there, which again, probably has a lot to do with the compost factor. Let me gush some more over the gloriousness of the compost! I feel I could write love poems to that compost. 

Anyway, thus far, the things planted in the front are thriving and it's really feeling like the renovations are over and we are settled in. We've also upgraded some of things that were living in the pots at the back of the house to larger pots, but most of them are still in limbo land as far as were we will eventually plant them.

I've got one native guava, which I'm guessing will do well in the sun, and a native something else I got at the school fete in 2021 which had Love in the name. I can't read the tag any more, and when I bought it, the guy at the plant stall told me it was a ground cover, but the way it's growing doesn't look very ground cover-y to me. Anyway, that's a problem for future Paula. Current Paula is happy keeping things alive and growing where they are. 

Making a Wreath

Don't die, but here is something that I got creative with that does not involve a sewing machine. Making a wreath. 

A friend of mine who lives on the street recently had a go at making one of these and offered to show the rest of us how to do it. We started the morning off by going to the local creek and pulling invasive weed vines off the trees to harvest for our wreaths. So environmentally friendly! I did pull vines too, though not as successfully as Darryl, pictured below.

After we had an enormous amount, we went back home to strip the leaves and start winding the vines into a wreath. We tied them off and added the dream catcher bit in the middle. I had enough vines to make two wreaths, and I decided to leave the dream catcher bit off one of them. I think in hindsight it helps keep the shape of the wreath, but it's not essential. 

After that you add moss and stuff in your succulents. What I loved most about this, was sitting around chatting with my street family while we did it. Our kids would come in and out, there were snack breaks and sharing. I'm so thankful for this place I live, and the people I get to spend time with who give me another perspective and enrich my life. 

Now to keep them alive....

Save the Trees

One part of owning a house that I have loved, is how many things we can grow in the garden. Gardening has been documented on the blog here before, though I feel somewhat erratically compared with sewing. As I began to get everything I needed together for this post, I noticed a significant lack of photos and records of gardens to be found. Time to try and rectify that I suppose!

As I mentioned in my post about building a shed, we were about to embark on another round of renovations for our house. (See and read about renovations here.) This time, to build a granny flat (or nana flat), under our house for Steve's mum. While we were at it, we figured we'd also relocate the drive way and get a covered carport, build a small veranda on the front of the house with a roof, relocate the stairs and landscape the entire front yard. Why not right? In for a penny, in for a pound. 

Since we were doing a whole lot of stuff to the front, it also included the relocation of most of our front yard gardens. Some of this was pretty straight forward (like the jasmine vine I had growing over the fence at the front corner), while others were tears and heart break. Not sure this will be the most interesting post for many people, but given that I want to remember these things for the future, and this blog is the means by which I do that, so tough luck. 

The first heart break was when we realised the entire water tank side of the house was about to change, and all the hard work we had put in only just over 12 months ago was about to be ripped out. The plants in the garden were fairly easily taken out and put into pots, but the glorious passion fruit vine was too tricky to save. 

I took photos and labelled things for Steve to dig out for me, but I also did some of the work too. Some plants (mostly succulents) were donated to the school gardens, most of the others were saved. 

This was the sight after we were done. Pretty sad compared to what it was, but I'm hopeful that what we transplanted will survive. And, we dug up the timber that was the garden bed edging there and used it in the back yard to re-edge the entire back garden bed. We also dug up the soil and used it to top up the back garden beds too. Anything we could salvage we did. Our neighbours even took a few wheelbarrow loads of the river stones from the pathway for their garden. 

The three camellia trees at the front of our house, which had probably been there for 60 years, were unable to be saved, like the jasmine vine by the front fence. I'll get another jasmine when we are all done, because that one was given to us as a house warming present by a good friend of mine, and I'd like to replace it. 

When we bought our house, there were two palm trees in the front yard. One of which, was growing right under the powerlines, so we cut it down, I think just last year. The other one we left, but needed to go for the renovation, so that one went too. Bit of a shame, since it shaded the front bedrooms now that it was so tall, but there was nothing for it. 

The last thing in the front garden was the four trees we had planted in the last three years. These were over by the fence on the left as you look at the house from the street. 

I love these trees. We actually bought two of them (a Blueberry Ash and a Luscious) in 2017 before we renovated. Since we started renovating though, we left them in pots and forgot to water them. When our renovation was nearly over, I took what looked like to be dead trees and planted them by the fence. Our builders then though I was crazy, but I was confident that I could bring the trees back. 

They did come back, and went from being about a metre tall, to four meters tall. We added the Australian Frangipani (third tree from the left), and a second Luscious just last year. All four trees were happy with their lives and grew tall and strong, aided by all the beautiful compost that Steve gave them too. The plan was that they would grow up and shade the front rooms of the house from the western sun. 

The second Luscious nearly didn't make it, but Steve and I worked to bring it back from the edge and it was doing fine when we realised that the new carport and landscaping of the front yard would mean the removal of all four trees. Devastating to say the least. 

In what may be a vain effort, Steve put in a number of hours digging up our beloved trees and replanting them. Three of the four when into our temporary pots made of garbage bins with drainage holes. We just aren't sure where they might go after the reno is done, and didn't want to have to move them twice since we weren't sure they would even survive the first round. 

The Blueberry Ash we planted out on the nature strip, and we hoped it would grow where other trees had failed. Even though I want to remain hopeful, I have to be honest and say it does not look good for the poor Blueberry Ash. The nature strip has about twenty centimetres of good soil and is then clay all the way down. Research has told me to work gypsum into the soil, which we will absoloutly do before we plant anything else there. I'm still hopeful though - I bought the Blueberry Ash back from the edge once before, maybe we can do it again! 

The three remaining trees in their temporary pots are living in the back yard supported by the tree house, and getting regular water to stay alive. 

The back garden is looking better than ever, with new edging, filled with good soil and mulch. And my saved collection of plants are doing well in their little corner behind the lime tree near the compost bins. Hopefully I'll get to plant them in a front garden bed again, when we find out what it all looks like after the mud is gone. 

The other thing I've done recently with plants is move my bonsai to a real pot! 

I've had a lesson in how to cut and style a bonsai, and I'm looking forward to this little guy growing into his new shape. 

It's Never Finished: Building a Shed

Buying a home might seem like a great idea, and don't get me wrong, I do love owning our own little bit of paradise, but the confronting reality is that house stuff is never finished. Sure there are breaks where things appear to be complete and you relax for a bit. Sometimes even you start to get proud of how things are going along, and the improvements you've made. Just as you are feeling good about that though, something new comes along to tell you there is more work to do. 

So the back story this little grumble begins with a granny flat. Steve's mum was alone in Bundy and we were concerned for her, and on and off for the last few years, we've talked about building in under our house to make a place for her to live that's just a bit closer to us all. Turns out this year was the year that Steve's mum decided this was the right idea for her, and we found ourselves talking to architects and having plans made. 

All well and good, except now that we were planning for under our house to become another house, all the stuff that we had stored under the house needed a new place to live. So time to cull, and get people who were storing their stuff under our house to take their stuff back, and also to build a shed to put what we were actually keeping in. 

Build a shed. Sounds easy right? Except that where we want to put it, in the back corner of the yard, is currently a garden bed, and the swing set would block the door. So we are not just building a shed, but also relocating a swing set, a garden bed, digging everything level, putting up a retaining wall, laying a slab and then building the shed. 

I went to bed a few  nights thinking the whole task was insurmountable, not to mention that we hadn't even started on the granny flat yet. Sigh. To be perfectly honest, moving the swing set, which was the first on the long list of things to do, seemed to be the hardest bit. It's laughable now, because Steve got into his head to do it one afternoon and that's all it took. He dug new holes, he dug the old ones up, we walked it forward and into the new spot it went. 

I relocated all the plants we wanted to save from the garden bed and then Steve and some street friends went to town digging out the area where the slab was going to go. We took that dirt out, put it back in, took it out and put it back in again. I can't even remember half the reasons we had to do so much repeat business with that dirt, but it took ages to get that ground where it needed to be for a slab. 

At last, we put the footing in for the retaining wall around two sides of the shed (including re-mounting one of the fence posts into a stirrup), and were ready to cement a slab. 

Again, with the assistance of some work friends, Steve did some solid work with this cement slab. Double, triple and quadruple checked for the correct size and after it dried, we were good to go. Steve did so much research and work on this whole project. Every now and then I got to clip something in, or hold the screws, but it was really Steve. 

We cleared nearly a whole weekend to do this shed, and it's pretty lucky we did. For the most part, everything went together ok. Walls lined up and things snapped in. Thanks to Sarah's Steve who came round to lend a hand with that first bit of the day. 

Just when you think it's all smooth sailing though, you put the roof on and notice that things are not lining up. And it seems that the walls of the shed are in fact, too big for the slab, and too big for the roof. 

Which presents a few problems to say the least. So after 12 hours of working on this shed (not to mention all the prep time on the swing set, garden bed, retaining wall and slab!), we had more work to do. When does it ever end!?!

Here we are, a few weeks later, trying our best to make the most of what we have, and not spending a moment more than we need to on this shed. Tonight, at about 5:30 while I was making dinner, Steve happened to look at the weather for the weekend and realised a storm was on it's way, so he did a quick last minute fix of adding a final bit of roofing to the end gap. So thankful my Dad had a bit lying around that we could use rather than having to buy a new one.

I've been filling the shed over the last couple of days. All the shelving units that we had previously stored stuff on under the house have been moved up and fit. The things we want to keep are also fitting, though I've come to the end of stuff I can move on my own and I'm waiting for Steve to give me a hand with the rest. 

Better get cracking though, because we met with our builder this afternoon too and the ball is rolling for a granny flat to be built pretty soon. I'm trying not to think about the more work that entails, or that it includes the relocation of yet another garden bed, some well established trees and a recently installed water tank. 

A Year Later

A photo memory came up a few weeks ago, of what the garden around the water tank looked like when we put it in a year ago. It has changed so much since we finished it! Even though I've seen it grow, I'm still in shock about how much life it has there. 

The biggest thing to grow was the passion fruit vine, which now covers the entire water tank, as well as all the balustrade down the length of the deck. It just grew and grew and grew! The flowers we originally planted took off, and in that garden bed I've also had spinach, lettuce and bok choy growing through out the year. 

One end of that long garden bed is still tricky to grown things in, so I might experiment with more shade option plants coming into autumn. We will see. Down the front garden bed, things are happy and healthy too. I bought a set of capsicum seedlings from Bunnings, three out of the four of them turned out to be banana chillies, which are not hot, but pretty disappointing when you were expecting capsicums. 

That said, they love their life in the garden bed and we have had so much fruit off them. Sometimes they grow so quickly I can't pick them in time. They aren't hot, but they are also kind of boring on their own, so mostly I feed them straight to our guinea pigs, who love them. 

Last time I went to Bunnings, Rachel was with me and asked if we could grow some eggplant. I wasn't sure but she's really into trying new stuff, so I figured, why not. I could always feed them to the guinea pigs if we had too many. The eggplants also like their life in the garden bed, and we've had some pretty nice fruit. I'm the only one eating them, but at least they are not growing as prolifically as the banana chillies are, so I can keep up. 

How pretty are snapdragon flowers? 

In our other spontaneous garden bed, things had gotten quite out of hand with regards to tomatoes and pumpkins that popped up out of the compost. We had tomatoes galore last year. I couldn't give them away fast enough. One week I gave away 7kgs of tomatoes, only to pick another 7kgs the next. There were truss tomatoes, grape, perrino and cherry tomatoes. So many tomatoes. 

The pumpkin vine grew around it all, but no fruit was forthcoming until we got back from our Christmas in Bundaberg and I wad delighted to see success! 

I left it to grow until last week when I got sick of all the weeds, and ripped out heaps of the old pumpkin vine along with them. There are still some vines there at the other end of the garden bed, so I'm hopeful for a few more fruits, but we will see. 

Got to be happy with that effort right? I'll have to take a video of the passion fruit vine because it's too stellar to capture in photos. Gardening is the best.