My Frost Protectors

Can you see my frost protection?

How about now?

Poppies!

That's right, these over-run perennial borders of poppies are one of the ways I protect tender plants from late frosts. Growing in the midlands is a challenge and last week's low temperatures showed us we are still not safe from frosts.

We are tentatively planting out tomatoes and zucchinis but we're ready with the covers just in case. Unfortunately the poppies weren't tall enough six weeks ago and all but a couple of my iris buds were destroyed but I can't cover everything. Actually in those frosts we even lost things in the poly-tunnel.

Long time readers will remember that when we moved here a few years ago we had our hands full with the house and the garden (paddock!) just had to wait, so I sprinkled some poppy seed hoping to have some spring beauty and a way of keeping some weeds down and mulch at the end.

Besides being cheap, easy, showy and then providing mulch and seed ....

It helped to cut some of the winds and I found it was wonderful protection for emerging dahlias and salvias etc. They are so expendable and if they get broken or blown it really doesn't matter. At the very least they put on a colourful show after the bulbs and blossom have finished and the bees adore them. 

And next year they come again....

An Artist In The Garden

A few weeks ago

Luke from Gallery 81 

visited our garden a couple of times to paint en plein air.

Interestingly, he chose to set up for this cross view which fascinated me and gave me a whole new take on the garden.

When we view the garden ourselves, we tend to always take a linear view running north south which is how over the last three years I have been setting the structure and lines.

This is the central axis of the yard and typically our most common view but having Luke come into the garden taught me something very important.

And that was to stand at the corners and look back across the layers those design lines create. Enjoy the depth that each section makes as the sight looks obliquely across the garden.

THIS is how I should be looking for seating placement in the garden; providing back, middle and foreground into the view.

Luke's View has taught me to pull my focus from the straight lines of axis and also plan how the beds and paths layer across each other.

Three years ago it was a paddock. Now we are happily producing and raising lots of livestock (hard to see in the photo but the painting does have chickens and sheep in the outer paddock) and the garden has had some major structural work put in place with the crazy paving sandstone path.

Over the next 12 months we hope to have a shed built which will allow us to finally work on the side  entrance to the garden and provide us a designated BBQ and entertaining area.

Thanks to Luke for our painting but thank you also 

for helping me to see

XXX

Spring At Garfield House

October has had a special springtime feel this year with the addition of more tulips planted last autumn. This is the yellow and pink bed and while perennials are still abed, I have coloured chard and strappy iris leaves filling in.

Spring is just not spring without the lambs! We are bottle feeding seven little maids much to the delight of little boys on holidays. Add to that the 50 chicks in the brooding pens and we are full to the brim with babies!

The boys always enjoy pasta making

and lots of crafts too....

Collages with a definite springtime theme...

Colour and science play with bi-carb and coloured vinegar from pipettes.

(Instructions Here)

More colour play with food dye in milk and watching the reaction to soap.

(Instructions Here)

Check out the video to see how the colours swirl like magic....

Some lovely, squishy, swirly sensory play in coloured water beads.

Lots of games, cards, "jobs", a water fights and good appetites.

And when the sun went down....

The fairy garden under the white peach tree lit up with little lights as the fairies played and magic misted among the sleepy calendula buds.

Then off to bed for sleepy heads and goodnight fairy stories to send them off to lands far away in dreams.

White Primula

This is a bit of a "note to self" and blogs are good for that. I create myself a visual diary for the years to come and the failing memory, so I'll understand if you look away now in boredom...

OK, Self...

plant white primula again in the autumn because they were great this spring!

Soft lacy caps of white filling the gaps nicely between the beautiful fleshy tulip leaves.

Cheap as chips and brilliant as a cut flower for posies, outlasting any other bloom currently in the vases.

Brilliant by day and glowing in the night, such a boon before the days lengthen.

Primula malacoides

Up The Garden Path

I've got another before and after story for you.

It's the story of some random stone and a path.

We bought some crazy sandstone paving and it's been accumulating beneath the peach tree.

This photo was taken back in September 2015 when the yard was just a paddock and we were marking out the first beds.

By the end of that summer it was thriving and productive and we had a rough path mapped out.

The following spring of 2016 it flooded....

TWICE!!!

This winter we finally made a start on formalising the main path.

The two large sandstone pieces were a happy find amongst our stone we had delivered for the dry stone wall. The shearer did an amazing job. I was just the TA on this one.

And voila!

From this to ....

This!

And THIS!

I am enchanted with it.

Besotted I tell you!

It might even be better than diamonds and pearls.

In The Zone

I used to feel so comfortable and at home in this world, now everything looks exotic and strange. I used to know so many of the plants but that was more than 30 years ago. Now the scenery for the most part jars my senses and jangles my nerves.

We recently went back to Queensland to see a new grandson and family.

I used to embrace the heat and humidity but now I find like a plant out of climate, I don't fare well; my skin doesn't feel comfortable and my hair becomes listless.

This is more the palette of my spring world now and the climate I feel comfortable in. It takes a long time to acclimatise and I am sure I've arrived.

It has made me think about the plants and gardening. We can and often do, blur the climate zones within which we grow things, some survive and a rare few fully acclimatise but for the most part I sympathise with those plants out of zone that fail to thrive but we persevere anyway.

My folly of a Tahitian Lime in Campbell Town is very much on my mind. It's definitely not thriving but....it just might be acclimatising.....?

Are you like an exotic flower and struggle outside of your climate zone now?

Garden Construct and Structure

This has to be the hardest we have worked in the garden! 

Spring and summer are pretty full on with the growing but in this pre-winter period we have been attending to the structural parts of the garden - Remember...this garden just two years ago was a paddock. We have put in some vertical structures like the arches and old gates (like sbove). These give the landscape some substance in winter when most of the garden is dormant.

Over the summer we have been getting ute loads of sandstone "crazy" pavers. These are a random mix of shapes and sizes that we have loosely sorted ready for laying down the central path of the garden.

Some painting jobs are prepped; like the folding seats and a couple of arches but there is lots of linseed oil maintenance waiting to be done too on timber fences and the fowl yard.

Lots of trimming back, dahlia shifting, seed saving, seedling exchanges and vine tying. 

The bulbs!

I've planted about 100 bulbs this autumn, mostly white tulips and white daffodils. I've mixed the varieties in the same colour so that I get a lasting display over the spring between the early and late bloomers.

I've planted out violas and pansies for winter colour into spring and we have our cold crops under way and battling the rabbits. Our pasture has been improved and Neil-Not-Veal (calf) is also thriving on cut lucerne and an oat, corn, barley mix. He has grown his winter coat and is getting jolly boisterous.

Our major project over the coming months though will be a dry stone wall down one boundary side. We will be hosting classes taught by a master Stonemason/Waller from Derbyshire UK. We have sourced some lovely sandstone that splits safely like butter and should produce a beautiful traditional boundary to last centuries to come.

(photo by Valerie Carline)

This is similar to what we are working towards and daily we indulge in gate fantasies....

like this beautiful one in Ross.

Timber or metal???

To tie it in with the shed....but that's a yonder still project again!

We Grew Chickpeas

It was our first time growing chickpeas so the Shearer put in a modest little patch, maybe .75m x 1.5m. He had acquired a packet of seed from a cool climate seed stockist. At worst we thought it would be a green manure crop.

From memory we sowed them in summer, just as we would the beans and they were quite fast growing, becoming little bushes with soft ferny leaves and developing masses of small white flowers. I thought I had taken a photo of the flower stage but couldn't find it. From the small flowers developed soft velvety pods, each containing one or two peas.

We allowed them to ripen and towards the dying off stage we then pulled them and hung them upside down in a shed to dry further. The podding was a little laborious but....

our reward is 1.5kg of our very own dried chickpeas. We could store them like this but I'm a bit of a spontaneous cook so when the preserving season winds down a little I will soak, cook and process in the pressure canner so they are shelf stable and ready for use in a moments notice. We will of course keep some for seed for next years' crop.

We rate this experiment a success and a good yield for crop space and a pantry staple at that.