Over-ruled

After the heartbreak of the last lot of chicks, the practical reinventor swore the next time a hen went broody she'd be unceremoniously dunked in cold water and frog-marched into the sun.

And then our remaining chick, Shirley, who had only just started laying, went broody.  There was frog-marching, but before a regime of cold baths and firm talking-tos could happen, the creative reinventor prevailed and we got her some fertile eggs.

And so she sat on her nesting box, with feathers fluffed and looking self-important.

And three weeks later the Marmalade Cottage CWA boasted five new members: Violet, Enid, Marjorie, Gordon and Barry.

Of course, neither of us has a clue how to sex chickens so the names are pure whimsy.

Then there was the first casualty.  We're saying it was Barry, because young boys are generally self-destructive.  One chick got out of the re-re-re-reinforced chook pen - goodness knows how - and we found it eviscerated up the other end of the garden.  Poor, pathetic little thing.

At least this time, we're confident it wasn't kelpie Jodie or tabby Lola.

Anticipation

Our first planting of tomatoes were mostly sick plants rescued from the trolley in the corner of the garden section of the Green and Orange Temple to Lost Weekends.

They seem to be doing all right.  The next lot has been grown from seed (Rouge de Marmande), and will be ready in six or so weeks.

The third lot is just emerging (Granny's Throwing Tomato - a Diggers Club variety, good apparently for salads and throwing at one's nemesis)

Here we go again

Neither of reinventors likes painting.  We've put off and put off doing up the guest bedroom, but with very important guests imminent, it can't be put off any longer.

There's a fair bit of filling to be done, then the inevitable sanding.

But once that horrible cream and green 1950s colour scheme has been replaced by lovely fresh white and blue, the room will look beautiful.  

We might even polish the ornate doorknobs.  They seem to be brass.

Up the garden path

When we moved in, the front garden wasn't so much garden as wasteland.  And now we can't find a photo of it, but imagine one dead and one dying hibiscus, a couple of neglected hydrangeas and a few straggling weeds.
Now it looks like this

Much nicer, yes?

The practical reinventor had her heart set on an all white garden, in contrast with the red brick and dark green of the ivy.  The hydrangeas, being blue, were doomed.  There was outrage among all our friends.  Even with a dose of glyphosate, they survived, so they're staying.

Passionfruit update

We have three passionfruit vines, two are your basic grafted Nellie Kelly ones, the other a cutting of a local breed.

This one is doing the best, due in no small part, to its proximity to the chooks.

If the bees are to be relied upon for pollination, we should have a bumper crop of passionfruit in six weeks or so.

Gardening as a radical act

The organised, western world is run on the principle of specialisation.  People are expected to do one thing - hopefully well - and rely on others to take care of other needs.  Some people grow food, other people buy it from them.

When you grow your own food, you're bucking the system. You're taking back control of a vital aspect of your own survival - and sur-thrive-al.

If you plant heirloom varieties and collect your own seeds, you fly in the face of efforts of mega-corporations like Monsanto that is trying to wrest complete control of global food production into its own profit-driven hands.

If you garden according to historic (now called organic) principles, you defy the pesticide and herbicide companies that simultaneously poison the planet and our minds with the fear of naturally occurring pests and diseases, most of which are less harmful than the chemicals used to kill them.  Note that most advertising and information about herbicides and pesticides doesn't use the word kill, rather it's all about control: pest control and weed control.

If you eat food that you can see growing, you take away the power of the storage, transport and retail companies, all of which spew enormous amounts of carbon and other pollution into our atmosphere, while allowing the nutrients in the food to degrade.

If you share what you produce, you're spreading the word that ordinary people do not need to be controlled and dictated to by faceless corporations.

If you can't grow your own, but choose to buy directly from a farmer, you are still taking away the power of the corporations, and  helping a local, small business to remain viable.

Gardening is a very powerful statement. 

The force is strong with this one

Avid readers might remember waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the beginning of Marmalade Cottage, there was some discussion about whether the dessicated stick of grapevine in the back garden was still alive.

Here's your proof.  Not quite 18 months on and it's not only alive, but producing.  And producing a lot. 

The creative reinventor took a picture of our juvenile grapes to a viticulturist of his acquaintance who tells us they're table grapes.  Which is a little surprising since the former owner was Italian and grew a huge amount of veg.  We'd expected them to be wine grapes.  But, well, there you go.

Unexpected sweetness

This came to the reinventors as a dried out stick.  The practical reinventor (ever the optimist) stuck it it a jam jar of water on the kitchen window sill.

Sure enough, it sprouted roots, so she planted it.

And look!  It does seem to like life in the corner next to chooks and behind the plum tree.  There are three offshoots.

We wonder whether we could extract our own golden syrup or whatever from it?

Thoughts on the nature of waste

The Marmalade Cottage CWA (that's Alice, Marion, Nancy, Joan, Joyce and Shirley, all of whom have feathers and lay eggs) are getting a little particular in what they eat.

Not for them ordinary white bread!

They love green feed - cabbage, lettuce, juicy weeds, kale, broad bean pods and so on, and they're fond of the crusts and stale leftovers of our home-baked bread.  Several times a week, a reinventor detours by the crate at the back of our local greengrocer, where the scraps are left.

Usually there's a bag's worth of cabbage or celery or lettuce for the taking.  There are a number of chook owners who take advantage of this.

Next to the chook scrap crate, there's a skip.  Depending on the day, there are all sorts of extras in reach.  And this bothers the reinventors greatly.  This skip (dumpster to the Americans) contains an enormous amount of perfectly edible food.

Last night, it yielded a cob of corn, two zucchini, two parsnips and some carrots.  There are often half melons (the chooks adore those), and bread, sometimes potatoes and sweet potatoes, very often bananas.

There are two points here: this food might look slightly soiled, perhaps with a brown spot or two, but it's by no means unsafe; and putting this kind of organic matter into landfill results in emissions of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.

So, by taking this food out of the skip and giving it to the chooks or eating it ourselves, we save the planet a bit more destruction, we respect the grower and we save a little money.  Sadly, stupid things like health regulations are against us here.

The practical reinventor has lost count of the number of banana cakes she's baked with bananas from the bin.

(if you're interested: cream 4 oz butter with 4 oz sugar, then stir in two eggs.  In another bowl, dissolve half a teaspoon of bicarb soda in a tablespoon of milk, then mash in two to three bananas and a dribble of vanilla extract.  Add banana mixture to sugar and butter, then sift in 8 oz self-raising flour.  Bake 45 minutes in a 180 deg C oven.  Apologies for the mix of imperial and metric measurements, it's my great-nana's recipe, and the metric conversion is messy)

If you caught the English series The People's Supermarket by chef Arthur Potts Dawson, you'd understand about the staggering amount of food that is simply thrown away.  It needn't be.  Home growers don't do this because we understand the effort and resources that go into producing food.  But if you don't produce your own food, if you've only ever bought it, it's hard to see what goes on behind the scenes and make the connection between production and consumption.

So here's a thought: have a look in the bin behind a supermarket or greengrocer and consider what you see in there in the context of world inequality.

Our sweeties

While vegetables are relatively quick, harvesting your own fruit takes patience.

Last year we got a handful of mulberries from our tree and were very pleased.

This year, the tree is more than twice its original size and covered in berries.

We're also pretty excited to see tiny flowers on the passionfruit vine that will offer the chooks shade this year.

We love plants that are dual purpose.

Not this year, but maybe next

The practical reinventor absolutely adores fresh asparagus.  It's a long term crop.  If you plant crowns, it'll take about two years before they're established enough to cope with being harvested.

If you plant seedlings, you can add an extra three years or so to that wait.

Having only ever had rented gardens, the reinventors never planted asparagus before.  Last year they put in five crowns, of which three survive. 

There are five more seedlings in the bed now along with generous shovellings of chook pen muckings-out (asparagus are heavy feeders) and a thick layer of pea straw.

Next year, we should be able to eat a spear or two.

Vinous

This is the grapevine we thought was dead.  It's looking so happy and reinvigorated, we decided to give it a challenge.  The creative reinventor has strung up wires and gently suggested the vine follow them. 

The real test with be whether we get some grapes.

Busy time in the back garden

As we've been harvesting potatoes, broadbeans, garlic, silverbeet and onions, we've been dreaming of summer veg.

That's cinnamon basil (we cheated and bought seedlings, then carefully separated them and crossed our fingers they'd survive outside of their nice, cosy greenhouse) and there are tiny tomato plants in the other pots.

At the back are some divided oregano for friends, and the other pots are seeded with cavalo nero, corn, beetroot, rosella, zucchini and pumpkins.

They're planted in a mix of our clay and the muckings-out from the chook pen.  No seed with any skerrick of life could resist bursting into green!

Digging up our dinner

Sort of experimentally, the practical reinventor had a look at the spring garden this morning.

Here's three plants' worth of potatoes - sapphire and kipfler.  The sapphire ones are purple on the inside too.

Despite the destructive efforts of the chooks and the canine apathy around gardens, this is the first of the garlic harvest.  While we know it should be plaited attractively, with the creative reinventor having broken his thumb in a motorcycle accident and the practical reinventor having done chronic nerve damage to her arms from too many years and kilometres on a motorcycle, neither of us is able. 

And we don't care that much either. 

The garlic is very heavily, erm, scented.  It's hanging up in our outside laundry, which is also pretty fragrant.  We're not sure we'll be patient enough to leave it there to dry out for long term storage.

Eating our greens

Here is proof it's spring:  the first broadbeans of the season.

 

In a salad with broccoli and fetta from the local farmers market, lemon from our neighbour's tree and parsley and dill also from our garden.

That's an Alfred Meakin salad bowl c1930s and a silver plate serving spoon we found in an op shop.

It went very well with steak and an earthy shiraz.