What's up Doc?

In November we picked our first crop - carrots. Unfortunately we didn't realise that we shouldn't fertilise carrots, so we did one or two times and the result was very curly carrots.
An impressive sort of number 5 shape.
They still tasted very yummy.
Georgie was very pleased with herself for growing them.
Carrots, cucumber and our silverbeet, all in baby stage.
The big tomato plant in baby state - we grow Tiny Tim tomatoes all over our place, where ever you look they are poking their heads up. They grow often in complete shade and normally with little or no extra water. Still they taste very delicious and don't stop growing. We don't seem to have luck with the big tomatoes though, they always seem to get eaten or black spots or wormy creatures or something!
The nice green lawn and my other little garden waiting to be filled up.
Once the lawn was established the trampoline was moved back out onto the grass.
The swings will go back up, eventually.

This is our nice long veggie bed, looking down at the water tank.
Dan put in an automatic watering system so that the vegies would get water while we were away. When we arrived home in January they were GInormous.

November Jacaranda

I love jacaranda time of the year, but it always seems to be gone so quickly.
This year the jacaranda were plentiful and such a beautiful colour.


The Christmas Bush wasn't bad either!

Possums are at that tree again...

Well I have been complaining a lot about the tree that is blocking the wintery sun to my washing line.
Finally he stood at the clothes line hanging out the washing and said 'hmmm it would be better with out those branches'.

Out came the chainsaw..
Goodbye high branches! Hello sunshine on my washing.
Ahh those possums... here are those sun blocking branches.

Don't worry, there's still plenty of tree left, just a lot lower.

Fleurs

Couldn't resist the opportunity to take some pictures of Mum's hydrangeas.
(No silly they're feverfew, they were next to the hydrangeas and quite cute.)
They're Mum's hydrangeas.
Nice colour.
And that is the funky little plant Georgie got for Christmas.

ok last lot, I promise

they're just so nice.

I promise no more hydrangea pictures

(unless their flowers suddenly turn solid gold)

Enough already

What do you mean enough of the hydrangeas already?

The Endless Summer, which actually has everything from lilac flowers to these beautiful blue ones.

Fleurs

My love hate relationship with hydrangeas has come to an end, I think.

My Endless Summer is blooming away on the back verandah and it's a very pretty pinky lilac.

Then I bought some "red" hydrangeas.

I wondered if they'd really be red or whether I'd have to treat the ground to get them to stay a pink colour.

But here they are... starting their journey towards red.

Loving it.

ahhh Spring

[Do you like the new header? Aren't they just the cutest Santas? Georgie checks at every shopping centre now to see if the "pretend Santas" have arrived yet.]

With Spring well and truly under way, I, like it seems, the rest of Sydney, was busy last weekend out in the garden.

I managed to clear one corner, move a plant, put in some seedlings and find a home for a blueberry bush. (Riveting stuff I know, but hopefully one day it will all come together and look spectacular.)

Anyway... some photos.

These flowers are interesting. No idea what they are but I am guessing they are some of the seeds G and I planted in winter. Their stems are quite furry so I thought they were weeds and have pulled the odd one out.

I just noticed their flowers on the weekend. They're quite pretty. We might have had a garden full of them but they keep getting identified as weeds poor things.

I managed to get my "Endless Summer" into a pot. It's living on my back veranda until I clear the front bed for it and it's comrades (who are red/pink hydrangeas and not Endless Summers at all).
Ah and a rose.
This is the last of these roses.
The bush grows thorns almost bigger than these roses and I finally decided it had to go.
It's almost a rogue rose. You chop it off and before you've walked out of the garden it's about six foot tall again waving lovely smelling beautiful coloured flowers at you to come pick, if you're brave enough to tackle the thorns.


It's a shame because it's lovely, still, there will be others.

if you're going to San Francisco

My rose bushes are absolutely bursting with beautiful flowers.

Interestingly they are mostly flowering towards the house, which gives me a beautiful view as I walk out into the garden, but from the road they don't look quite so stunning.

I love Spring.

I tell you something that I've found, that the world's a better place when it's upside down

We've been watching a very large strawberry on this little plant for a while.

It just grew and grew and never seemed like it was going to turn red.

Well, of course, in the last couple of days, while we haven't been watching it, it has ripened.

And here it is... well 3/4 of it anyway.

G couldn't wait for me to get the camera before she tasted it.

And despite her face (her dramatic staging for the camera) she enjoyed it.

She enjoyed it so much no one else got to try it (in fairness she did offer it to Jamie, who doesn't like strawberries, and I can't eat them right now and Dan was in the shower, but it really did seem like in the blink of an eyelid she went through this process and devoured her first grown-by-her-very-little-self strawberry.)

There are at least 6 - 1o more growing in that little pot - which is proving to be a great way to grow them at the moment.

So we'll water, feed and wait for those ones too.

I have some hanging "edible" gardens growing too. (Georgie likes very happy flowers or things you can eat to be growing in the garden.)

We've got a tomato that is supposed to be growing upside down, but is heading up towards the sun, an upside down cucumber and 2 strawberry plants in the big basket. (I can't see how the strawberries are growing from my vantage point but the other day when I was feeding the basket I think I noticed quite a big crop up there too.)

And in the small basket 2 cucumber plants growing up top. (The kids love cucumber, I could fill the whole back yard with cucumber plants and I'm sure they'd eat the whole crop. There's a whole story about Georgie and cucumber on cruskits, suffice to say, if you have a packet of "original Cruskits" she likes her lunch to look exactly like the picture with the cucumber on it.)