Chapter 10

Crop Circles  

If you took an aerial photograph of our house and land you might be mistaken for thinking the aliens have landed and left their mark.  There are six perfect circles about an metre and a half in diameter in a pattern somewhat resembling the Olympic Rings in our garden.  These Crop Circles are a combination of my idea of recycling rubbish left behind by the codger who owned the place before us and my desire to have some raised garden beds in the “no mans land” near the herb garden.

Recycling is a great concept and one that most of us don’t think about often enough.  I think that “reuse” is a long lost art.  Remember the days when pickles and chutneys were home made and stored in oven sterilized jam jars adorned with little dolly caps of pinked gingham.  Paper shopping bags made great masks for children or were reused to hold garbage and newspapers were cut and folded to house the peelings of the potatoes, bean ends and pea pods before they went into the bin.

Some recycling however costs more than it saves and here is one such story...

I wish I had a picture of it, the great grey cylinder of concrete (about 1.5m in diametre and three metres in length) that was once part of a water pipe and was just left, dumped, in our back yard (far enough away that we didnt have to look at it every day).  The artist in me had thoughts of a mosaic sculpture of a face with great orange aggie pipe hair coming out of the top.  So the first time our mate Ian came around to clear some land for us with his excavator and bob cat, we had him lift it onto one end.  It stayed that way for the best part of a year and a half.

Next I priced some of the terrific raised garden beds that were out there in Bunnings and on the net.  Way too expensive for the budget (or lack of one) that I had.  Treated sleepers were taboo because the copper oxide could leach into the soil and eventually be taken up into the vegetables (particularly root crops) and ingested.  Untreated sleepers would eventually succumb to white ants and help to bring them closer to the house which wasn’t a great idea.  Plastic sleepers were again too expensive.  No old water tanks lying around to be ground into several circular sections... but it did give me an idea about what to do with the water pipe.  

RAISED GARDEN BEDS - CURRENT TOTAL FREE!

So I called a couple of concrete cutters and got some prices.  To make five pieces was going to cost about $250 cash.  Five garden beds for $250, which wouldn't deteriorate or poison us, sounded like good value to me!  About a week later the guy came and cut them after I had marked them as best I could with a line for him to follow.

RAISED GARDEN BEDS - CURRENT TOTAL $250.

 We envisaged that once in sections and lying on the ground we could lift one edge and roll them onto the trailer and one by one bring them up to the herb garden and roll them into place.  We had NO IDEA how heavy reinforced concrete was, even in sections.  The smallest one Benny couldn't even budge, let alone get it onto its side, and he is very strong!  So we thought we would call up our mate Ian again and thankfully with our special “mates rate” it wouldn’t cost much more to get the crop circles put into place.  The problem with this thinking is Brent.  Once he has a bobcat and excavator on the property he never wants to let them go.  So $300 later... we have lots of lovely cleared and tidy space and the circles are in place.  

RAISED GARDEN BEDS - CURRENT TOTAL $550.

Weeks went by and I eventually had some time to start filling the beds.  I had decided I wanted to go the way of the “no dig” garden and had in the shed enough left over mulch and organic potting mix to give the first one a go.  I piled in the newspaper (not nearly enough to suppress the weeds) and the mulch and then thought about the water supply.  Talk about cart before the horse!.  Benny loves to put in sprinkler systems.  He has done this in various homes both ours and other peoples and will sit back and watch his handwork regularly spring to life.  So off to Bunnings we go hi ho hi ho.  Poly pipe, risers, sprinkler heads, filter, dual tap controller, timer etc. 

RAISED GARDEN BEDS - CURRENT TOTAL $670.

Anyhow you get the message.  Then with seedings and more organic potting mix and the next five circles worth of mulch our garden beds are coming along nicely.  Have we harvested enough produce to reclaim our $800?  Not yet, probably not ever, but I love looking out from my work space at all our vegies growing and most weekends there are sufficient variety to make an otherwise ordinary omelet quite special.  Benny turns the sprinklers on most mornings and marvels at the symmetry of the water spray. 

RAISED GARDEN BEDS - CURRENT TOTAL PRICELESS!

Chapter 9

The Pumpkin Patch

Gardening is all about experimentation to me.  Perhaps it is more about my lack of motivation to do any research before poking in a seed or planting a cutting, but I am enthralled by the results that very little prior preparation and planning can still produce.  

After a recent tour of a friend's wonderful acreage with organic vegie garden I learnt that one of the best things to control weeds is the planting of running vegetable plants such as pumpkins.  He had a wonderful crop of robust Blue and Kent pumpkins running mad around the bases of his stands of banana trees.  They seemed to be cohabiting quite well and there certainly didn’t seem to be a weed in sight.  

Taking this information on board I thought the perfect place to employ this technique was one of the car tyre retaining walls (oh so attractive!) which was both eroding and constantly overgrown with weeds.  

We have a number of vegetarian friends (as I may well have previously mentioned) and so I constantly make a big tray of feta, pumpkin and spinach quiche.  Every time I peel and deseed a store bought pumpkin I scoop the seeds into a container to allow them to dry out in the kitchen.  So I had plenty of seeds to propagate in some shallow trays, which soon produced about a dozen healthy butternut pumpkin plants.

I know well about caging my vegies when you have free ranging chooks, so after planting the seedlings at the bottom of the tyre wall (thinking they would climb UP it), I put a frame over the plants, covered it with chicken wire and the chookies were not impressed.  From then on the weather was bad and good and wet and bad and eventually with little help from me the plants took off.  And “took off” is exactly what they did... in the wrong direction.  As I watched the plants grow and send out tendrils strangling the “mother of millions” or “cobbler’s pegs” as I had instructed them to do, I also noticed that they were heading downwards towards Brent’s workshop and across the driveway leading to it.  So the tyre hill was still covered in weeds, eroding and UGLY!  The best part is that even though they didn’t GO where I wanted, they did DO what I wanted them to do and we were happy to receive about a dozen lovely little butternut pumpkins which were quickly turned into quiche and so on and so on.

Okay so we live an learn.  Back to the original premise.  The top of the tyre wall unfortunately was not retained in any way.  It is the top of the walkway and goes off on a steep slope towards the shed.  So the new idea was to retain a boxed plot at the top of the hill, plants some new seedlings and hope that they would have no choice but to cascade down and give the desired end result.

Projects like this really do excite me.  I am even more chuffed when I tell my husband and he asks “how can I help?” rather than telling me it is a ludicrous idea.  So we cut some boards from some rubbish timber lying around.  He helped me run some stakes into the bank to support their weight and we cut some triangle shapes to enclose the ends.  We ended up with a box about two metres long and half a metre wide.

I weeded the area as best I could with a little help from the curious chooks, and then it was my job to back fill it with soil.  So I hooked up the trailer to the mower and took it through the gate (closing it behind me) and down to the compost heap.  

Each shovel full was teaming with worms which was quite encouraging and I was secretly hoping the curious chooks wouldn’t come down and see what I was doing and get in the way.  I shoveled and shoveled until the trailer was full (no mean feat) and then drove it up to the yard and as close as I could to the walk path which was still a few metres away from the planter box.  Then shovel by shovel I walked all the soil to the box only to discover it was going to take at least another trailer full to come close to filling it!

Back again to the compost heap, more hard work, back up to the walk path, and guess who is in the planter box eating all the worms?  There is nothing like a fresh pile of dirt or a heap of garden mulch to get chooks excited!

After I finished shoveling in the dirt I shoed the chooks away to plant the seedlings and cover them with mulch.  In quite a hurry I caged the new plants behind a mesh fence and gave them a drink to help them settle in.

Weeks have passed.  Much rain has fallen.  The only problem with the location of the pumpkin patch is that at the top of the hill is it doesnt get as much sun as at the bottom of the hill.  The plants are growing and I havent lost one yet but they arent really growing very fast.  I should also mention that it is now winter so maybe that has something to do with it.  Experimentation. Live and learn.

Chapter 8

The things you pick up at a 

Garage Sale

We had owned the house just over a year at this point and ever since we moved in we have had a “boarder”.  Border Collie that is!  The first neighborhood greeting we received was a visit from two local pooches, the Collie and his little mate a very fat, old Jack Russell Terrier.  Our son Lawson was beside himself with joy at being able to come home every afternoon and play with two dogs.  They were our “Claytons” pets (the pets you have when you’re not having a pet), long before the chooks arrived.  We hadn’t met the neighbours yet and for weeks we were tempted to write a letter and put it in their mail box introducing ourselves and asking the names of their dogs (so that we could properly address them of course).  

As I work from home during the week the Collie had taken up residence at the front door whenever I had it open to let in the breeze.  Not inside the house but on the door mat, like he was keeping me safe, or keeping me company.  Lawson would come home every afternoon and throw the ball for him to chase, which gave an indoor child a well needed excuse to get outside and run around.  On the weekends Benny, not know for his love of dogs, would be caught sitting on the step patting and chatting with the Collie or rubbing the tummy of the little fat Terrier.  We were all very content with this arrangement and made a conscious decision that apart from playing with the dogs we wouldn’t feed them (but we did put out water) or do anything else to overtly encourage them to stay at our place and avoid their own owners.

The little dog was old and arthritic so only managed to go home down their massive driveway in the evening for meals and wander back up once in the morning.  So he stayed on the road or in the yard all of the day.  The Collie was more fit and adventurous and would chase the ride-on mower, birds, motorbikes etc and we often felt that he slept in our yard and didn’t go home at all.  We did start to get worried that he wasnt having any meals but he always looked healthy and cared for so we let it go.  

So our Claytons pets just hung around every day, Collie on the door mat and Terrier just always there keeping him company, sleeping on a mat, the outdoor couch cushions, the new pet bed we bought him (couldn’t help ourselves)...until we realised he was incontinent!   Argh!  Of course by this time he had grown accustomed to getting up on the outdoor furniture, even on the bare bases when we removed the cushions (after a number had to be discarded).  We were at our wits end having to pack everything up every time we left to go out anywhere and weren’t there to patrol the yard furniture.

As hard as it was, we had to discourage the little dog from coming over.  Lots of “shooing” and “go on off with ya” later and he got the message and stayed away.  The collie however recognised that he was still welcome so long as he didn’t get up on the furniture and so he continued to keep us company.

We eventually met our neighbours and told them what was going on and what we had done to dissuade the little dog (now known as Ben) from coming back over.  We also told them that Scruffy (the Collie) was welcome to come and hang out and play catch and sleep over etc if it was okay with them.  They “said” it was okay but secretly I think they were a little jealous of us getting all the attention when they did all the feeding and paid all the bills!

Well, as I mentioned we had owned the house for just over a year and we saw a sign up across at the neighbour’s place advertising a Garage Sale.  We were curious as we had heard whispers from other neighbours that maybe they would be selling up and touring Australia in their luxurious new caravan.  We were desperate to know what they were going to do about the dogs (one in particular) so we thought we would go down the driveway and check out the sale and have a chat.

We were greeted warmly and encouraged to have a look through the mounds of books, furniture and tools that they were hoping to off load.  A couple of hundred dollars later Brent was the proud owner of an air compressor and series of air tools and I bought nothing because frankly that was enough!  

We sat at the table and asked them about their plans and they told us that although they were hoping to sell up, as the market was slow they thought they would rent their place so that they could get on with their plans to travel straight away.  We took a deep breath and asked “What are you going to do with Scruffy?” 

“Well he’s your dog isn’t he?” replied our neighbour with a wry smile.  “We thought you might like to take him.”

Well, we couldn’t contain our relief and joy!  They mentioned how at first they were jealous and tried to keep the dogs at home so that they wouldn’t go over to our house.  They even locked them in the pool enclosure!  But they soon realised they were punishing the dogs for their own reasons and as they were away most of the time working they recognised that Scruffy was particularly in need of companions that would chase, run and play with him.  They said they would be taking Ben in the caravan as he was small and getting on in years and we were also very happy with that news!

They handed us the registration papers which had recently arrived for renewal (timely) and answered all our questions about feeding, worming, brushing, etc etc as this was our first dog and we knew basically nothing!  We were so excited to tell Lawson.  He was beside himself and ran to call his school friends about what had happened.  

Soon after we went for our first of many trips to the Pet Store as new dog owners and stocked up on all sorts of gizmos, gadgets and thingamybobs to claim Scruffy as our own.

Unashamedly an ad for Decor Pet Beds
www.houseandhound.com.au

Again an ad for Decor Pet Beds
www.houseandhound.com.au

I know I know but they are lovely aren't they!
www.houseandhound.com.au

Chapter 7

Recycling at its Finest

One of the features of our new home that we were very excited about was the expansive workshop.  Over the years we have dreamt of having a space for all our tools and a place to work on all the projects we have imagined we would make.  Somewhere that you could leave a project half done and walk away from it without having to pack it away.  So now we have a massive shed with a nine meter workbench running the entire length of one wall.  One weekend Benny got to one of my old cutting tables and dismantled it to make a second wall length bench with bottom storage shelf on the opposite wall.  To give you some idea of the size of this space, with both benches in place we can still drive a vehicle down the centre of the shed!  At the end we store the ride on mower and an assortment of bits and pieces that wont fit under the bench.  On shelving and in boxes are all the tools and fittings and fixtures from a variety of household projects and refurbishments.  

We have a bench vice and a place for the drop saw to be permanently located.  A section allocated to painting has mountains or rollers and paint brushes that when we unpacked all our boxes just seemed to multiply.  How many paint rollers and trays does one family need, and caulking guns?  The shed has sections for camping equipment barely used, old fish tanks have a home until they are needed to house reptiles or guppies once again.  Bits and pieces are all neatly laid out so that when you want something you can actually find it and not have to take yet another trip to Bunnings to buy something that you are sure you have, somewhere!  Best of all, there are racks to house timber, old shelving, a dismantled bunk bed, some off cuts from an old kitchen, some used cupboard doors.  All the bits that are so useful when you want to “make something”.  

So now to the projects...

We have this space by the back door that gets cluttered with shoes and I envisaged a bench seat with boxes under it to house the discarded footwear.  So off I went to the shed armed with just an idea, and hours later the old bunk bed was recycled, into a distressed retro painted park bench (the boxes are yet to be made) and installed by the door.  It has been so useful for parking your butt to pull your boots on and to put boxes for the courier to pick up so that they dont get dusty, or chicken pooped.

The next project was a team effort.  The chickens had up until this point been housed in a “blue box” inside their run, made long ago by a previous owner and slowly being eaten away by white ants.  I noticed the back leg deteriorating just in time and put bricks under the back edge to prop it up in case the inevitable happened and it collapsed.  Which is just what it did!  So it was time to build the Taj Mah Chook House.  I had surfed the net for various designs but finally agreed that it needed to be a bit free form to fit in the weird shaped space at the end of the run.  So I drew a sketch and showed it to Benny, who did the measuring and came with me to Bunnings for the blue board and framing timber to make sure I got the right stuff.

He decided that because we were making it up as we went along that it would be best if we put it together in the shed first to make sure it worked and then undid it and transported it to the chook run and put it back together again!  Only a man would think of doing this I swear!  So that's how we tackled it. 

On the first weekend we put most of it together except the doors.  A couple of weeks later we put the windows in and then several weeks later (after loads of unseasonably cold nights which I worried was going to freeze the chooks to death) while I was cooking breakfast one morning Benny dismantled the frame and brought it up in pieces.  

We put it back together reasonably quickly and it worked!  Some roofing clip lock aluminum that we were given by our neighbours was used to make the angled roof.  I used some acrylic panels to make the windows.  We wrapped a wooden ramp in some marine carpet courtesy of our friend Glen who was busy doing up his yacht in our back yard.  This stopped the rather steep wooden slope being too slippery.  I put in a couple of perch options, reused the old nesting boxes but put a store bought plastic egg in to show them that this is the new place for laying.  I left the old laying box on the ground until they got used to it but on the first morning one girl had laid where she was supposed to and everyone else followed over the space of the next week.  

The chooks were very impressed and after the first night (when I had to go and physically put them in it) they knew what it was for and where they needed to be.  The following morning Lawson and his friend Cory (who had a sleep over) painting the house bright red and when we ran out of red they used up some old spray cans of blue paint on the back to make it colourful and help protect the boards from the weather.

I put in fresh sugar cane mulch and raked the area and then stood back and admired what we had done.  A true family project!

Benny manages a resort, if I hadn’t mentioned that before.  This means that every couple of months there is a Board Meeting that takes up family time on Saturday but in lieu he takes Monday off to do some projects around the house or have a day of rest (HA HA!).  I keep to my regular work week and try and stay out of his way during his day off so that I dont get dragged into his projects instead of concentrating on my own work.  This particular Monday not so long ago, I heard many noises coming from the shed, at least one trip to Bunnings was had and Benny didnt come up to the house to ask for a cuppa or even lunch!  

By the time it was almost time to get Lawson from school, I thought I had better go down to the shed to investigate what was going on.  It turns out I ruined his surprise as he was almost finished a pressie he had been making all day, just for me.  There is no particular name that he has given to this tool but I call it a mobile potting bench and wheel barrow. He has made it the exact height for cleaning out the chook house and the barrow space is just the right dimension to house the bag of sugar cane mulch I buy fortnightly from Bunnings.   The bench section is great for potting plants or transporting tools, storing gardening gloves, or housing a curious chicken.  He jokes that it looks like it has been made in a sheltered workshop and I think it is useful, practical and best of all made with love! Oh and it is recycled too, all except the wheel.

Chapter 6

Miracle Eggs

Our Bubba Chookens, as we affectionately call them, began to grow very rapidly.  All eight were almost fully grown, their baby down replaced with feathers, their cute status updated to full grown chicken almost as we watched.  Then one morning at about four am we heard the sound that we were dreading “cock-a-doodle-doo!”.  Oh no, one of our hens is a him!  Well that would have been just fine, in fact we were kind of aware that at least one of the girls might be a boy, but we weren’t prepared for each morning more and more birds to join in the chorus! One, two, three, four, and then FIVE!  Out of our eight little chicks five where declared officially not egg layers.  

What were we to do, we grew them from chicks, we had named them, fed them, looked after them and now they were waking all the neighbours at 4am and worse still US! Being new to all this chicken stuff we weighed up the options.  I was even offered money by one of my Vietnamese machinists to take them off my hands...for dinner!  I just couldn’t bring myself to do that I’m afraid, they had to go to a happy home or more reasonably many happy homes.  So I rang around and found that the people at Nerang Stock Feed would take them the next time they were receiving point of lay hens and would offer them as a free giveaway to those who wanted to take them to make new baby chicks.  Gives new meaning to “Buy this and receive a free chook!”.

I must admit that we put off the inevitable for a few weeks, neither of us willing to catch the somewhat aggressive big white birds.  We were spurred on (he he) one weekend when we had some sleepover guests (luckily from a country property) who were also woken at 4 am by the roosters.  Armed with a big cardboard packing box and a bit of tenacity and encouragement, Benny caught them, stuffed them into the car and drove them to the stockfeed place just minutes before they were due to close.  Bring on the sleep in!

I made an off hand comment to Lawson that I reckoned within the week that the remaining three hens would begin to lay without being harassed by the roosters.  They really were copping it bad from being dominated five birds to three.  My optimism was rewarded only two days later with the first of our “miracle eggs” (Lawson’s name for them) which was cooked for breakfast that weekend on the BBQ, YUM!

Another really amazing thing happened the very next day, when unexpectedly two little chickens, not much younger than ours just walked into our yard!  They were obviously hens (I was learning how to discern the difference) and it was getting late so I locked them away with our girls.  I thought that perhaps the owners would come looking for them in the morning, but this never happened.  So we named them Kentucky and Scramble and added them to our brood of Schnitzel, Omelet and Hazel .  So eight became three and then five, awesome.  Looking forward to waking up to five eggs a day for the next four years.  

Some time later our neighbour up the back gave us his two white chickens as he, his Mum and his sister were “over them”.  One kept straying back up the hill but the other "Georgina" was happy to stay.  Eventually we lost Scramble and one of the white hens (no idea where they went although we hope they are with a good home), so five became seven and then five again.  Nowadays we have five eggs a day, which is enough to give us what we need, sell some and give the occasional dozen away in exchange for help in accounting, babysitting or just because we can.

I am constantly amazed at the “miracle eggs” and look forward to collecting them every day.  I was surprised to find that white chooks have white eggs and brown chooks have brown eggs, but even these vary in shades from cream to purple/beige to caramel.  When you add our eggs to a vanilla cake mix it become so yellow it looks like it should be lemon cake.  The yolks stand proud when you crack them into the frying pan and the whites also are thick and gelatinous not runny like store bought ones.  The most amazing thing is the fattest greediest chook, our Hazel, lays the biggest eggs and almost all of her's are double yolkers.  One morning we were amazed at the size of this particular double yolker and thought “ouch, that must have hurt”.  It was twice the size of the normal eggs that she was used to laying and we couldn’t even close the egg carton on it! 

We have had our share of eggs taken by peewees, crows and bush turkeys but luckily few and far between.  I have fixed the massive holes in the wire roof over the run in an abstract pattern of criss crossed wire web that no spider would claim or be proud of, but it works to keep the crows out.  

While I was cleaning out the chickens blue box (rudimentary chook house) one Saturday I noticed the trail of white ants around the crumbling timber of one leg the box was perched on.  I grabbed some bricks to stabilise it just in case they were to eat  right through.   Just as well it seems because only days later it collapsed onto the bricks.  I dragged Benny in to the run to have a look and announced that we had to build our bubba chookens a new home post haste.  A project for the whole family wouldn't you say!

Chapter 5

The Spice of Life

I have in my mind all these grand ideas about cooking with herbs and spices grown fresh in our garden, but really when it comes down to it my usual kitchen repetoire is very boring and bland.  Not because I don’t love the aroma and the subtle flavours that herbs can add to a meal but when I cook anything a la Jamie Oliver covered in Thyme leaves, Rosemary sprigs or fried Sage leaves I face the same old disappointing comment, “It looks like you dropped it in the grass!”  ARGH! What am I to do?  I have made the most beautiful fresh basil pesto with hand picked leaves, carefully toasted pine nuts and had it go off before it was finished because I am the only one who eats the stuff.  

I have even spent ages on a cushion on the deck pulling the tiny coriander seeds off their desiccated stalks to half fill a jar with the potential for a delicious curry.  It was therapeutic I must say, even enjoyable, as it really did represent for me my first “crop”.  But alas, no one else in my family eats coriander.

Anyway, regardless of the family's lack of culinary adventurousness, the first time my sister from Sydney and her partner came to visit our new project, I roped them in to help me plant the herb garden.  We pulled heaps of weeds that had well and truly embedded in what looked like old weed matting (lot of good that did!).  Under instruction I dug the holes, half filled them with organic potting mix and gently eased the little plants out of their pots and placed them into the ground. Collections of local newspapers were placed over the ground and watered in and then topped with a layer of sugar cane mulch to keep in the moisture and repel the weeds.  We did a terrific job in such a small space and I held great hopes for the herbs progress. Weeks later I worked out that I needed to fence out the chickens as they scratched all the newspaper to the surface and I had to do the whole process all over again!

Everything flourished for a while and produced my crop of coriander seeds and garnishes for many salads.  Unfortunately with our business being my first priority the garden was left to care for itself. We first lost the parsley (lack of water), the coriander (went to seed way too quickly) and a couple of the sage plants (water again).  I must say though that we have the biggest healthiest rosemary plant that I have ever grown.  I have always chuckled when Jamie Oliver used rosemary sticks to skewer meat... I didn’t even know that rosemary could grow large enough to produce “sticks” as mine always died before the plant grew to get woody.  Now I see marinated lamb kebabs on the horizon!

We have since added the egg plants and as mentioned have been rewarded with fruit.  We planted some strawberries that we found sprouting in a strange space in another garden and now we wait hopefully  as they have bloomed with dozens of little white flowers.  

I knew that in order for anything to grow prolifically we needed to put in a water reticulation system on a timer because dragging a hose to that part of the garden was a chore which I neglected to do often enough.  

Another couple of hundred dollars later (did I mention we call Bunnings the $200 shop?) and we have all the parts we need; the hose, the risers, the sprinkler bits coupled with an old garden timer we found in the shed.  Now it is just another job for Benny that needs to be scheduled in to his many tasks.  I wonder when it will makes its way up the list of priorities?

Chapter 4

Cage the Vege and Free Range the Chooks

 The couple of potted plants that I brought with me to the house were suffering and longed to spread their roots through moist rich soil and flourish.  I planted them into the ground accordingly and so, here we are almost one year on and what should be a metre high miniature capsicum plant is less than half that height and a prolific birds-eye chili plant looks more like ground cover!  What happened you may well ask?  Was the soil not fertile was the sun not shining was the rain not falling regularly?  No, all of that was happening like it should, perfect growing conditions in fact, however our free range chickens were free ranging all over my plants! 

I read just recently in Earth Garden magazine that if you want to free range your chooks you need to cage your vegetables, so that’s just what I did.  Using the new roll of wire netting that was supposed to be the new roof over the chicken run I cut out sections and fenced off a part of the garden just for me.  

We have grand plans to build a large raised vegetable garden down one side of the yard next to where right now our herb garden is doing very nicely.  There is a vacant spot, a “no mans land” that is basically just a wasted space that requires regular mowing.  It is overlooked by what I would call the “sun room” a long thin room running the length of the house from the front door which was originally a verandah that has been closed in.  This is currently where I spend most of my week days as it is also one of the  spaces that we have dedicated to our clothing business.  It houses the cutting table, packing benches sewing machines etc.  A right little “sweat shop”.  To have that space overlook our vegetable plot will be a calming view on those not so calming days when work is overwhelming and all I wish I could do was be outdoors.  

Alas, this garden will be an added expense that hasn’t reached priority status just yet.  With the water tank in and paid for but still yet to be plumbed, the garden will have to wait.  So meanwhile I have decided that every other available space that doesn’t require any monetary commitment needs to be dedicated to my need to grow food.

The good thing about my new fenced area is that is already has water reticulation and with just a few added risers has pretty much got water spraying to every part of the ground.  A trip to Bunnings and not a lot of money later my crops include; snow peas, real peas, rainbow carrots (a heritage variety), asparagus, lettuce that sprung up from an old plant that went to seed, rainbow beetroot (another heritage variety), broccoli, cauliflower, perpetual spinach, and a lone purple runner bean plant (heritage), a lone cucumber (we started with four plants) and the chili and capsicum plants that bravely survived the chook’s garden decimation.  I have other vegies in the herb garden also.  A striped eggplant and lebanese egg plant that my sister and her partner bought me at Christmas and have already given up some beautiful fruit.  I have strawberries that have tripled over the summer and now are laden with fruit that is just beginning to blush with the promise of yumminess to come.  As I mentioned in the last chapter we have plenty of banana trees that previous owners have planted and also a renegade golden passionfruit vine which has yielded a huge crop already even after sharing many fruit with the possums.

When we first bought the house I envisaged a fruit grove running the length of the driveway so I quickly planted some trees; a "lots’a lemons" which has given us three in its first year, a lime, which has only produced one so far, an olive tree, a grafted avocado tree and a housewarming gift coffee tree. 

In the compost heap down the “back forty” which is lush and rich and aerated with the help of my efficient garden mulching chooks, three other avocado trees have sprung up by themselves.  So its fair to say that from virtually nothing edible in the garden we have a veritable bounty in its early stages.  

There is nothing more satisfying than picking and eating some food that you have grown yourself!  The other morning I had a free range egg omelette with home grown tomato, capsicum and gently flavoured with our own chives.  Next I’ll be looking to source an alternative for the cheese and I’m thinking about growing mushrooms.  I look forward to my fist home grown dinner party (with our vegetarian friends of course), and I think they are looking forward to it too.