Waiting on the rain

Despite only having one decent day of rain in the last few months, the garden is hanging in there.  I've been away again for a week for work and Shaun has been trying to keep the water up to everything, so I was happy to be back yesterday and check on how the plants are coping.  There are always a few surprises and one of those is the kiwi fruit.  We brought it up when we came from Sydney and it did OK for a bit, but died completely back (more than the usual winter hibernation) so I thought we'd lost it.  But when I was clearing the edges of the veggie patch of grass, there in amongst it was the brave little kiwi fruit.

Remember the ginger farm?

When we visited the ginger farm, we bought a few kilograms of fresh ginger (that we actually dug up ourselves - can't get fresher than that).  We got advice from Michael and Kate who grow the ginger and they said we had until the end of September to get our act together.  So on the last weekend of the month (of course), I did.

Now that's an egg

As we have relatively young girls who are now laying, we have a higher number than normal of double yoker eggs.  But they're not just double yokers, they are jumbo doubles.

Still growing despite the big dry

All sorts of lovely things are busy growing, getting ready for the summer.  We've put three extra tanks on the property to collect as much rainwater as possible and so we've been keeping the water up to the veggie path and the food forest with tank water.  And despite the heat wave this week, all is still looking healthy.

Aquaponics update

In case you were wondering how the aquaponics system is going, here's an update.  The fish are now eating up a storm, and growing to match, so we're looking forward to our first meal of Jade Perch in mid-summer.  We also cleared out the finished bed of lettuce and beans and planted it up freshly.  Here is how the lettuce is looking now

They seem to be getting bigger on a daily basis and we've got some spring onion and some kale in there as well.  They seem to be getting bigger each day.

beautiful things

Sometimes (well, most of the time) I get caught up in thinking about the productivity of the property and all the jobs I have to do to make that happen.  But some days, it's worth just looking at the beautiful things you normally march straight past, shovel in hand.  So let me share them with you.

How gorgeous do the mango flowers look?  Instead of wondering if I'll get any fruit this year, I can just appreciate the flowers as they are.

Bees

I had been away for five days and when I got back, Shaun surprised me with our new bees.  You need to move them at night for a host of reasons and so he and our Bee guru friend Hans loaded them up under the cover of darkness and brought the hive over on the back of the ute.  Then clad in their bee keeping hats, looking like two ninja spacemen, they placed the hive on the blocks Shaun had prepared a few days before.  The site choice is key - morning sun is only preferable, water nearby for them to drink, a clear flight path and a nice level spot.  So here they were the next morning

That was unexpected

I know I shouldn't be too surprised, given where we live, but we were out on the verandah with friends the other day (looking at my painting handiwork) when Shaun spotted a snake in the palm in front of us. So we went a bit closer to have a look....