Fence it Baby!

We've been talking for a long time about fencing off the top 1.5 acres above and to the side of the house.  Its quite steep and really just suited for livestock who don't mind a bit of exercise.  Goats would love it but I don't think we'd love dragging goats out of our veggie patch once they'd climbed over the new fence, so we've decided to go for sheep instead.  There are at least three breeds that molt instead of needing to be shorn and so we'll be opting for one of those.  We'll have a small flock that will be for meat.  But before we get to all of that, there was some fencing to do.  So we called a few of our friends from the local growers gang and got to it.  There was lots of measuring, digging, eating and pounding and at the end of it all, we christened our fire pit and had a BBQ with all the families to thank them for their hard work.  It will take a few more days like this one to get it done, but the guys did an amazing job and all the big poles are in and the gate is hung.  Here's how it went. A HUGE thanks to Adrian, Jason and John!

Feeding the soul

The parts so the garden that don't feed the body feed the soul.  Having said that, I probably don't give as much attention to these corners as I could.  But they are certainly coming along.  My dear friend Linda let me rummage through her rain forest garden with her to harvest a massive car load of bromeliads for my own little tropical haven.  They've made themselves at home and have been flowering, much to my delight.

Another garden altogether

I recently went to Singapore to speak at the global Impact Investment Forum and added a day to the trip to go and see the amazing Gardens by the Bay.  Its relatively new and so will only get better with time, but I have to say I couldn't have been more impressed.  There are a series of gardens that represent all the cultures that make up Singapore, including the cultural, culinary and spiritual uses for all sorts of plants in each culture, and then other gardens that teach children about the wide diversity in nature.  These gardens surround a cluster of 15 story high man-made trees that have been planted out with bromeliads and the like.  They capture their own solar energy an water and at night, light up like a scene from Avatar.  Then there are two domes, one that recreates the climates of the world and a second that recreates a mountain forest.  The contents of these domes are indescribable, so best I share the images now and stop gushing....

what else is growing at ours

I started a walk around the garden on a previous post so I'll take you from the veggie patch up to the swales.  On the way though, we should really pop in and see how well the bananas are doing.  We now have four circles going on either side of the driveway.  And after losing a few bunches with the February cyclone, we now have three gorgeous bunches remaining and picked our first ever bananas yesterday.  And they taste amazing!

RIP Bruiser

For some unknown reason, our fabulous rooster Bruiser died on Thursday.  When I came home from work, I popped in to check on the chickens and found him curled up underneath the passion fruit vine.  There was no visible sign of trauma and he's been his usual energetic self in the morning, romancing the girls, jumping over fences....

He was a gentle fellow and I felt so sad that he wasn't with us anymore.

Today, our friends Jason and Vanessa (in fact it was Vanessa who helped us find Bruiser in the first place) lent us their Light Sussex rooster, who seems to have taken a dislike to their two year old son.  So he's on holiday with us for a while to see if the girls take a shine to him.  Strangely, they seemed quite clingy after losing Bruiser, so maybe they like having a man around the place.  We'll see.

Its been too long

You may have thought I'd given up after the cyclone but I think I just got out of the habit of taking photos and blogging.  I did take some photos just over a month ago, so I guess that's the place to start to bring things up to date.  With all the rain, things have been growing well and none better than the passionfruit that's growing over the chook run. This is the one that we have given absolutely no love or attention to and yet has grown gangbusters (and there's probably a lesson in that).