Our garden

I’ve been meaning to post pics of my garden for ages. So finally, here are some as of last weekend!

This is the pots all along under the kitchen window. There’s flowers, parsley, mint, cat grass, a lemon tree, a bay tree (that’s the tiny plant in the black pot!), a pot of radishes and coriander, fruit-salad citrus tree (grafted mandarin, navel orange, valencia orange and pomelo), three avocado seeds that haven’t sprouted yet, dead basil, russian comfrey and a chilli plant.

Then there’s the hanging baskets, with snow peas, sugar snap peas and a Broad Ripple Yellow Currant tomato plant. The tomato plant is still flowering and fruiting, absolutely amazing considering it’s the middle of winter and we’re having frosts! The fruit isn’t ripening though, it’s just sitting there green… Plus the child, who seems to grow anywhere!

These are our gardens along the back fence. The frames were made by Eddie, from scavenged pallets. We filled them about one-third full of ‘vegie mix’ that our neighbours gave us. Vegie Mix is purchased soil, well, it’s sold as soil, but I think that’s exagerating! It’s mainly made from cow manure and fill, plus a bit of fertiliser, and a heap of sand to add drainage. If it dries out it becomes rock hard, and plants actually don’t grow that well in it. However, when you mix it with a heap of compost, manure, vermicast and the odd old bag of potting mix, it does very well!

I’ve been harvesting out of these gardens for about two months now. This is garden one; there’s alyssum flowers, parsley, garlic, parsnips, carrots, spring onions up the back, spinach and some coriander that hasn’t sprouted yet and a cabbage that’s being eaten by bugs. However they seem to be sticking just to that one and leaving everything else alone, so I’m happy to leave it there!

Garden two: two walking stick cabbages, alyssum, silverbeet, garlic, spinach, ordinary cabbages. The one in the front was harvested just after this photo and used for the Cortido in yesterday’s post.

Garden three: Broccoli, Cauliflower, silverbeet, beetroot, garlic, Nero de Toscana Kale.

And I can’t find the photo’s of the pumpkin patch, which is now a pile of compost, but I did find a pic of the pumpkins we harvested. The pumpkins were growing when we moved in here, we think from kitchen scraps thrown on the garden. Also in the patch was two tomato plants, one of which we were able to harvest half a dozen small tomatoes (which Dian took to school in her lunches) however the other plant didn’t ripen before winter hit.

I’m intending to put in at least another three gardens for next spring, just need more pallets and a heap more time!

Cortido

Cortido is South American Saurkraut. I made two jars today using a cabbage from our garden! I’ve noticed how much juicier the home-grown cabbages are than shop bought. They taste way better too! These two jars used almost a full miniature cabbage, plus bought carrots, onion, chilli flakes and oregano. I’ve already picked a cabbage about a month ago and made ordinary saurkraut, with just the cabbage and some fennel and caraway seeds for flavour. There’s one more cabbage that is ready to be picked now, but it will have to wait for a week until I decide what to do with it.

Update on the last week

The boy who bullied Dian on the bus has been suspended from school. I found out that he is severely autistic, and he has no understanding or comprehension that he hurt Dian. The school has been having other problems with him for awhile now, and this incident was the final straw. He has been suspended indefinately. I really feel for his parents, having to deal with this.

I have work until Christmas! The area that I’m working with in Defence, who have been saying for four months that there is no way they can extend my contract, turned around yesterday and asked if I would like to stay until Christmas. Yes please! I’ll still be working 22.5 hours a week, but spread over four days. So I should be home by about 3.00pm each afternoon to get some time in to work on my coaching business! We’re all really happy about it.

Employment and a posting?

I got the news yesterday that the job I had applied for recently, that I really wanted, I didn’t get. I was ‘outstanding’ on my application and interview, couldn’t fault me at all and I should be applying for higher level positions. However…. the job went to someone who had done Executive Assistant work for the last 20 years! So we’re looking at the possibility of me not having work again when my contract finishes at the end of june.

To top yesterday off, I was waiting for Eddie after work, and his boss mentioned that Eddie’s career manager wants to post him again. His position is being upgraded to the next higher rank wef next january, and they want to post someone else in on promotion. Which means reposting Eddie. He’s known about it for a few weeks, but didn’t tell me because he knew I’d freak. Which I did. He was planning on telling me when it was decided one way or another, so I wouldn’t be worried and stressed in the meantime.

It was literally a year ago that Eddie rang to tell me we were posting back to Canberra.

I’ve just been speaking to Eddie about the posting stuff, and we’ve decided that if the army insists on posting us, then we’ll ask to stay in Canberra first, if they have to post us out then we want to go to either Brisbane or Queenscliff in Vic. Either way, we’ll have family there and people we know. My sister and BIL are moving to Brisbane around Nov this year, from London, and I have other rellies in northern NSW. The in-laws are all down in VIC.

If they can’t post us to any of those three locations then he’ll discharge. It’s literally worth about an extra $100,000+ for Eddie to do another three years, we don’t want to lose that by being too inflexible. All three of those locations have heaps of positions for his rank and trade.