Summer Harvest

I must admit, the garden has been sadly neglected in this heat. Luckily we're getting reasonably regular rain, because I haven't even been watering it. Went out this afternoon in the cool of the evening, and picked these. I planted 20 Roma tomato seeds a few months ago, and they have just produced and produced. This was just today's pickings, and because I haven't been out recently, there were just as many rotting on the ground. Guess I won't have to plant seeds again next season! Surprisingly we haven't had much trouble with bugs or anything, perhaps because in my laziness I didn't even stake them, and the plants are just heaps on the ground, with the tomatoes protected under all the leaves? Whatever the reason, I have a freezer full of tomatoes. Think it's about time I had a pasta sauce preserving session.

I didn't pick this watermelon today, but it's sitting there all ripe and ready to pick. Just as soon as I finish the one in the fridge that I picked a few days ago. You can tell when a watermelon is ready to pick because the curl at the point where the stalk joins the vine dies off. From the nine seeds I planted this year, looks like we'll have enough watermelons that we won't need to buy anymore this summer. And they're staggered enough that they won't ripen all at once either, should be just about right. And my goodness, they are DELICIOUS. A store bought watermelon has nothing on one you grow yourself, let me tell you.

Apparently my grandfather, who was a farmer in the Mary Valley when my mum was a girl, said the trick to a good watermelon is lots of water while they're growing, then stop watering in the last week so that the sugar can develop. Which, funnily enough, is exactly what these ones had. We had rain on average 2-3 times a week for the initial growth period, then in the last few weeks, only once a week or so. Couldn't have arranged it better if I'd tried!

So, just to remind myself, next year I again have to plant about 20 Roma tomatoes, and about 9 watermelons!

Safe and Dry

As any of you in Brisbane are probably aware, the northern suburbs of were hit with quite a nasty story last night. It was lovely and fine (if hot) all day, then late afternoon the clouds came up. We saw it early, and after checking the radar on the Bureau of Meteorology webpage, knew there was a large storm heading out way. We had time to batten down the hatches, put the chickens away, and make sure anything that might blow away was secured. DH had started clearing one of the gutters (gutter guard is supposed to be going on this week!), when it hit.

I was inside with DD, watching DH still out in the rain, when I saw one of the trees up the back (on the neighbours property) fall, and yelled for him to come in. He couldn't hear me, but thankfully came inside soon after. We retreated to the bedrooms with torches and mobile phones, because we have some large trees on the living areas side of the house that I was a little concerned about. They're large trees, and old and strong, obviously they've stood their for quite a while, but better safe than sorry. We were lucky that no trees came down on our property, only a few small branches, but many roads were blocked and roofs damaged by falling trees elsewhere.

In fact, I'm happy to report, the worse damage here was to my corn plants, which were blown over in the wind. Thankfully none of the stems were damaged, and they weren't even really uprooted, just blown over. We've straightened them, and staked them up with some tomato stakes and baling twine woven through them. Hopefully they weren't damaged too much, and will continue to grow and produce some corn for us! This is the tallest I've ever had corn grow (usually I think it doesn't get fed well enough, corn is a heavy feeder), and it doesn't even have any sign of cobs yet. I tell you, we're eagerly awaiting this corn, and will be quite upset if it's been damaged beyond repair.

Despite the leaking gutters, our tanks are nearly full. The poly tank is totally full, and we've transferred some water to the smaller garden tank, and the stainless steel tank is three quarters full. It's very very nice to know there is plenty of water there to see us through the coming season.

Spring Quilting

It wasn't until I was editing the photos for this post, and trying to decide on a title, that I realised how well the colours of this quilt fit to Spring. The beautiful, bright rainbow really brightens up the room, and when you look at it, you can't help but feel light and happy. Perfect for a little girls room.

There's very little frugal about this quilt, it's made from (almost) all new material, and didn't come cheap, although the main body of quilting is made from material I have had in my cupboard since before DD was born. I didn't even buy it myself, my mum saw it in her local quilting shop, and couldn't leave it there. 24 fat quarters, hand dyed, all in carefully arranged shades through the rainbow. (Although we only used 23, several of the pinks were so similar I took one out, as the quilt was going to be very long anyway). I have put off cutting up this material, trawled through many quilting books and magazines for the perfect design, but eventually it was time to just give it a go, and we decided on a really simple design, that would show off the beautiful shading without any fancy patterns detracting from the simple beauty.

First step was to cut the material, not into squares, but into strips. We were going to carefully measure each one, but in the end, we just cut along the fold lines, giving us 4 strips very close in size to what I wanted.

I worried for a while about how to keep the colours in order, as some of the shades are very similar, and in the end we decided to lay them down in order. We pinned each colour (4 strips of each) at the top to prevent them blowing away. (This is on my mum's veranda, you can see the grass in the top left hand corner, so it was a little windy.)

This type of quilt is much easier (and quicker) to sew with two people. My mum sewed each strip together as I handed them to her in order. If I had been on my own, I would have had to constantly get up and down to get each piece, and I'm sure some of them would have ended up out of order.

I was a little concerned about how to keep track of the order anyway, as so many shades are so similar, but came up with this simple strategy to keep it in order. Each time I took a strip off the pile, I turned the pin the other way. That way I could quickly and easily work out which strip to grab next. It worked too, not a strip out of order.

Once we had joined all 23 strips, we then sewed the first strip to the last one, making a continuous loop like this. I hope the photo shows what I mean, as this is the step that made doing the staggered pattern so simple and easy. We made 4 of these loops.

Each loop was then folded into quarters, and cut into strips the same size as the origional strips (so that the patches would be square). As you can see here, there was a small bit at the end left over that wasn't big enough to make another strip, but those will get used later.

Then I unpicked one seam on each strip, moving one square through the colours each time, and sewed these together (as we went). This was a little tricky, as some of the colours were hard to tell apart, but in those cases I looked back to a strong colour change, and worked from there. Again, I did the unpicking/arranging, and my mum sewed. I deliberately arranged it so that the pink colours were around the middle of the quilt, as my DD loves pink. We picked out a pink border at the local quilting shop, and found some bamboo wadding for the middle. If you haven't heard about bamboo, it's a wonderful new alternative to cotton, which is grown with far less pestasides, making it far more gentle on the environment. And it has a wonderful, silky soft feel. Seems almost a shame to hide it away in the middle of a quilt!

Of course, the quilt isn't entirely new material. The backing is a white sheet I bought at the local op shop for $4! And the bias strip around the edge is the end bits left from cutting out patched strips. It was almost exactly the right size to go around the quilt, only 4 squares left over. Quite an economical use of material really.

Doesn't it look beautiful on DD's bed? She loves it, and has been sleeping in her bed again since we bought it home. She had had a run of bad dreams, and moved back in with us full time, and I was hoping this would make a difference, which it has. Not that we mind having her in with us, in fact DH and I both sleep better with her nearby, but I also want her to enjoy her own room, which she is now doing. We bring her in with us when we go to bed, so that she isn't waking up alone in the dark.

For anyone who is thinking of trying their hand at quilting, but is afraid to give it a go, don't be. My mum and I aren't perfect quilters. We don't measure things terribly carefully, and if we make a mistake, we don't let it stop us. For example, we cut off the edge of one of the last strips by acciden, so that it was about 5mm shorter than all the other strips, but carried on anyway, and in the end, you can't even tell which one was the shorter square. I also accidently bought about 2 inches less batting than we needed (I forgot to calculate for the wider border), so that it doesn't go right to the edge, and had a similar problem with the backing, but we just fix those up, and keep sewing. In the end, these little mistakes are unnoticable among the larger quilt, a quilt that never would have been finished if we'd let ourselves be deterred by simple mistakes.

Happy Sewing!

Chooky News

We added some more shadecloth shade on the side of the chook run yesterday afternoon. I know the shadecloth doesn't look too tidy, but it's really just a temporary measure until the plants get growing I hope. Down this side I planted some more nasturtians (since they grow really well, and the chooks love them), the last few seeds of last year's packet of corn, some wormwood (herb that's good for preventing worms in chooks) and some carrot and lettuce seeds. I planted these quite close to the fence, so that hopefully the chooks will be able to peck at them through the wire.

In the corner, where that cheeky magpie is, I planted what I think is a liquid amber tree. My mum has one, and I love the autumn colours. For those overseas, nearly all the trees here in Australia are evergreen, so we have very few visible changes in autumn. Hopefully this will bring a bit of a seasonal feeling to our place next year. It will also have the advantage of providing the chooks with shade during summer, but letting the sun in in winter. Once it grows anyway.

The pen has been quite a bit cooler with all the work we've done on it, which is gratifying. Still hot, but then everywhere is right now. Hopefully not so hot that they'll cook though. The few times we've been out in the hotter part of the day they have seemed fine when we get back.

Our one chook who has been laying lays an egg most days (missed once since that first egg I think), and it seems we have another one, maybe two, laying as well. The last two days we've had an extra egg. It's surprising how different the eggs look. With supermarket eggs, you get a whole box looking just the same. But seems that isn't the case with backyard chooks, even if they are all the same breed. Our first layer lays small, pinkish/brown eggs, very round. The egg we had the other day was more orange, and with a more elongated shape.

I find it very funny that I can't tell the chooks apart, but I can tell their eggs apart!

Summer Shade

We've been working on some extra shade for the chickens over summer. Unknowingly we seem to have put their pen in the hottest place on our property. We went out to visit friends yesterday, and arrived home to find the chickens hot and bothered, with their beaks hanging open, looking most miserable, so something had to be done.

Firstly, we used five sugar cane bales to make a shade shelter within their outside pen. These will hopefully block out the worst of the north and western sun in this section. I also put this 75 litre bin in there filled with water. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but I am hoping that it will keep the area cooler for longer.

Then down the side of the pen we've put a large trellis of reo bar steel. I've planted some loofah seeds, some cowpea seeds (with inoculant), some nasturtium seeds, and some linseed. Hopefully once they grow, they will shade the side of the shed and keep the temperature down in there too. Until they get growing, we've put up some shadecloth, with a gap between it and the shed, in the hopes of cooling things down.

We'll see tomorrow how it goes. I'm happy with all we've done, although there are a few more things we've planned to do as well. So far though, everything we've done has been with materials we've already had, so there hasn't been a big outlay.

First Spring Harvest

No time for long posts tonight, so I'll just leave this picture of today's harvest for your enjoyment. Not bad huh? There were also about 8-10 mulberries that didn't make it to the picture...

I have lots more garden photos that hopefully I'll have time to post tomorrow. Hope everyone is enjoying the first day of spring.

Tiling is Done!

Yet another step on our road to actually having a house that might be a bit warmer than this shed! I totally love these blue tiles, and can't wait till I can do my washing in this beautiful, bright laundry!

And, of course, have a shower in this lovely shower. It looks a little dirty already though!

We're all getting a bit frustrated about the non-finished state of the house right now. The date we've been given for completion now is June 3rd, DD's 4th birthday. While it would be a nice birthday present, it would have been even nicer if we could have been moved in, so we could have a nice party in our new house! Apparently the problem is getting the water tank delivered, which I can well believe, water tanks are hard to come by in Brisbane with this drought going on. They're selling out faster than they can get them in. I would have thought they could have ordered it early enough to prevent this problem though!

We might not be so impatient, but it's getting COLD in this shed. The minimum night temp is hovering down in the low teens, and while it isn't too bad once you're in bed, typing on the computer at this time of night makes for cold fingers, and it's very hard to get going in the morning. I suspect that part of it is due to the concrete floor and the shade trees that were so wonderful at keeping us cool in summer making it seem cooler than it actually is. Once you're outside in the sun, it's quite pleasant, but otherwise, well, lets just say I'm very busy knitting slippers and warm clothes for everyone! (Hopefully some more pics of those soon, I've nearly perfected my slipper pattern I think.)

Autumn Leaves

Autumn is such a non-event in Australia. Surrounded by evergreens, the season passes with little notice other than the fact that it's getting cold. Since it rarely drops below freezing here in Brisbane, the beginning of cold in autumn is only a little milder than the mild winter cold. Which is why this liquidamber tree at my mother's inspired me last week.

I wanted to make a patchwork rug for DH like this one we made for DD last visit, but the colours we had in the velvets were limited. That's one of the problems with sewing from recycled materials, you can't just go out and buy what you need to finish a project, you have to work with what you have. Not that I've had much luck with finding what I want in craft stores when I go looking. Anyway, as you can see when we made DD's quilt, most of the velvet was pinks and reds. I slowly pulled out a pile of other colours, browns, reds, and a tiny bit of orange, and eventually picked out all the other colours I had, and was left with a beautiful array of autumn colours, that inspired me to send DD out to pick an autumn leaf from the tree.

This is the rug that eventually worked it's way out of the materials, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out from a bunch of velvet that initially looked all pink. Because of all the agonising over colours and patterns, it took most of the day to complete this one, unlike DD's rug, which only took a few hours.

We used the bitty leftovers of the velvet to piece together the back, since none of the colours that were big enough to do it in once piece fitted in with the autumn theme.

These appliqued leaves added the perfect finishing touch I think, even though my Mum and Dad kept saying they were stars! Hopefully when we pull this rug out next autumn, as it starts to get cold, it will help us feel a little more autumny. Hopefully the little liquidamber's that I plan to dig up from around the base of my mum's tree and plant in our front garden will help as well.