Summer in the garden.

I have been busy in the veggie garden harvesting all the silverbeet which was starting to go to seed, I gave most of it to the rabbits and chooks we had eaten all the good stuff, also removed all the onions and got a beautiful crop of large red onions and a smaller not so successful lot of white onions.

I have usually just give the beds a turn and add a few buckets of compost for the next lot of crops. Am putting celery, some more lettuce and coriander in the two vacated beds.

Also brought a Rosella plant which I had not heard of but apparently its very high in Vit C, I will plant it near my Jostaberry, really hoping all these unusual plants don't need another plant to bear fruit as Ive only brought 1 of each!! My Elderberry is doing really well and I can either see the beginning of berries or its flowering.

My kiwi fruit plants of which I know I do need male and female have grown a good 2 metres in height since Spring, amazing can't wait to get some fruit!

The potatoes which Rylan planted this year have really grown well above ground I can't wait to see how many potatoes are growing under ground.

I was given free a ton of sunflower seeds and pretty much planted the lot in the sunhouse and everyone has sprouted so I need a ton of space to plant a big lot of sunflower plants! I am thinking of just putting them all along the front fence just to get rid of them rather than making a new bed for them although I suppose I could just use one of the beds in the veggie garden. Will see what I decide and update you later.

The other week I added some fish emulsion to the veggies and the lettuce is now pretty much ready to eat and looking so healthy and the corn has shot up! My cucumbers are really slow again I am beginning to think I have a black thumb with cucumber, perhaps its just not getting quiet enough sun.

With the animals I have a Hamburg chicken sitting on 3 eggs, there were 8 but upon candling the eggs only 3 were viable so the others got removed. They should hatch within the next 2 weeks I imagine. I wasn't really wanting anymore chickens this year as the limit of 20 per property in Ballarat had changed during the time I have owned property here and its now 6 per block and I am sitting on 15 chickens! I did have one death of one of the old girls and a Barnevelder over the past 8 weeks, but I didn't really wish to replace at this stage so will probably advertise and sell the babies.

Sian and her babies are doing fantastically well, the babies are just gorgeous, I have new homes for nearly all of them now which is lovely, still have not decided which one I will be keeping though, such a hard decision.

New bunnies

Yesterday I took my new little Chocolate Torte doe Ambika into the Daylesford show, it was a long day and really took it out of me but I helped with the stewarding which means you get the rabbits out of the cages as the Judge requires them and your able to learn a lot of the Judges comments. I learnt how to "stack" a mini lop which was exciting! Anyway we came first in one class and second in another so that was great, I took Jordan with me and it gives him some experiences speaking with the Judge, to be honest he looks terrified the entire time, they always seem to ask him some question Ive not prepared him for.

During the week we had an exciting event with Sian my adult Seal Point Doe that lives in the house. She gave birth to 4 kits, 3 days later there is an obvious larger one who's hogging the milk but they are all looking really healthy. I have to be careful to smother my hands in Sians scent whenever handling the babies after washing them so she doesn't smell another rabbit.

She seems to know that there is a new bunny upstairs in my room and she's none too happy about it!

I have in the pipeline Ken thinking about building me a shed for the rabbits and new hutches ans the ebay ones are just rubbish and very hard to clean out. But I am very aware I don't want any rabbits too feel really closed in or have a awful life with me, whether I can fix this via lots of free time in pens on the grass I don't know but it's making me quiet hesitant to buy any more rabbits. I do also enjoy the showing but it terribly boring for the boys and even I feel the day gets longs there so I may be very limited as to when I can show and Ive also always been so against showing of all things really animals or people although I get the concept I think things should be judged on so much more than beauty or what a particular judge is looking for at the time - such as the squishy face with the mini lops.

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With last weekends beautiful weather I did make great headway in weeding the gardening and starting to get it looking somewhat tamer, although the weather got too warm at the beginning of the week so I didn't quiet finish the front garden off. I have started a new compost off for the Summer having used all the compost up nearly that I made over the Winter, I started with all the rabbits hutch contents and some soil.

I had only a small part to finish, I also added some Marigolds to to a garden bed and put wire over it so Pepa the free ranging rabbit didn't immediately eat them, he was watching us and just waiting his moment! Kyan was helping me he's such a lovely little garden helper, often I end up doing whatever he helps with over again but his heart is there and I don't remember any of the other boys wanting to help so I am enjoying the company.

Rabbit manure is so great to be put straight on the garden too and pretty much each time I clean 2 hutches out I get a wheelbarrow of straw and rabbit droppings. This year my Roses are looking awesome and better than ever thanks to this new manure.

I am really finding the garden is like a meditation for me and so peaceful - unless all 3 boys are outside with me then not quiet as peaceful, actually downright noisy!

I put some fish emulsion on the veggie garden last weekend and I cannot believe how things have shot up there too! The little lettuce seedlings planted 3 weeks ago are almost ready to be harvested!

I need to get out three and remove the silverbeet or Rainbow chard, I have given lots to neighbours but it's starting to go to seed now and I should be thinking of planting something else there.

This week I'd like to finish off all the weeding, as it's rained pretty much all yesterday and the ground will be soft and start weeding out the back, I might even lay some grass seed out the back see if it takes with all this wet soil.

I took some pictures late last week of some flowers to remind me that although the garden was a little overgrown there were still some lovely flowers out and worthy of a picture.

Garden Therapy & Nevaeh's Story

I have changed this title 3 times trying to find the appropriate title! Haven't posted in here for quiet some time, not a lot happens in Winter in the vegie garden at my place.

This had been a very emotional couple of months. At the end of October I found out I was pregnant and as I am 40 Ken is 48 and we have 3 boys and had been trying for a fourth but after 3 miscarriages in the past 2 years no more children had been accepted and dealt with. I was actually looking forward to all the things I would be able to take on board again next year. Improving my business exercising more and becoming really fit,kayaking more getting out training the dogs, breeding the rabbits, gardening daily!! We were shocked, surprised and terribly worried once we found out and to finally have a strong heartbeat at 7 weeks found ourselves calming down somewhat both sure this would be our little girl and we would adjust to the massive changes another child would bring.

Unfortunately right on 9 weeks I had an ultrasound and we found her heartbeat had stopped at 8+6 days. I was about to leave for Melbourne for a retreat and was devastated, absolutely shattered, this was my 5th miscarriage (I had one before my first child) and I felt this was so unfair.
Initially I lay in bed for 2 days just waiting in terrible grief, and eventually the hospital told me this could take up to 2 weeks for this baby to be birthed. I refused a D&C I wanted to see it, it was important for me to birth this baby at home. I gave up breastfeeding my 5 year old to ensure this baby had the best start as some Doctors believed with my age that breastfeeding might not have been the best idea while pregnant. I took aspirin every day, I went to to Melbourne and got herbal tea and drank the revolting stuff religiously twice a day. I stopped all exercise just in case, I felt so ill with morning sickness I was sure all would we well.

During the week since we were told I became very angry and was told anger is energy try not to use it on people! I went into the garden I hadn't touched due to morning sickness for weeks and hoed, and dug, and pulled those weeds out with tears streaming as I wept for all my hope that was gone. I pruned with the electric pruner shaping things and cutting blindly It was really therapeutic and poor Ken didn't suffer my anger quiet so much. Funnily enough he dealt with his grief by baking bread, and boy did he bake, he baked 2 loaves per day and while there was bread in his world all was well, he could stay in denial.

On the evening on the 8th November I really weeded hard, I just didn't stop, I was in physical pain by now, and bleeding was slow but consistent. I remembered the night before Kayns birth my little 5 year old that I did much the same thing that is my nesting and weeded all weekend and pruned. I didn't come inside until around 9.15, I took painkillers and went to bed. I woke through the night I knew it was close and at 7.10am on the 09/11/10 at 10 weeks pregnancy 9 weeks gestation little Nevaeh was born, completely whole, little arms and fingers, eyes and a mouth just all really tiny.

Unfortunately I bleed a lot I knew I would I had with the others and this one was older and was taken to emergency and after working on me for an hour I was taken to theatre for a Curette as the bleeding was just not abatting at all.

Since Ive been home Ive read a lot, Ive done a diabetes test that was in the paper todayand came out 1/14 chance of getting it the next 5 years due to fact I let myself get so overweight and having parents that are diabetics, and realised, this baby was sent to me at a time I was severely depressed, she literally saved me from harming myself. Now she is gone and that hospital worked so hard on saving me I have decided no I am not going to let another miscarriage send me to hell, I am fighting back this time, I will get my waist line down to an acceptable risk of 1/100 chance of getting diabetes, I will execise more I will take whatever natural remedies I can to reduce this horrid depression that inflicts meI get and if that doesn't work I will go back on prescription medication again, I will garden like Ive never gardened before!! Because in hard work and nature and the earth, healing happens, it really does I truly believe that with all my heart.

I have 5 little babies buried here now, all around the garden very small little souls that didn't quiet make it, and they have taught me that I can overcome this grief, I can use this tragic effect to change my life and physical heath and I owe this little soul that I really do and then I must become a whole and un grieved mother to my living sons again. I lived through this it's been such a hard week and I lived for a reason I am going to beat depression, I am going to be well and my garden is going to help me.

There will be no more babies for us, Ken is getting a vasectomy, he said he can not ever put me through that again, and I have to say I can never put another little baby through that either so we are both in consent with this decision.

I would like to show you my vegie garden, all work done in grief, and Nevaeh's Crab Apple Tree we planted she is under the tree in a little box. I have discovered through this journey that many people will know not what to say in fact they will say nothing, and many, many people are just with you in so many ways, even if there is distance they are thinking of you and I have been touched by the care that has come to me via this computer. So many friends that have been through similar times.

I hope you like Nevaeh's tree as she joins her sisters in the earth Savannah, Sarah, Amy and Nieve.

Succulents

Not particularly my cup of tea these plants but they are brilliant for the garden in times of drought which we have been in for some time now, although we've had 3 weeks of flood and rain the cynic in me isn't entirely convinced it's over!

They aren't planted into soil but a mixture of sand and pebbles and some soil and can go ages without water as they store an abundant supply in their leaves.

All Cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti! That is many don't have the spiny leaves and are in a different family altogether.

Here's some pictures of the prettiest ones, when I enlarged them on the computer the design of them are really quiet intricate!

I do have aloe at home purely for medicial purposes - fantastic for sunburn and some skin disorders, otherwise my garden is largely succulent freee but I did enjoy looking at these ones.

Unique recycling in the garden

Today we went to the Glasshouse at the Botanical Gardens in Ballarat. Wevé been a lot recently the atmosphere is so serene and peaceful, they serve coffee although not so much other food - but we take cut up fruit and biscuits, with 5 in the family you have to improvise and the flower display is simply awesome.

I was really interested to note last time that pretty much all the decorations are made from recycled items. I have included a picture of flax sitting inside a portion of painted and cut off 44 gallon drum. I believe in another picture the rest of the drum is painted the same colour and is holding up a table of flowers. The big purple flowers are painted onto a corrugated cardboard and attached with these bits of curly steel or come sort of metal (I didn't want to poke about too much and get us thrown out) and the use of the steel corrugated borders looked great against the vibrant flowers. There was also a hanging cicle with 3 inner cicles which turned ou to be handpainted paint lids, amazing some people are so clever!

I really love flowers they are such beauty in a world where sometimes beauty can be hard to find as I found out soon after at my sons soccer game!

Candles

With the price of electricity going up and they way they make it I thought it would be wise to invest in some candles. I just love the ambient light produced by candles and also the fact the mood just appears calmer when they are lit, although I do need to remember to be careful to put them all out at the end of the night, I have been caught before and whilst it's handy being married to a career firefighter, he's often working nights and that's when I've been woken with them still going!

So I've attached some of my special candles, I also love fairy lights, which possible aren't that good on the environment but they do look gorgeous! Here are some of my favorite sconces and candles, I have also included my Himalayan salt lamp which are supposed to help with negative ions and they give off a lovely soft light too, I use one in my massage clinic and also my 5 year olds bedroom as a night light.

I've also brought a ton of lanterns for tea lights for outside, as I think this will hopefully draw the bugs away from us in Summer and look great in our new patio area. Otherwise a lot of the lighting outside is just solar, I went a bit manic and brought up a few years ago on $3 solar lights, and while the puppies are having a good go at chewing them I do still seem to have a lot left over!