the garden after rain

Hello dear friends,

We had rain! 

Finally at last there was 13mm in the rain gauge this morning. Or 1/2 inch/50points for those of old school. This happened last night and it was music to my ears to hear it falling on our corrugated iron roof.

It is amazing how plants respond to rain. This morning I went for a wander around and took some pictures of the veggie garden to share with you all.



I am getting a lot of tomatoes ripening. These are the plants that I almost lost from the heat in January. They came back!

  
Freshly planted spring onions.

Silver beet and basil.

Spring onions and basil.

Trying to grow ginger.

Garlic shooting up.

Thyme growing in a foam box wicking bed.

I have just transplanted some yarrow into here.

Dragon fruit.

More tomatoes. 

Dragon fruit cactus and a self seeded capsicum.

Dragon fruit. 

Tomatoes.

  

Silver beet.

Sage.

More tomatoes

With chives growing underneath.

  
Amaranth that grew by itself.

Tomatoes I kept in pots during the heat in January. Just starting to get fruit.

Oregano.

Baby spinach.  This is so easy to grow and tastes divine!

Basil that has regrown after I cut it back to dry.

Celery.

Jerusalem artichoke.

Beetroot.

Yet more silver beet. These are just about finished, so I will be putting more in over winter.

Eggplants are almost finished too. I have picked about fifteen off these bushes, and there are still a couple left.

I am letting this basil go to seed. The bees appreciate the flowers also, there are not many around due to the drought.

Apricot plants ready to go in out in the ground in winter. 

The rhubarb is doing really well. Also growing along here are lemon balm, a nectarine tree, a pomegranate tree, lemon verbena and bay leaf tree.  All in pots.

The sweet potato is taking over...

More baby spinach.

And sage

 planted with the capsicums. 

I am picking plenty of these at the moment, they are so juicy and delicious! I eat them like apples J

At a glance...

Sadly the kangaroos have stripped the fruit trees. We need to put a fence all the way around them.

My chomped on rose bush...

  
I am hoping someone can help me identify this plant. It came up in a pot and I am not sure what it is. It has quite a sturdy trunk and I presume it is a tree of some kind. It is not a caster oil plant. The leaves are soft and light green.

Have a look at this cutie. This is a Thorny Devil and is found in the Australian outback.  This little fella was rescued and is now living at a friends place. His diet is ants, and there are definitely plenty of them around here!

  

Have you been blessed with some rain? 

I sincerely hope so.

While we did get rain, this does not mean the drought is over. We need follow up rain because there is no sub soil moisture deep down below.  Our last decent rain was June last year, so it has been a while. 

I will see you soon with a post about pickling olives.  We have just finished pickling seventy five jars.

Until then, take care,

xTania

feeling optimistic

A new big rain water tank was delivered yesterday. 

Now bring on the rain!

We finally switched the house over to rain water as we have plenty in storage.

Knowing we are in drought, I will monitor the usage very carefully. Our water storage will increase to 30,000 gallons once the new tank is full.  One decent drop of rain will top everything up because of a huge amount of roof area. Fingers are tightly crossed now J

The reason we had not switched over sooner was because we discovered a leak in the solar hot water system which has now been replaced. There are still a few issues with pressure, but hopefully hubby can work it out.

Oh how good it feels to bathe in rain water, tap water does not compare at all!

Have a great day,

xTania

I'm back...

Hello dear friends,

I am so glad that summer is over! What a disaster it turned out to be.

We broke records with extreme temperatures, we even managed to be the hottest place on earth on one particular day. We had temperatures mostly in the 40's for most of January, with some days over 45C for days on end. To top it off we have had NO rain. It is so dry.  The animals are dying, the insects are scarce, the birds are scarce, everything is scarce.  The natural salt bush is dying. Now this plant will take some punishment weather wise, but it is dying. There is dirt and dust everywhere! By the forecast, it was meant to rain this past weekend, but as usual it passed us by. We did have a few sprinklings, but that was it. This drought is a really bad one!

On the 24th of January, we reached nearly fifty degrees (122F) and it was a terrible day indeed!

It was so hot I had to put water on the ground for the birds. They literally were down out of the trees and burying themselves in the dirt trying to keep cool. I ended up putting the sprinkler on the back lawn just to keep them cool, they just laid in the water...

Later that day these two were out the back munching on the lawn.

Followed by this girl a while later. She has a joey in her pouch and was so hot...

Watch what she does in this video, twas so cute :) 

And this is what happened to my poor tomato plants. They were doing so well and then just collapsed in the 50C (122F) heat. They had water and shade, but it wasn't enough. 

I felt really defeated this day, and was not sure I could keep going with my veggie gardening. I lost the mojo to blog also...but eventually I picked myself up, dusted myself off and now am ready to face what could be a long, cold, dry winter.

I ended up leaving the tomato plants in the barrels and picked the tomatoes as they ripened to make tomato relish. I also made tomato soup that is in the freezer to enjoy over winter.

Anyway, it has been so good to see the heat go. The arrival of cooler conditions is helping the garden recover. The eggplants are doing excellently, they seem to love the hot weather. The capsicum bushes are laden with fruit and the basil has boomed! I am picking beetroot, tomatoes, capsicums, silver beet, eggplants.

I have one pumpkin. Not sure what type yet as it is self sown.

I dried a heap of basil. My kitchen smelled divine.

Here are the leaves placed in the drying rack. This lot is now all done, and I have another batch drying at the moment.

Thought I might include photos of the lizards I have seen over summer. 

The first one is a goanna and I have no idea what the second one is.  This is the first time I have seen one like this! He had a huge grub in his mouth and was not letting it go. He was the funniest little lizard to watch. 

The bottom picture is of a baby sleepy (shingleback) lizard.  He is only a few weeks old and is hanging around the pot plants outside.  I guess there may be some bugs he is eating plus I have water placed in different places for lizards. He looked to be so hungry when I first found him, so we brought him inside to check to see if he was okay. He seemed to be in poor condition, so I have been putting strawberries out for him to eat everyday. I see him most days just wandering around out the back and occasionally sunning himself in the sunlight. That tail is supposed to be plump to help them get through winter. I have seen so many of these lizards are they are not faring so well. Their tails are quite flat.  So sad...

I will leave you with this picture from above of our little patch. We all put some money in and bought hubby a drone for his birthday, so I will share some more photos in future posts. The footage from a drone is amazing! That triangle shape is our block.

Just a quick post tonight to let you know that I am still here.

xTania