a quiet day

Hello friends,

Not a lot to report about today. Was a slow start to the day as I slept in until 9am! I must have needed it, but when I sleep in I am sluggish for the rest of the day.

Another lovely day here except for we now have cloud cover.  Hopefully it is gone by tomorrow, unless it contains rain, then it can stay as long as it likes.

Hubby is at work until 10pm so I am relaxing in front of the fire watching the Adelaide Crows play. I have just finished tea {vegan veggie stew} and will pop the kettle on for a cuppa and dessert {quandong pie and yoghurt}.

Tomorrow we are going over to my parents again.  Will go early in the morning as hubby is working later in the afternoon, he will be driving the Ghan train to Marla.

I put the old wonky arch back in place. This was removed when the new veggie garden was being built. I made this from the long spindly branches after pruning the fruit trees a couple of years ago. The heart hubby made from a piece of the mesh that surrounded the old flu when we replaced our combustion fire.

This mornings view from my new garden seat...you can see where hubby has been burning scraps of wood.

I added some green matter to the compost bins. Thank you Robyn Louise for telling me about using stinging nettle in the compost. I have a few nettles growing so I will water and make good use of them.

I planted a geranium ivy out near the orange tree.  I want to see if this will spread out like a ground cover.

I dug a big hole and put a couple of shovelfuls of rotted horse poo in to give it a kick start.

I finished moving the bricks to form a ring around the mandarin tree thus continuing to make the pathway wider.

Then I removed the mulch left on the path and put it into the bed around the tree.

I will keep building on this.  I noticed that it was quite damp under the mulch that I removed, so it is a good indicator that it works well to keep moisture in.

The rings I completed yesterday. The inner brick  is where I need to move the rest of the bricks for widening the path.

The bricks on this one need to go in a bit as well...

The same view from my garden seat at sundown. The clouds have moved in...

I found some time today for a bit of craft. Made this pin cushion from off cuts of an old wool blanket. In the background is a wheat heat pad I need to finish. Still deciding on a design to sew on it.

When I finish writing this post I will be continuing on with this crochet blanket. Once again I ran out of wool...pink this time. I wasn't able to match it up perfectly so I have picked the closest colour I could find. In the future I will buy more than one ball of wool so I don't keep getting caught short when deciding to try a new project haha!

Fifteen seconds of bird song at days end...

Enjoy the rest of weekend where ever you are.

See you soon,

xTania

the orchard ~ part two

Hello again friends,

Once the cold morning had warmed up a bit I went outside to do some more work in the orchard.

Firstly I want to share some photos of the beautiful sky we had today, this one with The Flinder's Ranges in the background.

The last leaves of Autumn...

Mid afternoon...

I had a few bits of wood laying around so I made up this seat. I will look further for a log of similar size as it wasn't quite level. This is at the back of the veggie patch and will be a great spot to sit and watch the sun go down.  I can envisage a fire pit out here also. 

Remember the red back spider I mentioned in my last post? Well here she is...

I added some leaves, manure {horse and chicken}, straw and clippings to a couple of the compost bins, and gave them a good water.

Then I started picking up a few old bricks in the wheelbarrow and carting them back to the orchard.  These get used for making borders around the fruit trees. I only managed a couple of loads as I didn't want to aggravate my leg so soon after the treatment.

Then it was time to put some manure around the orange tree.

While I was doing this I got to thinking...as you do when you are in the garden ~ smiles

I have been wondering about how I can use the water from rain a bit better so it will benefit the fruit trees. I came up with the idea to dig dirt out of the pathways and lay small rock {or something similar} down to keep in the moisture.  Surely this would help the trees a bit more...

Hubby came out to see what I was up to and I mentioned my idea to him. So he suggested that if I make the paths wider {just over a metre} then he could use the dingo digger to dig the dirt out for me. Now wont that make life easier?

So the rest of the afternoon was spent moving the pathways to make them wider!

I had to relocated this little seat to a new spot. 

Another peaceful place to sit and ponder...

I made a lot of progress and still have a fair bit to go, but if I do a little each day, or when I can,  it will get done.

Needless to say, my muscles are letting me know that I have used them and I definitely wont have trouble sleeping tonight.

Another cold one tonight followed by another gorgeous day tomorrow. I am enjoying the sunshine and getting jobs done while the weather is so nice. We are having a run of warmish days coming up next week.  I work Monday and Tuesday and we will be in Adelaide Wednesday and Thursday so not a lot will happen around here next week. Making good use of my time this week will pay off.

So on that note I will say good night and see you all soon,

xTania

the orchard ~ part one

Hello dear friends,

Sorry for my absence yesterday...I had my 15yo grandson staying here overnight and he was using my computer to do homework.

So this is what I got up to during the day.

This is where I started...quite messy and not organised!

 and how it looks now. That is so much better.

This is our fruit orchard. You can see where I have moved the compost bins around to the other trees. In this patch we have orange, mandarin, grapefruit, fig, mango, mulberry, peach, apricot, nectarines, grapes, olive and an apple tree growing.

Now there is a bin near the orange tree, on the shaded side...

And the Fig tree has one...

This bin is near the Mango tree. Mangoes aren't really suited to this area so I will probably sacrifice this tree and replace it with something that will fruit. It has been planted for years, but no produce. Why waste water for no return? I am thinking the same with the mulberry tree. I do get fruit from the mulberry but is is so small.  They are not wasted though, I pick the mulberries and add them to my kombucha.

The mandarin tree has one too. I added lawn clippings, horse and chicken poo and watered it in. There is a big mama red back spider living in this bin, so I need to be cautious and sight her before putting my hands anywhere.

It was hubby's idea to use the sulo bins and black barrels {above} as compost bins. He cut in them in half and made wicking beds from the bottom which left us wondering what to use the top for...Problem solved!

While I was working away, I let the water run on the fruit trees, moving it around from tree to tree.

This barrel holds water for the wildlife, and is under the mandarin tree on the opposite side to the compost bin.

These two are situated under the nectarine and apricot trees.

I have one of these compost turners.

It is really good for turning the mix over. Just screw the spiral in...

Then pull it upwards and out.

It brings the compost up from the bottom to the top, thus mixing it around and aerating the soil.

I am hoping this compost will be ready by the time Spring gets here.

I moved the raised beds to here.  I will probably take these over to my parents place, maybe they could make use of them. I had planned to use them for growing things under the fruit trees, and I did try in Summer, but you can guess what happened once the heat arrived. Then I thought I could use them for compost...maybe I still can...hmmm...

Looking a lot better than yesterday.

I started to move some mulch from over yonder to under the fruit trees. I will continue on with this job today. I will also kick start the rest of the compost bins with grass clippings, leaves and manures and remove the old fruit from underneath the grapefruit tree.

Another job I hope to get to, is to move some manure to spread around under the trees. Saturday I will go on the hunt for more poo. We have a friend nearby with cows and there are also horse stables just down the road, so it shouldn't take to much effort to find some. I only source pony poo, not racehorse as it is safer to use on the garden. It is all free...

That's all for now, best get going and get started on my day.

See you tonight, there will be two posts in one day!

xTania