Sunday, February 7, 2010

Oops..........

Well, here we are in February, and I sort of haven't done the January challenge for the 12 in 12 in 2010. I feel like a naughty schoolkid.

I had the best intentions, honestly I did. I sat down one night when the husband went to bed early and started doodling-I had a pile of kids clothes ideas in my head that I wanted to get on paper and start refining. And one of the ideas for a pair of pants looked really, really cool. So cool that I want it for me, but as shorts.

 Now I know it's not the sort of artsy concept drawing that one is supposed to blog, but it was all I could be bothered doing at 10.30pm. I'm thinking I may be able to squeeze them in as February's challenge, which is knit fabric, as I wanted to do them in a t-shirt style fabric anyway. The only problem may be finding some of sufficient quality-all the Spotlight stuff has no stretch memory. Hopefully with a stash of great knit fabric, i'll also be able to finally make some That*Darn*Kat undies for my skinny butt kids-I only bought the pattern a year ago.

Now, to tear myself away and back to work-oh, it's so glamourous being able to 'work your own hours'. Snort!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Food gardens, January 2010

If i'm going to hit my target of 20% of our food being home grown this year, I need to expand! The current gardens are below. We let everything die off when we went to Melbourne in October, and it was too hot and dry to start again until the rain hit in late December. So it's pretty woeful ATM.

The vegie beds-the left is under a green manure, the right has malabar spinach climbing up the reo, a few ramblers, a round zucchini and a couple of strawberries. I just can't seem to get out there ATM-there's room for another three beds to be marked out and dug.
 

The herb bed, right outside the door-chives, garlic chives, society garlic, perennial basil, parsley, italian parsley, curry bush, a tiny red malabar spinach and two cherry tomatoes.
 

The food forest, more of a hodge-podge of permaculture ideas crossed with Jackie French's groves. Off the top of my head, mandarine, lemonade, malabar chestnut, Darwin bush lime, jaboticaba, wampi, pomegranate, black sapote, white sapote, native tamarind, macadamia.........and I forget the rest.
 

A lime, plus tropical apple, peach and pear, with mint and lemongrass in the pots. The chooks have had a mulch party by the looks of it, they've already eaten all the lemongrass.
 

More fruit trees ready to go in........somewhere. Plus a purple and yellow passionfruit to cover the ugly shed wall.

Apart from some nasturtiums and native flax in the fairy garden, a lemon tree in the middle of an unused (unfenced) circle bed and the bananas and paw paw around the mulch pit that's it. There's not much in the way of soil here (think gravel over solid rock) so establishing beds takes a bit of work. We're also concentrating more on low-maintenance perennials as i'd rather easy food that doesn't die when I don't get around to looking at it for a few weeks!