A beginning….

I seem to remember that the moon was in the seventh house last entry. Well at last I stopped thinking about it and wielded a spade in the back yard, the spade is certainly mightier than the thought process.

The ground is very hard and the spade only penetrated a few inches but it is a stare, the ground will loosen up when things start growing. I gave it some blood & bone and a good helping of lime. Being subsoil there will have to be a lot of humus added but that’s a lot of fun.

Looking around the yard there is room for several more beds but this will do for starters.

There was a scrub turkey wandering around this morning so I will need to use netting. On Gardening Australia a couple of weeks ago there was a viewer’s tip which advised using the herb Five Spice which repelled the turkeys. I will try that one for sure.

Breakfast With The Stars

I had breakfast with the stars this morning, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Orion and all the rest of the family. It was such a delight watching the orange glow on the horizon and there was the stillness, that silence which lives in everything was there.

After the Winter Solstice

The moon is in the seventh house and the weather is pleasant, a good time for a new garden challenge.

I have long been looking at the back yard with a view to growing veges there instead on having to drive 45 minutes to the current vege garden at Springbrook. The problem being that when the house was built the land was excavated at the back to a depth of about 1 meter making the surface soil hard clay. The soil is so hard that a crow bar will only penetrate a couple of inches when driven hard.

So, why not give it a go. I have started off with an application of gypsum at the rate of 1KG per Sq.M. to break down the clay and in the near future I will also give the area a treatment with the biodynamic preparation 500:

Here it is after the gypsum….

At present I am contemplating a no-dig garden to start off with, I wonder if I will have spring veges?

Samhain

 

The medieval Irish festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half". It was celebrated over the course of several days and had some elements of a Festival of the Dead. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. People and their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, and the bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.

This morning there was a magnificent sight in the eastern sky about 4.30am. The crescent moon was above Venus then Mars, Mercury and Jupiter all rising heliacally. The sky was crystal clear and I stood there for a long time looking at the spectacle without any movement of thought. When there is no thought then ‘what is’ is able to delight us.

This time of year the tree dahlias are starting to bloom, there is a big one in the back yard and I am using the photo as my desktop.

There are some beautiful Tibochinas in flower around the mountain, I wait for their flowering twice a year.

I haven’t spent much time in the vege garden over the past month but I did plant some red bok choy and broad beans.

 

There was a pile of weeds composting so I used them to cover some potatoes. The spuds came up in a week and look very happy.

The bok choy have just germinated

… and the broad beans are looking real good

There is going to be a big crop of jap pumpkins, this is from three plants:

If you look closely you can see some pumpkins:

After weeks of rain

Rain, floods and humid weather, not a good combination for a garden. I returned yesterday after a few weeks away and how the weds have grown! The carrots have not done much neither have the beetroot, they sure don’t like all that water. Here are some of the weeds:

I am pulling out everything that is not performing well as a result of the rain and will prepare the soil for autumn planting.

Dinner last night was carrots, potatoes, beans and beetroot with a drizzle of olive oil and a small sprinkle of sea salt – delicious.

The next crop of sweet corn is looking good, it has tolerated the wet wether very well. I gave it a heavy top dressing of blood and bone to help it along. In a few weeks the cobs will be ready to pick.

The days are still hot and humid but the nights are getting cooler, last night an extra blanket was almost need.