Browsing Tag

garden

Country

Summertime at Moondance!

I’ve been quite quiet of late, that’s because I have been busy with work and I had some internet bandwidth restrictions since I arrived in Australia. As we live in a relatively remote area, we use satellite internet and we have a very low peak-hour quota, so I need to blog during off-peak hours, which means after 11pm up to noon the following day. And we usually max out on that quota too.

It’s officially summer in Australia, which means it’s time to sow lots of tomatoes and yummy vegetables, and it also means beach time! There’s lots to do at this time of the year, although it is getting quite hot, and unfortunately it’s been quite dry too, even in the rainforest. The soil is cracking on parts of the property, and the creek is low. We are awaiting the big rains with eager anticipation, our land needs it.

In the two months that I had been away in Singapore, my boyfriend, Dan had been sending me lovely photos of our potato, tomato and zucchini crops. Upon my return, I realised that our other garden beds had become overgrown with weeds, and some of my beloved plants had died – claimed by the elements, he tells me. Hmmm…

December 10, 2013 by Olivia

City

Me in my city garden

Here are some photos of me in my garden, in Singapore. These were taken last month by little red ants creative studio for promotional use in a brochure by the National Environment Agency. I recently received them and feel pleased enough to show them off.

Not much of my plants can be seen, but the highlight would certainly the bantam chickens. They were rather afraid of the cameras but dropped almost all of their defences once they saw me holding half an ear of sweet corn.

Through these pictures, I also realise that I have a bit of a hostile gardening face. The photographer kept telling me to smile, and now I know why. I think I need a “Go away, I’m gardening” t-shirt to complete my wardrobe of gardening attire – pyjamas, really. My boyfriend calls me the pyjama gardener. I could even possibly make my own by up-cycling an old t-shirt, with some handy hints from Agatha.

In a couple of months, I hope I’ll have a lot more to show for in my city garden. At the moment I have some of the usual herbs, such as curry leaf, rosemary, mint, lemongrass and basil, and I am growing organic seedlings that include kale, mibuna, coriander, tomatoes, winged beans, okra, eggplant, and rosella. But for now, it’s time to play the waiting game.

October 26, 2013 by Olivia

Country

What a difference a year makes

When I first got to Moondance, it was full of pretty flowers in bloom, teeming with lots of wildlife, especially birds, but the food garden looked like it had fallen into disrepair, and taken over by all kinds of weeds. It didn’t even have a gate of sorts.

Dan used to have a productive food garden but as a single man, he got busy with his music production business and did what he could with the rest of the house and just let the garden be. We decided that we should move towards living off the land as much as possible and eventually getting off the grid.

We started with one bed before moving to another. Dan’s family friend, Karel helped out a great deal by sifting beds of clumpy soil, and planting several seeds, including chili, radish and carrots. We bought several seedlings, but lost our entire cucumber and kale crop over the summer months to at least one bandicoot. Fortunately some seeds did spill on the ground, so we saved them for the following year’s crop. It was time for Dan to put up a fence, which he did eventually, after much nagging.

September 10, 2013 by Olivia

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