Art for Heart's Sake

First Tomatoes Potted On

Hi, well what a day I had yesterday - I felt completely behind the eight-ball (whatever that means, giggle) for most of the day and I can only put it down to our pump going phut (breaking down).  For some reason it threw the rest of my day into a shambles and I had trouble feeling settled, particularly in the morning.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon potting on the first tomato seedlings (I love growing tomatoes) and sowing loads of other seeds so I will have a continual supply of the most popular plants such as coriander, french sorrel, cavelo nero (Tuscan black kale), rhubarb from mid-September until December.   Heather is coming to get the first lot of herbs on Friday morning.

We are going grocery shopping this pm so I am going to spend the morning in the garden.  I have some sugar snap and snow peas to plant, plus some beetroot (in the kitchen garden).  I also have some peony poppies and apricot foxgloves to put in the main garden.  Oh how I love planting things too!

I can't believe it is the last day of August already - tomorrow is the first ''official'' day of Spring here in New Zealand - it's come round so fast!!  Okay, I'm off to enjoy the day! Smiles..

 

Rocks Re-found!

Hi there, well we had an exciting start to our day today.  John had just finished having a shower and was in the process of cleaning it when he called out ''our cold water's not coming through, is the pump going?''.  One easy answer to that ... ermmmm ''NO!''.  We are on a local water reticulation scheme and we get a certain number of litres per day into our concrete water storage tank.  We have a pump in the garage that pumps the water to the house and it switches on every time we run a tap.  Needless to say the ''pump man'' has already been this morning and has taken away our dear old pump (which he thinks has burned out) and replaced it with a temporary one in the meantime.  It's the weirdest feeling to suddenly realise your cold water supply is cut off!

Here are a couple of photos of the edge of the woodland garden that I redid over the weekend.  It was such a joy to discover these rocks that I'd edged the garden with a few years ago!

 
 
It makes such a lovely difference and the rocks really look as though they belong!  The poor things were buried under seedlings and ermmm weeds!

Yesterday I had fun planting, instead of weeding, for a change.  I planted the delphiniums, some sweetpeas and even a few of my trillium collection.  I have neglected my trilliums a bit in the past couple of seasons so I decided they are better off to take their chances in the ground!  Today I need to pot on some more herb seedlings and the first of my tomato seedlings for Mapua Country Trading, plus sow some more seeds.  I'd better get to it!  Smiles..

I Adore Delphiniums!

Hi there, yikes I can't believe we're at the end of August!  Crikey, that means on Thursday it is officially! the first day of Spring here in New Zealand.  This doesn't mean the weather necessarily gets better, it's more likely to get a lot more erratic, with warm spells and the odd cold snap too.

I have always adored delphiniums and I when I lived in Wellington I tried to grow them without much success.  Wellington is such a windy city that the poor things would always struggle to get above around 2ft high and if they did they always got knocked over.  I gave up in the end!  Here in Nelson I can grow them really well and we had a fabulous show of them (amongst shirley poppies, hardy geraniums and other delights) for our wedding (5 years ago in December).  Since then I have had a few disasters with them rotting off in wet weather, being drowned out by my other perennials and various other factors.  This year I have decided to plant them with a vengeance.  I bought a couple of packets of seed of the Pacific Giant variety and I am going to sow them later today or tomorrow.  I also treated myself to four Dowdeswell Delphiniums which have been bred in New Zealand particularly for our conditions.  They are more stocky and chunky than Pacific Giants and the flowers are HUGE!  I have longed to buy some for the past few years but I have always ummed and aahed for too long and then they've sold out!  Here are the four I chose:

 
I am going to get them into the ground today.  It is overcast at the moment and pretty cold but no sign of rain yet.  Our neighbour has lit the bonfire in his front paddock (we share the fire, stacking our garden refuse on it too) and I am a little nervous because he always piles it a little too close to the trees between our two properties and a breeze is just stirring slightly.  Fingers crossed no sparks fly into the trees!  I am PETRIFIED of fire and always have been!  Yikes..  I will go out into the garden and try not to think about it.  This pm I am off to the local garden centre to buy some loose seed potatotes.  I love doing it this way because it means I can get a few of several different varieties instead of one huge bag of one type.  Ok a-gardening I must go!  Smiles..

AAggh No Rain Forecast Now

Hi there, oh pookies is all I can say.  We were meant to get a decent rainfall tomorrow (Monday) but now the forecast is saying possible showers only on Tuesday.  Aaaaggghhhhh....  we had far too much rain in June, early July but now I've realised certain areas of our garden are fairly bone dry!  I had to put the sprinkler on in the woodland garden yesterday afternoon.

Oooh I'm so excited, I managed to get just over two thirds of the woodland garden edges done, including one section that has a lovely rock edging (rocks gathered a few years ago from a local river).  The rocks have been hidden for a couple (if not 4!) years by seedlings which have popped up on the edge of the lawn.  I dug up the buried rocks and have re-edged most of it - I'm going to finish it today if I can, although my body is telling me to have a day off.  I don't like leaving jobs unfinished so am going to try really hard to do it.  We are going to go out this afternoon to our local mega hardware store, so that will be a break.  I need more sheep manure pellets and some vegie plants. 

I am longing to have a play in my studio but it will have to wait until we get some gnarly weather I fear.  I am going to do a poppy pic for my Mum's birthday (84 on 1 Oct) so I must get that started.  I think I'll use my pan pastels again.

Ok, the garden waits for no woman..  Oh heck I also need to sow more herb and tomato seeds, I guess that will be tomorrow's job!  Smiles..

Rain on The Horizon

Hi there, as I am typing this I am thinking of my friends on the East Coast of the USA, waiting for Hurricane Irene to reach them.  I can't imagine how it feels to know there is a massive storm coming, I really feel for you, particularly as they are now saying you need to be ready for evacuation!

Here the weather is still absolutely beautiful and we have had no frosts for the past four mornings - quite a novelty!  Yesterday I spent the day in the garden again and John helped me unload four scoops of fish compost (he made two trips to go and get it) onto the garden behind the chook houses.  As I've mentioned this garden has fairly horrendous soil due to tree roots etc so I am hoping by giving it some love it will help.  We have also been offered up to 50!! (yikes) spray (as in flower shape and size) roses so we are taking 25 which will help to fill up all of the gaps in that garden.  John will need to go ahead of me with the post hole digger so we can make holes more easily for them.

Rain is forecast for Monday, possibly heavy, so I am going to garden my little heart out today and tomorrow and tomorrow especially, I want to plant some perennials in the main bed.  Here is a photo I wanted to share with you today - it's our ''pet'' ducks (5 of the 40 odd we have between us and the neighbours) enjoying a ''bath'' in the garden where I had the sprinkler going this morning.  The two darkish ones are Mac (macchiato) and Af (affogato), the large white one is Ted and the two females are Madge (Mac and Af's wife, ermm that sounds kinky, giggle) and June, Ted's girl.  They are such characters.  Smiles...

 

More Gardening... Bend, Stretch!

Hi there, well yesterday I spent almost all day in the main perennial garden and managed to get one side weeded and dug over.  It looks amazing!  Today I am going to continue on the other side which, luckily for me, is not terribly weedy.  I do have one problem area though and that is at the base of my Brown Turkey fig tree.  Figs have fibrous roots and they tend to mat the ground just under the surface so it can be very hard to get the weeds out, particularly invasive ones like couch.  I am going to do my best to pull out what I can and then I will just pile barley straw under the fig tree.  I know this means the ducks, chooks and birds will have a ball kicking it around all over the rest of that part of the perennial bed but I don't really know what else to do.  I don't want to put down weedmat or weed cloth because it looks ugly.  Hmmm could I put it UNDER the straw?!!  Now there's an idea, think on...

This morning John has taken our trusty old ute (utility) to get two scoops of wonderful fish compost.  Yes, you guessed it, I will be unloading it onto the garden at the far end  of our section.  As I've mentioned this garden is hard to keep weed-free and tends to be neglected rather so I've decided after weeding it as best I can (last week) I'm going to give it a good dose of compost and then once the perennials and roses that are surviving (just) have put on good growth in Spring I will put a load of barley straw on that garden too so it looks tidy for the Iris Convention at the beginning of November.  I still have quite a lot of work to do on other gardens around the house too, plus the kitchen garden so I am going to be frantically busy in the garden every fine day until then.  Just as well I adore gardening, is all I can say!

Well I'd better get out into the garden.  It's almost 10am and I have a very busy day ahead.  Smiles..

Look at these!

 
 
Hi, aren't these creatures gorgeous! I have a lot of helleborus orientalis hybrids and seedlings dotted around my garden and I just love the way they brighten it up at this time of year. 

Yesterday was unseasonably warm over quite a lot of the country, in some places by around 9 degrees C!  How weird, especially considering the snowstorm much of the country suffered a week or so ago.  I managed to do a bit more weeding in the main perennial bed and then we went grocery shopping in the afternoon.

Today I'm back out in the garden, sunblock on face!  We've just had a fireguard installed by a friend who does the most amazing steel work  so I'll take a photo later and post it tomorrow.  It's beautiful!!!  Smiles..

Yay Matilda Laid An Egg & A Photo of My Latest Creation

Hi, I hope your week is going really well.  I've managed to get the main perennial garden ''edged'' so I'm feeling pretty happy about that.  I still have a couple of other areas to edge but at least the really big garden is done.

Over the past few days our little bantams and game hens have started to make ''I'm going to lay soon'' noises and much to my excitement Matilda (the mother of our other two game hens) laid her first egg for this season.  We've been going through a really dry patch egg-wise since around mid (if not early) autumn.  I'm not sure why Matildas daughters, Gertrude and Sophie went off the lay because they are only around 3 years old, whereas we've worked out Matilda must be around 8 by now (so  not surprising her eggs dried up early).  I can only think they went out in sympathy with their mum!  Bertie's two girls (bantams) are getting more red in the face by the day so here's hoping they will start soon too.  They aren't great layers anyway and will possibly only lay for 2-3 months.  What can I say, we love them too much to a) eat them or b) put them out to pasture (so to speak!!! if you get my meaning).  Hard-hearted land-owners we will never be!!

On Sunday I finished making a present for my big sister's birthday on 3 Sept.  I am really happy with the way it looks and the colours are perfect for her living room.  Her walls are almost exactly the same colour as this  paper and she has lemon in her upholstery.  I highlighted quite a few areas with gold acrylic paint and the bird and flower are handpainted too.  The flower was white to start with.  I really hope she likes it!  I put her initials in it too.  I can post this now as I know she doesn't get time to check my blog.  She is the head of the English Department at a local Girls' High School where she lives and it is an incredibly busy, slightly pressured lifestyle, as you can imagine.

 
Okay I'm off out into the garden again.  We are going grocery shopping this afternoon (I think) so I need to make the most of this morning.  Smiles...

Hmmm I can smell....

...dog food!  As I am sitting here typing this I am aware of an aroma that reminds me of Chester's dog food.. ermmm there is a very good reason for that - I have some of his small biscuits in my pocket!  It seems no matter where we are or what we are wearing there is either dog food or plastic poop bags in our pockets!  Giggle..  Since his tummy upset we don't tend to give him a lot of training treats so we are lucky we can use his main dog food because he really loves it.  It is a natural blend of doggy goodness, called Orijen.

 
John took this photograph on Sunday and I love it - Chester is 10 months old on 2 Sept so he is growing up! 

Yesterday I sowed lots more seed for MCT (Mapua Country Trading) and managed to do some more garden edge too.  I was in the garden at around 4.15pm when I felt that ''cloak'' of coldness come over me, it felt as though it was literally a cloak falling onto my back...brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  We are still getting frosts and glorious days and the evening chill came in really quickly yesterday.  I am aiming to carry on the garden edges today too.  I won't rest until they are DONE! 

Okay, I'd better get out there.  Smiles...

Petit Four!

Hi there, yikes it's Monday again!  We had a delightful evening at our friends Mike & Millie's house last night.  The conversation was great, as was the food!  I made some petit four in the afternoon, for the first time ever, and they were such fun to make.  I have to say when I piped them onto the baking tray I got the giggles.. they looked a little bit like possum poop rather than delicious tasty morsels!

The mixture was pretty sticky so it was a bit tricky to do too.  They looked one heck of a lot more edible when they came out of the oven.

 
By the time I dipped the ends in chocolate we were both salivating.. so yes, we just had to try one - yummm!  The chocolate set beautifully a few minutes after this photo was taken.

 
Then we had to work out how to package them.  Dear hubby made me a paper box with an acetate ''lid''.  Needless to say he's now on packaging duty for my edible christmas pressies this year.

 
Okay, I admit it, I'm now hooked on baking completely!  To bake or garden, to bake or garden.. hmmmm, giggle.  Smiles..