Today is a day where I feel I should put my gardening post in the 'Rant, Complain, Talk' community. It's freezing outside and I have a cold so my resilience has hit the floor, and all I keep thinking about is how I wished I'd booked a holiday to Bali these holidays or moved to the tropics! The chicken coop is wet and slippery with mud and shit, one keeps busting out and scratching up my garlic, and to top things off, the blackbirds are scratching up any seedlings I put in, so that I've had to build kinda wire tunnels to protect the rows. Two whole trays of self seeded fennel I pulled out to grown on in seed trays were ripped to shreds by the buggers - yes, I've learnt now to slide them under a scrap of fencing. The seed trays, not the blackbirds.
Self seeded fennel sprouting up everywhere.
I'll turn my mind away from it now that I've had my little rant, and focus on the positives. Early this Autumn Jamie pruned the lime tree and I made all the young limes into a delicious lime pickle - I'm a bit of an addict, and make a lactofermented version with some pickle spice I buy at the local indian grocers, with some fresh fennel and onion seeds added for good measure. Honestly I live off this stuff (that and my lacto fermented chilli hot sauce, which is the absolute bomb shizzle - even my son says it was 'legit' which I'm pretty sure was a compliment).
Lime Pickle
It's definitely mid winter here so things are growing slowly. I've been eating a lot of broad bean tops in salads and soups or pasta sauces - not many people know you can use them as a vegetable. I have tons of lettuce everywhere which makes me laugh when they're so expensive at the supermarket now. Can't argue enough that many local producers are better than large monocultures up north that get hammered by various events reducing supply.
The good thing about husbands is that they can turn over a patch with a fork in about ten minutes when it can take me all day. I prefer no dig but the chooks had been in there making it all patchy and lumpy and the green manure was kinda patchy. It'll be covered with mulch for the rest of winter to prep it for the spring grow. Pretty satisfying, if a rather boring picture.
The other cool thing, lest you think I'm being totally moany (it's winter, and I have a cold, just in case you didn't catch my moaniness the first time lol) is that six months after hatching a clutch of 14 colourful easteregger eggs, 9 of which were born and four of which were roosters, I ended up with one laying blue eggs. Woo hoo. The others lay brown so I can't complain, more exciting than white! You'll notice my Victorian winter uniform above - flanno (that's Aussie for a flannel shirt), jeans, woolly socks and Redback boots.
Here is my selfie for this week - if you think I'm looking like a mushroom, you'd be right. Languishing in the winter dark, fat and dumpy, and covered in soil. Just kidding of course, that's not really me, it's an actual mushroom I found in my polytunnel.
To be honest, I wrote this earlier in the week and intended to finish it, but a lot has happened since then. First of all it wasn't just a cold - it was COVID, caught at my cousin's memorial. Here's a picture of Mikey next to a tree. He was a creative soul and a troubled one, a horticulturalist and a nature lover. I've been thinking about him a lot lately in the garden. 48 is far too young to die.
By the week's end I was feeling a bit better and have been out in the garden, and have a part 2 planned which is less grumpy, although I'm still shaking my fist at rabbits and blackbirds...
I hope you are all loving your summer gardens in the north, and if you're in the south, hope you are staying warm and not as grumpy as me!
Hope you can join in the #gardenjournal challenge for July - it goes for just over a week and you can read the details pinned to my blog or over at @gardenhive. I do have a big favour to ask, especially if you aren't curating a lot at the moment due to being busy or just absent. If you can spare a little to delegate to @gardenhive to help with the upvotes of great garden content across Hive, that would be amazing - every little helps, even if it's only 50HP! We upvote every single day so that HP is used to support Hive gardeners of all kinds. See you in the community - it'll be buzzing this week due to the challenge!
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Is the COVID on the way out now? It's such an annoying thing
Yeah, had a relapse today but probably overdid it in garden to make up for laying on couch so much! So annoying. I'm on Day 7 now which is a bit long for a cold!
I think it lasted till about 9 or 10 days with me. Which is it was the same with you would mean you are on the right track
Hopefully turning another corner then! I must say it's a little dull being ill... !
I fucking hate being ill. My wife thinks it's nicely unmanly of me not to enjoy it because of men and their manflu'ness when they have a cold. Lol
I tell you what Jamie's been good this time because I think he has ACTUALLY been ill and it's made him quiet... Which is lovely. He's all doe eyed at me and keeps telling me how beautiful I am, because he's so sick. Usually he sighs every fucking minute to let me know how sick he is when it's only man flu. Men are the worst at being sick. 🤪
Christ, when I do that it is because I have progressed beyond man flu and genuinely believe I am dying!!!
Hope you feel better! That’s no fun but at least your immune system got a bump!
Winter is tough for sure, does it snow in Tassie where you’re at now?
Nice eggs, I’m definitely going to get me some chickens when we move and get a house! My wife isn’t going to be too thrilled by it but the chickens would be great for lots of things, one major one being they will help keep the bugs at bay!
Doesn't your wife like chooks? They are awesome and your little tacker will love them too!
I think she tolerates them when we go somewhere to visit lol. The little man loves animals and chickens! I would love to raise some, for eggs and also the eventual meat bird. That’s one thing I’ve never done but I know that I can do it and it’s necessary, especially as things potentially get worse economically.
My wife’s a die hard vegetarian! She just thinks meat is gross lol
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You did save the best till last, the photo of the chickens is great.
Ha I totally mucked up the post, forgot the footer and everything. Covid brain!!
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Oh wow! Your garden looks awesome! Congratulations!
I was looking at your pictures and Fennel caught my attention. It looks so similar to arugula. In my garden, it's sprouting everywhere, which is nice, because I love it.
Thanks for the tip! 👍
In my garden, I have different kinds of Berries, butternut squash, some corn, tomatoes, Jerusalem artichoke, and some spices. Pretty soon I will plant red beats, maybe some Cabbage and Mushrooms.
Thanks for sharing!
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Wishing you recover now, but hey take precautions and stay in bed so you´d be well in the coming days. And yeah, I ´ve just delegated now... Be well and take care!
I remember you're posting about Mickey a few weeks ago. 😥
Sadly I don't have a garden. I used to grow herbs and little plants on my balcony when I was living in the Philippines. But now I'm in Spain and I can't do gardening anymore. I miss it. It's so nice to see seeds coming out and turn into little plants. You take care of them and see them growing. So satisfying!
Oh and a good way to use a lot of lettuce is to make soup. We do it with lettuce and a herb cheese (like Boursin). You can put the soup in the freezer. I learned it from my mother in law. At some points all the lettuce of her garden was ready and way too much to eat all of it.
Now first take care of yourself and then you can chase the blackbirds again!
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Your chickens are so cute but I understand how they really give headaches to our crops. That's also one of my big problems here with us.
By the way, your pickles are different but I guess it's so sour because they're lemons and it's very good for your illness I hope that you heal very soon @riverflows. 🙏
Lime or lemon pickles must be so good for a cold, right?
Chickens do make a mess of the garden, don't they?
You are right about everything 😅.
Get well soon @riverflows.
Hi, Nice update. well, winter and garden only you can manage it. we are now in summer. but we have hard winter here and can't even find any green outside in case having a greenhouse with thermostat. take care of your health, especially your cold, and get well soon don't work hard in the cold weather.. greetings🙏
Feel better soon! I love the blue eggs
Aren't they cute? From one crazy arucuana.
"Moaniness"--that's a new word by me, but often quite appropriate, I believe. I think I may have mentioned in our family "prickly" is probably a similar term. Again, appropriate, and very much allowed, especially in rotten weather when you're under the weather.
Hope you're feeling well again soon, and send some of that lettuce my way! ;)
Haha I probably made it up. I'm sooky as well 😭😭
As noted somewhere in this blog, there is something cool called mushroom that is not available during hot summers. This should be sufficient to get into a good mood (regardless of how bad you could feel), shouldn't it? :)
However, for what concerns COVID, I am afraid I can only wish you a quick recovery. I am still suffering from mine that I got a month ago. I don't wish this to anyone, really. The side effects are so annoying :/
Please take care!
Oh no what are your side effects? Ten days in and I still feel crap! Upping fish oil, ashwaganda, nettle and whatever else I can to strengthen my system. I've never seen the husband floored so!
Muscle pains, sore throat, dying voice, and being quite exhausted. These three actually nastily complement each other, and it is their sum that is actually most annoying. For now, I don't feel great, but I am not felling like shit either, so that I didn't bother stop working in the whole process. Hopefully this will get fixed by 20 days, when I will break for vacation ^^
Oh I hope so too. It's not fun. Muscle aches and general feeling crap is my after affect, and the lungs. Get some ashwaganda into you daily. Can't hurt.
I also take some vitamins to boost me up. It helps, it helps ;) By the way, I didn't know what ashwaganda was. I found on the web that it is close to Ginseng. I will try it out as soon as I will manage to get some.
Cheers!
Yes they call it Indian Ginseng. It's revered by ayurveda but very good for stress and etc. It also has strange side effect of giving me horny dreams!! 😂 Worth looking into. I swear by it. Like many herbs, long term regular use has best effect rather than a few pills and I'm cured kinda thing.
I really dislike fighting the critters to grow stuff. I guess I am lucky here, knock wood, in that the only serious one I've had to deal with was the climbing woodchuck last year. Glad you are on the mend!
As much as I worry about foxes with my chooks, they do keep the rabbits down. I wish they hadn't gone shot a load!
Lovely to see things lush and green and the description of your pickles got me craving a sample! I do hope you recover quickly with no long term effects from covid! Great to see the gardens from down under!
It's a bit of a long recovery in my book - with a cold I would have been better already. A bit frustrating with so much to do.
I hear ya - such a bummer to be sick when there is so much to do but always best when you can give yourself the time to recover - I adopted the motto of I get done what I get done and I don't get upset and that's alright with me! Made gardening much more enjoyable!
Yes, that's a good motto to have. I'm trying to do a couple of things each day and rest in between. Still a month or so til the weather starts to warm up so I have a little gap before I need to do a lot more work in the garden!