ACTIVITY FOR SEPTEMBER

If no-one has any other ideas for somewhere to go in September, all members would be welcome to come to my place. If we made it soonish then you could see my vegetable garden looking good and producing stuff madly. Some is going to seed, mostly the Asian stuff and some of the kale but there are plenty of other things just coming into their own and some that are just getting started. For the trained eye, there are little jewels in every nook and cranny.

Put a comment on this post and we will do the final details by email.

SOMETHING TO SHARE

Not exactly a skill but still very worthwhile.

We bought this house 17 years ago partly because of the opportunities here to take our dogs on walks off the lead, right from our door. The Burnside Council has been doing extensive work in the last year or so to extend the variety of the walks and allow people to access foot tracks from the original fire tracks and Old Bullock Track . They vary from following a contour around the hill - a perpetual magnificent view for an hour or so, to walking to Waterfall Gully or Mt Lofty, all from our front door.

I would love some company on my walks so fill in your name on the document and lets go. As I don't have any dogs at the moment, yours would be welcome.

I don't have any digital photos to attract you (and my camera battery is flat) so you will have to use your imagination !

JAMIE AT HOME

I have watched the best advertisement for kitchen gardeners I have ever seen on this gorgeous show set in Jamie Oliver's own vegetable garden. He picks fresh, organic things and cooks them simply and with his usual passion for enhancing the natural flavours. The way it is produced should make people without a TV go straight out and buy one. The first time I saw it almost may me cry because it says everything that we believe in. Check out the website:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/

There is a place to put info of your own so, there we are, on the website now as I couldn't resist adding our bit ! I called myself 'oz vegie girl' , as vegie girl is a username I often use for gardening stuff. Put your own bit on, its fun.

Watch the show 7.30 tonight (Friday) on channel 10. (Tape it and skip the ads - so much nicer).

We have this slightly crazy machine that lets you start watching later and that way you can always skip the ads ! It is great. It does everything except cook dinner, as you can pause it, right in the middle of a program you are watching live, so you can go and make a cup of tea and continue on later. Some technology is terrific.

There are some wonderful things on TV and I wouldn't miss them for anything. Its just like books - seek out things that expand your view of the world and don't be afraid to turn it off!

COWS, FOOD AND NEWS

I was talking to my mum this afternoon and asked her about the kitchen garden her father had when she was a child. She said she didn't take any interest in it at the time because, during The Depression everyone did what they could and it was not something to get excited about. After The Depression was over and food became available again, her father stopped growing vegetables. His vegetables were wonderful and they always had plenty, she said. He also used to take her rabbit shooting and she had to gut them - no wonder she doesn't ever want to see another dead rabbit !

However, she knew more about what her mother was doing during those times and this involved the care of their Jersey cow, Daisy, and the production of the milk, cream and butter. They lived at Plympton, just off Anzac Highway and had a cow. In the mornings a lad would come and milk all the cows in the area, after washing his hands well as there was no refrigeration or pasteurization. Then he would take the cows off down the street and they would graze on the various paddocks about the place and the lad would bring them back in time to milk them in the evening.

The fresh milk was put through a separator and from this they would get milk and thin cream. The milk was then left overnight - whatever wasn't used during the day - and the thick cream would rise to the surface. This was skimmed off and used to produce butter - often a lot of churning seemed to be needed to make the butter, especially during hot weather, my mother seems to recall. Once a good flopping sound could be heard that meant the butter had formed a lump and the buttermilk was washed off to leave a beautiful, dark yellow pat. Salt was mixed in and this was then formed into shapes with wooden boards and a special impression made, just like you see in the movies. All the equipment was boiled in the copper after use.

Any extras were given away to the neighbours but wasn't allowed to be sold. There was a lot of sharing of produce as they didn't have a fridge. Everything stayed pretty cool in the cool-safe but things like bread were fed to the animals if not eaten the day they were made. No-one would eat day-old bread , she said.

They didn't ever have a lot of money but never seemed to feel poor - just like so many others I read about during those times. She pointed out that they had many dreadful droughts too, in the days before the Murray pipeline but, interestingly, they never had water restrictions because there was no TV and, during the depression people didn't have enough money to buy a newspaper or a radio. All the 'news' came via the pub where her father would hear that so-and-so said he had heard that such-and-such had happened. It would have been impossible to have everyone knowing what was going on ! Sounds great to me !

Sorry I don't have any photos and it doesn't seem right to get something off Google Images, somehow !

BECOMING A NURSERYMAN AND THEREAFTER

Lately I have been reading through a tome that my father left me, about his life from 15 years of age to 82 ! It is truly fascinating to read of the changing faces of pots , the invention of the garden centre concept and the ever so gradual evolution of the nursery, as an industry. Here it is in his words, with mine in italics....

The nursery consisted of 30 acres stretching from the River Torrens at Underdale, to Henley Beach Road. I begin this story in about 1934 when my father, John, was 15. He has been through several introductory months, with his father as his teacher - a tough but good-natured man with a sense of humour, it seems...

I had now learned how to weed, kill slugs and snails, dampen and strip raffia (for tying up plants),use a sharp razor blade to cut off the loose ends of the raffia and finish with a bed of plants looking absolutely perfect, and the basics of watering (all by hand - I will write on this another time).

Next, down at the soil area, Dad introduced me to the 'soil heap' which was really a compost heap where we dumped all weeds, unsold and rubbishy plants,bits of straw swept up from the packing shed and any rubbish that came along (of course plastic hadn't even been invented !).One end of the soil heap was old - it had been dumped there a year or so before. The other end was new - where I'd put my slugs and snails in lime and weeds and other stuff.Well now, the old end set quite hard so it all had to be sifted. To overcome this problem an old mattress was wired onto some wooden poles and the idea was to chop some soil out (sometimes even with a pick or a sharp spade), smash it up a bit with the back of the shovel and heave shovelful after shovelful very strongly against the mattress so that a goodly portion went right through and formed a loose soil mass on the other side. All sorts of things turned up unaccountably on the near side, such as broken pots, glass, kitchenware, long-lost secateurs and the lumps of soil which were too big to go through the mattress. After all this knowledge Dad gave me a rise not only in money but also in status, as this was a primary part of growing good, healthy plants.

I was now given the soil mixture recipe for growing 'general plants and trees'.We had at least 5 special mixtures including those for acidic soil-loving plants, hydrangea soil, palm soil, fern soil and Dad used to make up his own special mix for geralton wax. The idea was to go to various heaps such as hills soil, river loam, Mt Compass peat (which had to be rubbed through a hand sieve, river sand, night soil (which Jeffries brought every year from the sewerage works at Regency Park), spent hops from the brewer, loads of various manures - all out in the rain and weather.

Dad used to say "John, take 2 of this, 4 of that, half a barrow here and there etc", walking to each heap with a barrow and shovel - in mud and slush during winter and with dust everywhere during summer. Now you don't just tip each load out of the barrow. The soil must be spread evenly in layers. When the required number of soil types are in this heap, one must turn the heap over 3 times, spreading each shovel of soil each time in those beautiful layers. Then and not till then, the soil is shovelled into the barrow and wheeled to the potting shed, which was a considerable distance from the soil heap. (Why didn't they put it closer ??Time didn't seem to be an issue.)

In the potting shed were various benches where the soil was shovelled in layers onto a particular bench and finally the soil was ready to use. On looking back, it seems impossible so many plants were potted in a day. Up to 2,000 3inch pots and 1,000 5inch were the order of the day for me (no wonder there was no obesity ! Imagine getting a 15 year old to do that now!) Of course the potter had to go and pick up the pots to be potted, bring in wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of earthenware pots and put them on the potting bench. The plants were then potted and put by the potter, on the potting bench and when too many got in the way, they were picked up again and put on a flat-topped wheelbarrow a few steps away.

You will have realised by now the many, many movements made just to pot 1 plant. Of course, at this moment in my learning to be a nurseryman, I didn't question the wasted effort and time. It was done this way and had been done this way forever and a day.
(I am exhausted just thinking about all this physical work so I will stop here for now. Unfortunately, as I was growing up in the '60s and 70's, I took all this for granted and have barely one photo of the nursery. But I have quite a few things of interest such as this catalogue from 1918. I have reproduced the front and back covers almost life-size).

Spring is Here

Urrbrae High will hold its Old Barn market this Saturday morning (check out the calender for details).

Last month the students had espaliered apple and pear fruit trees for sale.
The students do such great things with the school produce.

I hope you enjoy the photo of these young alpacas in the Urrbrae paddocks.
The new program for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens (A Season in The Gardens Spring) is waiting for you, just click on the link.

There are lots of great events and talks, so check out the program and book in early.

There is even a pram stroll for our newest seedsaver member and his mum.

Well, warm days have arrived and so our daily patterns of garden care change to mulching and the little watering regulations allow.

Here is one of the walks offered in October:

From Earth to Plate: Tasting Australia Guided Walks
Take a guided walk around the gardens to see native and introduced plants that give us
spices, herbs, drinks, jams and fruits. Look and learn about the source of the ingredients
in the foods we love to eat.
When: 2pm daily, Saturday 13th–20th October
Where: outside Visitor Information Centre,
Schomburgk Pavilion
Cost: gold coin donation
Bookings essential – ring 8226 8803

Happy Gardening

Peaches, peas and mulch

The signature tune for the arrival of Spring in my garden is always the flowering of the stone-fruit and citrus trees - almonds, plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, mandarin, orange, lemon and grapefruit. The peaches are pink (photo) while the rest are largely white, though sometimes tinged with pink or orange and yellow.
This last autumn, I planted the peas at the base of some bamboo tepees that had been used for tomatoes last summer, and that I'd left in place. I wasn't sure how they'd stand up, as peas have tiny grasping tendrils, and can't get a grip on a bamboo pole in the same way beans can - by wrapping around it.
Fortunately, with all the pea-straw mulch I'm laying down to hold my winter soil water, I'd plenty of baling twine left over. So Claudia kindly tied some lengths of this tough blue twine horizontally between the bamboos, and the peas are starting to grasp onto them. So now, when the gully winds come, or the great weight of peas I'm hoping for arrives, they won't collapse.
Plenty of other things are flowering too, particularly the radish, kohl rabi and Asian brassicas such as pak choy.

SKILLS TO SHARE

Deb had the great idea of us all sharing not just seeds but also knowledge and skills, that we have built up over our lives. Sometimes we wish we knew how best to go about doing something and usually, out there in the ether, there will be someone only too happy to give us a lesson or demo, if only we could connect .

As a result I have started another document called 'Skills to Share'. Here we can do 2 things - ask for help and offer something ourselves.

The document is still under construction as I have few computer skills but am lucky enough to have helpers at hand, if I can be bothered asking them. In fact anyone who accepts the invitation to join can redo the table I have made or add extra bits if they know how and this would save me sitting here instead of being outside !

I tried to think of something I could offer, to start things off, but I can't think of anything that I know at all ! It is a bit sad, that! So, if you know of anything I could help you with please feel free to add it to the table.

Fairy Mulch

Our garden was established in the late 1870’s and one of the first plantings was a camellia. The camellia dominates the front garden and when we came here 24 years ago the garden was very overgrown. The camellia had grown so large it had, over the years turned the tin on the convex veranda into a concave veranda. Now that we have new gutters it is it is pruned with a chainsaw to keep it out of the gutters. It has never been fertilized or watered in the past 24 years, yet every year it’s covered in wonderful display of red flowers. In time these fall onto the path & form a fairy carpet, when it gets a bit thick & dangerous to walk along I scoop it up & use it on my vegetable gardens as mulch. All that falls under the camellia is left for its benefit & sometimes as it breaks down its sieved & used as potting mix (The oaks planted in1901 also contribute well as both mulch and potting mix)
Truly a gift from the Nature spirits.

SENSE IN THE WATER DEBATE

This is not a skippity doo moment, although it well could be, if I could get over being so furious with this blastard government and their crazy water rules.... There I was, standing at the bench cutting up lots of vegies for tonight's soup - all from MY garden - pumpkin, celery, fennel, parsley, garlic,and I haven't finished yet, when I heard a bloke on the radio talking about that horse flu and how it will effect businesses all over Australia and that some people are going to sue the quarantine office for letting it in. Well, I think we would all be better off without racing of horses or cars and betting of any kind. I would bet there are no restrictions on the use of water at those stables and what is that producing ??
Someone from SA Water was on the other day explaining how, in the last year, Adelaide households had used 14% less water than in previous years. And that it is estimated that gardens use 30 - 40% of total household usage.What is more is that of all the water taken from the Murray, the whole of Adelaide (industry and all) uses 9%. So what this means is that water restrictions as they stand used 14% less of the 9% we usually use and, of this, about 1/3 went on gardens. This amounts to about 1/2 of that wasted in leaks in infrastructure. Basically it is pointless and ruining gardens and green spaces that mean so much to a lot of people.The only people forced to save water currently, in the city, are gardeners. Businesses, schools, industry and offices etc have no restrictions.

My idea is to force everyone connected to a meter to reduce their water consumption (say, based on the average of the last 5 years) by a fixed percentage, maybe 20%. That means every meter - all office blocks (where people often shower and toilets are usually not even dual-flush),
all industries (where water is used once and then goes down the drain into the Torrens etc), all restaurants, shopping centres, all households....EVERYONE. This way we could use it how we like AND we would save huge amounts because industry will always find ways to comply when they really have to.

Cheltenham racecourse should become a wetland and possibly all 17 of those schools they want to close down could too. This would make wonderful spaces for wildlife, instead of for cramped housing full of hard surfaces and more problems. Also all storm water should be cleaned to an industry standard and piped off to make concrete, steel, wash machinery etc and potable water should be kept for the purposes it is meant to be for a civilised society.

What do you think? Why are we accepting all the blame for this water thing when we are the ones restoring the soil to a better condition than ever, burying carbon, planting trees and growing our own food and caring for our earth ?

Andrew, there are no photos because I want people to read and imagine..

MORE ON EGGS AND CHOOKS

Funny thing is that I also wanted to write about eggs, even before I saw Andrew's delicious idea. I have just finished eating a boiled egg, which was laid only seconds before I collected it from the nesting box. It was so hot and still had a spot of liquid on it when I picked it up. I brought it in and put it into the pot right there and then and wondered if it needed slightly less cooking because it was already hot on the outside. Interesting how the eggs are laid hot, but uncooked ! After 5 minutes (usually I cook them for 6 when they are this large) in barely on-the-verge-of-bubbling water I extracted it and got into it, cutting off the top and popping in a thin sliver of cold butter - a refined skill which allows none of the insides to dribble out down the outside of the shell ! I didn't have toast with it because the taste of a fresh, organic egg is unsurpassed and should not be adulterated with other flavours (except for Paris Creek butter). The yolks of such good eggs are orange and very rich in flavour and the white is a total contrast. I would like to invite people to my place for breakfast and maybe Andrew and I could cook up a storm ! Yes this is a photo of my egg, not a google image!



Chooks are so easy to look after and so friendly and surprisingly different in personalities one from the next. Almost anyone could have , say, 3 or 4. Deb is very generous with her feeding regime for her poultry but I just give mine a mixed grain that contains no animal by-products and no added vitamins or any other additives . Apart from that they get all the weeds from the garden and kitchen scraps( you get to know what they like). The brown hybrids lay continuously for at least 2 years and I usually plan on getting 2 more each year to account for those that escape or die or stop laying. That way I seem to keep a group of 3 - 5 all the time.
Fox baits are often laid up here in the golf course opposite us and in the Cleland Park land just around the corner and this is why I think we don't have trouble with them, even though I often see them at the bottom of the road wandering along in broad daylight ! I didn't know this when I got them so, after a lot of reading, we made a double entrance into their sleeping quarters and each time the chooks have to bob down and squeeze through a narrow space to get into the inner section where they go, by themselves, at night. The hutches are framed with metal and sitting on a double width of bricks so nothing can dig under.
I have fenced off a section down one side where I have let weeds grow. Later in summer, when there won't be much grass left in the chook run I will let them in here now and then. I hope to keep this patch watered and green for them as long as I can.

Here is a picture that son Alex emailed to me with the caption "a better way to stop the chooks getting out"!

No matter what you do the chooks WILL get out when it is most inconvenient !

WORLD WIDE CELEBRATIONS

Here is a photo that Roger , Mr KGI (not KGB!), sent us showing how some people in India celebrated the day. It is so good to have a sense of celebration about something so fundemental as growing food and I hope our participation will be seen by people in other countries, through our blog. I sent him a few of our photos but not the secret ones for the competition!

I hope everyone had fun and I was very grateful that there seemed to be an enthusiasm to design a letter for our entry! Having it at Nirvana was beaut and so much better than the Bot. Gardens. Thanks Deb for all your efforts with the signs and the whole set-up !

A Merry Meadow Feast at Nirvana

Spring sprang as we gathered at Nirvanas Willow House with hosts Deb and Quentin to celebrate KGI International Kitchen Garden Day.
The picnic turned out to be a home grown, home cooked, home dried and home brewed FEAST.
Where shall I start - Quentin cooked "skippy" burgers (kangaroo burgers) then there was Deb's sour dough rolls and platter of home grown and dried fruits and nuts.
Deb and friends provided there home grown and made wines - elderberry, raspberry, shiraz and quince and rhubarb grappa!.
Then there was Warrigal spinach and home grown pine nuts on crispy bread triangles, home grown bowls of green salads, broccoli brown rice salad, yummy organic beef and vegetable soup, roast chicken and home grown and spiced olives, cheese and gherkin sandwiches and blue cheese and crackers.
And we had cake - Kate's orange, orange ,orange cake, carrot and sultana cake, chocolate filled muffins and yummy almond nut slice.
It was a fantastic day to celebrate our wonderful kitchen gardens.
Click on Photos to see more pictures of the day.

Sunday Breakfast Onion-Eggs

Around here, I'm the gardener, not the cook!
But on Sunday mornings, I cook breakfast for the cook, and she might deign to give me a hand straight afterwards in the garden.
So here's my own simple recipe for a cooked breakfast.
Gently heat olive oil and butter in a fry pan big enough to feed all guys two fried eggs, and all gals one fried egg.
Chop onion and garlic sufficient to cover the bottom of the pan completely, and saute gently on low heat until the onion turns clear (add spices to taste, such as sweet chili sauce, herb salt, etc). Then crack the eggs on top of the onion base, cover the fry pan and simmer gently. This way, the eggs never burn. Egg yolks should be runny, and the whites just set, before serving.
Divide up and serve on brown buttered toast, and add organic Worcestershire Sauce, as shown.
An alternative breakfast uses steamed silverbeet with herb salt, topped with eggs poached in the steaming water.

KGI International Kitchen Garden Day

Good morning all, this is the first time we will celebrate IKG Day as our blog is not even one year old yet .
Last year I did not have any idea that this rich and colourful tapestry of seedsaving groups, KGI , blogs like Foodshed and much, much more was waiting for us.
So it is with gratitude today that I will remember all Kitchen gardeners from around the world.
People who while I write this will be busy in there gardens and busy preparing good healthy home grown foods for their families and friends.

If you have time click on What is a Kitchen Gardener

Sometimes we need to slow down and remember the fragility of life.

For me I would like to plan (as the gardener does) to try to cultivate other things that can be learnt while gardening.
Things like patience, compassion, gratitude and generosity of spirit.
Well that's the plan !!!
Gardens are great places to be.

So have a great day today and every day.

Exquisite Little Things in the Garden

Scrabbling around in the soil this morning I looked up at something tickling my head and came eyeball to pistil with a beautiful little rocket flower. It was so delicate and precise it made me want to go skippity do around the garden so I grabbed my camera and took a few shots of the flowers & buds eagerly waiting for spring.

The rest of the photos can be seen here: Exquisite Little Things in the Garden

Hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them.

August in the garden

It all seems so possible this time of the year when the soil is damp and delicious, the sun is shining but not hot and the whole garden sparkles with life and I darn well skipped across the kitchen again !! Lets not worry about drought just now; lets be grateful for what we have and the fact that I have grown all this without adding any water except to get them started, months ago. Please look at the rest of the photos I put on the link if you need to get a handle on what to grow during winter next year. So often I have tried to get people interested in growing food in winter but they seem to think we live in northern Europe or Canada where it is -30 and metres deep in snow. There is not an inch of unplanted ground in my vegie patch because you can plant right up to the edge - it won't dry out until it gets into the 20's -and you can forget the dripper lines !
Everything looks so good in the damp soil. ( Why won't these photos go in nicely like Deb's do ??)

Best fennel crop I have ever grown.

Below is a little solar panel that powers an uplight that I have shining up into the tree ferns all night long.........The panel has a 4m long cord so I can get it to a sunny spot and still have the light in the shade.



Here is my fast-growing perpetual celery now clothed in a juice carton to blanch the stems.





This chook thought I was inside - it is standing on the outside window sill, but I was standing behind it taking the photo.

We have cracked 300 on the hit counter !! In 9 days !! Grow-off, Show-off here we come.

Introducing Peter

Peter was born Saturday 11th August weighing 3180g and 50cm long. We're both healthy and I'm having a wonderful time learning how to be mum. We spent our first day in the garden together today. Weeds arrived, quite a few seedlings dried out and my pak choy and broccoli all flowered while I was in hospital. To cap it off, the chooks broke into my vegie patch once I was home and dug out any seedlings that did survive. However my beans have grown really fast and my fruit trees and much of the rest of my garden is suddenly in flower and looking lovely.

I still have potatoes ready to plant but haven't been able to dig the holes for them yet. Is it too late to plant them this year? Will they keep until next season?

KGI International Kitchen Garden Day 2007

KGI International Kitchen Garden Day 2007 Sunday 26th August.

Beginning at 12 noon, with a tour of the vegie garden and hot-house.

Followed by a picnic - bring food to share - made from something in your garden if possible, a rug, a story, and a great big smile.

Check your emails for details - there is important extra, secret information in that email I just sent you (24/08/07).

Looking forward to seeing everyone...................

BUTTERFLY GARDENING

Here is a beautiful website about what to plant to attract butterflies to your area . It is specific to the area of Adelaide that you live in and shows photos of the butterflies you might see and all the plants you could use to attract them. The map is a little cryptic but once you work it out the information it gives you is fabulous. I had no idea that here at Mt Osmond there are so many butterflies just looking for somewhere to live. I am going to print out the photos of the butterflies so I can look out for them and the list of plants so I can take this into account when I want to fill a space in the garden.

http://www.butterflygardening.net.au/

We Went To Nirvana and Back

A picture paints a thousand words, so we have many pictures and words for you to simply fly away with. Click on the Photos link to see more.

When the water is all gone...

This past week took me to the headwaters of Australia's largest river, the River Murray, and the source of much of Adelaide's water supply. Critical, then, for us gardeners!

A thousand kilometres from Adelaide, the Hume Weir is the largest dam on the River Murray, and holds 3,038 Gigalitres of water when full. It's now down to less than 2% of capacity.

Back in February 2007, it looked like the top photo. I drove around it, and it looked much like the bottom photo - lots of dead trees standing in mud. And this at the end of winter...

On the drive back to Adelaide, I gave some thought to how this will affect all of us here in Adelaide, especially if Spring rains in the Snowy Mountains result in anything less than major floods (normal rains won't see us recover from a drought-ravaged catchment).

This past winter, I've collected 60,000 litres of rainwater off my house roof; how best to use it?

So far I've spent $300 buying pea-straw (50 bales, now at $6 per bale, and soon to be unavailable because of the drought). I'll lay this in thick sheets of mulch over the vegetable garden, on top of T-Tapes, which are a form of sub-surface dripper that lays down wet lines in the soil along which I will grow my summer vegetables. With so little rainwater (no more than 6 weeks worth in my normal garden), I will need to stretch this out by not using overhead sprinklers, where so much is lost to evaporation.

I will also have to plan my crops, and grow only essential stuff. We must expect that the food bill will go through the roof following the drought; ours is already costing us about $100 per week for fruit alone.

We had a taste of water restrictions last year. I believe that was a mere prelude to harsher restrictions yet to come. All along my travels this past week, I came across signs in townships advising of Level 4 and 5 water restrictions applying; and this towards the end of winter.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going! Now's the time to be planning your Spring plantings, with mulch and water saving techniques uppermost in your mind.

TIME TO GO OUTSIDE

Its time to go outside as the shopping has been done,

Its time to feel the breeze and have a little fun,

It would be easy to sit down and have another cuppa

Instead of working hard to provide us with our supper,

But the earth and sky they draw me

And the chooks I want to see

So many seeds I want to sow

And vegetables I long to grow,

I can't stay inside a moment longer

This feeling does grow ever stronger....

BLOG HIT COUNTER

I have put a hit counter at the bottom of the blog page so we can see how many people have visited our blog and how many are currently online. If it is only Maggie and me then I will be very disappointed ! Just scroll right down to the bottom and you will see it there.This is a free counter so doesn't do fancy things like only counting you once a day, it is just the total. ShinyStat is the brand name. It is at the bottom of the page because it does not fit in nicely when it is put anywhere else. So far the 2 are both me trying to get it looking right !

There is so much free stuff for people to use these days and it is fun trying to incorporate it all into our little blog. If you know of anything else we could adapt, just let me know.