WALKING IN A WEDNESDAY WONDERLAND

My life is so predictable. It is Wednesday and that means gardening day with my garden group. Today it was at Sally's. We just did some weeding and then some more weeding and then some more weeding...so I went off and took some photos of some pretty stuff in Sally's garden for a few minutes. We did have other, grander plans to do with the chook run but it all needed more time and thought.

Not even a photo of the vegetable garden extension, I now realise! But Sally did have the skulls of 2 cows and a koala under her lemon tree!

Now, don't ask me why Sally has these...she has some sheep on her 10 acres and there are a few sheep skulls around, but cows? I didn't ask - my friends seem to do strange things!

In the photo at right, you can see the top jaw of a koala that died at her back door during that extreme heat we had in March. Very sad but very interesting - I have never seen one of these before either! They only eat the leaves of a few different gum trees, and nothing else, so their mouth structure is adapted especially for that.

Sally made an absolutely outstanding hazelnut syrup cake - I have put this recipe on the Gardeners Gastronomy . It is one of the best cakes I have ever eaten! And I can tell you that this garden group has made some pretty amazing cakes, every Wednesday, over the 11 or so years I have been a part of it....we should write a book, maybe.

Then I drove over to Glenys',which is only about 10 minutes from Sally's, as I am supposed to be looking after her garden at the moment!

Now, Glenys is the queen of the red cabbage! I love going to her place and drifting around the garden when she is not there and checking out all the little things that are happening that I don't always see when we are there for gardening as a group.
I thought of Ian's beautiful post where he talked about all the friends he chatted with, in his head, while weeding and as I started to weed Glenys' vegie patch, in the welcome warmth of the winter sunshine, I felt she was there with me and it was really pretty special.

On my way down to the berry patch I managed to tease Glenys a bit, as I tend to do because she is so gullible, until she laughed and realised I was at it again! Poor Glenys!

...One Wednesday we made this pond for Glenys and it is looking pretty good, I think....

As I stood there alone, surrounded by all the plants and trees and projects that we have helped Glenys with over the last couple of years, I felt again a close connection with these friends and their gardens and with the essence of life itself.

These types of friendships are rare. If you are lucky enough to have some, take time to envelope yourself in them and treasure them with all your heart.

On the way home I passed this field of leeks, in the Piccadilly Valley, growing almost right up to the edge of the road

Community Gardening

Look at this great service the Unley council provides. Are you able to contribute to it? If you live somewhere else, perhaps you could set up something similar in your area.

YACON AND YACKIN' ON

The other day I found another blog that I think is very nice and the first post I read was about the harvesting of yacon. It is a very timely thing because I have been wondering about that myself. Read about yacon there. And check out the rest of the blog too.

Funnily enough I have been meaning to say something about yacon for about a week and keep forgetting. So here it is : if you have never felt the young leaves of yacon and you have it in your garden, now, this very minute is the time to do it. People usually grow vegetables to eat them and herbs to eat or make into teas or lotions and potions but there are some more, rather subtle ways of enjoying some of these plants.

Of course some have glorious scents and some have surprisingly awful scents, and the colours can just make you gasp but I am a kind of touchy feely kind of person and I like to run my fingers over things, especially all the parts of plants. Things are not always what they appear to be in the plant kingdom, I have discovered. Yacon is one such case. The leaves get quite large and they just feel like....leaves! But the new growth, which looks exactly the same, is indescribably beautiful to touch. Every day now I go and feel those leaves because I can't believe how gorgeously ......indescribable they are!

My 3 favourite scents are the blossom of the lemon tree and that of the deciduous....oh no, such a nice name it has and I can't quite remember it but I will in a minute....yes, it is Philadelphus (or mock orange but it is nothing like orange blossom scent!) and also the Acacia iteaphylla (Flinders Ranges Wattle).

My favourite vegetables for their brilliant colours are those amazing red and yellow capsicums and purple stripey eggplants that I photographed during summer. But for me the one plant I grow especially for its colour and form is that lime-green chicory with the curled central leaves, from a couple of posts ago. A whole bed of that would be breath-taking. The leaves are rarely eaten by anything and grow large and soft and gorgeous.

Also I am delighted and amused by the crimson okra plants with their oak-like leaves, soft creamy hibiscus flowers and deep crimson pods pointing firmly upwards, when you'd think they would hang down!

There are many, many wonderful things about growing food and I think vegetable gardens and fruit trees should be more appreciated for the beauty that can be found in them....

I have written a lovely post about gardening at Sally's on Wednesday but now Live Writer won't let me publish it! Grrrr...

More Splashing Ducks At The Adelaide Himeji Garden by Maggie

Ripples of bushes
Ripples of leaves
Ripples of color
Ripples of light
Ripples of water
Ripples of stone
Ripples of stillness
Ripples of calm

Click on the Photos link (under Our Links) to see more of The Adelaide Himeji Garden.
A garden of imagination and relaxing pleasure, rocks, ducks, flowing water, wonderful trees and water plants.
See where Kate's ducks go for a big splash day or to just chill out.
You will find the garden on South Terrace near Hutt Street.

Click here to read some history of the garden when it was presented on Postcards.

TUESDAY IN MY.... LIFE

Well, I was going to put various things in the heading, after "in my.." but they amounted to stuff in my life, so there you go, that's that explained. Useful!

It is funny how the amount of enthusiasm you (or maybe its just me) have at the end of a day is quite substantially influenced by how your day has been. Mine has been a very skippity-doo kind of day and so I feel deliriously "pumped", as son Hugh would say. I am pretty sure it is not because I slept well or ate well or any other of a million scientific explanations but the fact of the whole matter is that good day = good feeling = lots of energy. I wish it was the beginning of the day, because there is not much left of it to put my energy into, at least not outside where I love to be, as it is dark already.

At last I finished the repiquage (pricking out, thanks Ian!) of my second sowing of Bill's baclueie lettuce and now they rest happily in the garden between some fennel and some beetroot, all nicely watered in with worm juice. Good night sweet lettuce....This week I have been madly pricking out, potting up and sometimes planting out all sorts of seedlings that seem to be ready to burst out of the foam boxes.See the side bar for details. Of course, before I could plant them out, I had to remove any left-over bits and pieces from the space, like spinach and fennel from last year that was just there doing nothing but forming part of my theory of naturalisation of this ecosystem called the vegetable garden. I don't take things out until they have completed their life-cycle and only then if I have something else to put in - except of course if I eat it; but I mean things like fennel and spinach that have gone to seed and then even died off. It is habitat for something so why remove it? My garden is messy.

As yet not planted out are about a thousand cavolo nero (kale) seedlings that I have kept in foam boxes, away from the vegetable garden so they didn't get attacked by aphids and white fly. This proved to be a wise move as they look so much better than those raised in the garden. Now it is nice and cold overnight, the aphids and white fly have gone so I think it will be safe to plant them out, if only I can find somewhere to put them. Still in foam boxes and not quite ready to plant out are some leeks, some small cabbages from Ken in NSW who I sent some other seeds to as a swap, and some White Gwenda lettuce from Diana via Cath's garden. Evidently this is Cath's favourite so I will see how it goes for me. Mostly I grow Joy's cos and oakleaf.

3 or so paragraphs about the 1 hour in the garden and you are no doubt wondering what are the other things that have made me feel so totally, fabulously and surprisingly skippity doo today - really for the first time this year! Well, I spent a few hours this morning with a friend and we had a great time together; laughing and carrying on like school girls! It has stayed with me all day and added something to all the other good bits. Next, I finally got some horrible administration out of the way that I have been meaning to do for ages and in the end took less than 2 hours. Why I didn't do it ages ago I have no idea. Lazy, I guess. Then I went to Italian...and did more about food and liking it and wanting to do all sorts of verbs, like travel and cook and ride a bike and do gardening. I had to concentrate pretty hard and didn't have time to make the lady laugh, who sits next to me!

I am heating something up for dinner so consequently that means I can spend more time here, writing this. Again I wish I had done this in Live Writer but at first I didn't intend to put in any photos. The Cootamundrra wattle is just beginning to flower - and looks all lacy and soft, weighed almost down to the ground with yellow flowers. I know it is actually a weed here in SA and we have removed all the others, but this one stays for the moment as it separates the garden from the road. Then there is a leukodendron - I love those red ones called 'Safari Sunset', and some ordinary yet lovely pansies I bought in a fanciful moment recently. There is a zucchini plant that has come up, rebelliously, and is producing lots of lovely, cruchy little zucchinis that I have been eating raw like apples, when I am in the garden.I love a good rebellion; there should be more of them but people have got so accepting of things and so ordinary...shut-up Kate. OK, sorry... The red flowering shrub is....a suckering pest of a thing that I can't seem to be able to kill, despite lots of attempts, but still beautiful and called....my mind has gone blank...now on Wednesday morning I remember it is Tecoma capensis (I think)!

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Sometimes my life is skippity-doo.... let your imagination take you there too.

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A WHOLE LOT OF FLIRTING....

Around my place at the moment the flirting that is going on is reaching unprecedented levels! You see, here in Adelaide we have a range of ducks - native and exotic - and they are getting up to a lot of mischief; so much so that I heard on the radio a while back that all sorts of cross-breeding is happening that hasn't happened nearly so much before. I live opposite a golf course where there is a large dam, so there are lots of water ducks of various sorts living around this area. Also, being surrounded by some native bushland and lots of big gum trees, there are also wood ducks.

Never a day goes by when the wood ducks, in particular, are not out flirting with each other; the males often almost falling off the gum tree branches in their desire to impress prospective partners of their agility and whatever else female ducks find attractive. First comes a faint male twitter....Hi gorgeous one, in distant tree from a tree far-off across the golf course. Sooner or later I hear a female reply that says something like....I am here but I am busy building a nest....Then there is some movement that catches my eye and I see the male has moved to a closer tree and calls ...Hi again. I was just passing and thought you might need a hand with your nest.... She thinks....How sweet. Maybe I could use a bit of help...but she says...Thank you that would be good but really I can manage by myself. Anyway, what have you got to offer that is better than all the other male ducks?....Now, he preens his feathers, straightens his tie and flies across to a branch of her tree and answers... Well, I can protect you from all the dangers of being a wood duck in this big, wide world. And now I can see how beautiful you are I hope we can get together more often, and be friends, and maybe ......She is not easily fooled by his suave talk but he does sound rather wonderful and so she asks him to come closer for a chat, beak to beak.....All seems to be going well until he gets just a little bit too familiar and suddenly, without any explanation, she flies off and leaves him a little bemused but even more determined to succeed.....This scene evolves, with lots of chatting and laughter and different types of duck-talk, and one day in the future I will see a whole tribe of baby wood ducks waddling about and know that somewhere she found love. Whether or not it was with the kind, flirtatious duck or a strong, handsome duck, we will never know...

There are some birds that like to have a bit more excitement in their lives than just the one partner and even once the babies are born, they are off chasing females from every corner of their world. I saw a TV programme about them recently. Dad says to Mum...Darling, I am just off down to that new tree I told you about to get some treats for the children....She calls back, while stopping the babies from falling out of the nest...OK, take your time and maybe you could call in and pick up some worms while you are out.....He flies off, does a big arc around the forest and lands just a few trees away from his family, where a younger female greets him and leads him to a hole in the tree....Meanwhile, back home the wife is entertaining a visiting male in the same way, who has been waiting patiently for the husband to leave in order to approach...Sometimes, as they showed on TV, the husband returns before the other male has left and a lot of explaining has to be done to avoid a nasty confrontation.These birds have one mate for life, that they live with, but every year they flirt and carry on with several other birds, just for the hell of it.

Then there are the ducks that mate in our pool - who knows if they are the same couples or individual ducks with various partners, often they look quite different to each other - but there is lot of it going on. Quite a few of the ducks around Adelaide are a cross between native and exotic now, as I explained before.....so obviously humans are not the only species that sometimes takes a chance and does a bit of flirting here and there!

RELEARNING THE LOST ART OF SURVIVAL

For many reasons some of the peoples of the world have lost the art of growing their own food. Their land has been in a war zone and decimated, their land has been taken over by multi-national agri-business, their land has been subject to flood, drought or other natural disasters or they have lost knowledgeable family members to AIDS or other diseases. These people want to help themselves and not rely on food aid from afar but they don't have the means to get started.

So Kitchen Gardeners International have identified such a group of villagers in Kenya and want to raise a small amount of funds to give these people a new chance to feed themselves and their families. Feeding themselves is like feeding ourselves - there are so many benefits to individuals, family groups and whole communities. I have written about that once or twice before.

So, please go to this link and read for yourself what your small donation can do for these people who need a tiny bit of help from us to get started growing their own food. KGI wants to increase the power of the "I" in KGI so that all kitchen gardeners on our planet can help each other re-learn the lost arts of survival, starting today and leading into the future.

Life is good. Let's share it.

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