Day 3 - Flower garden

Thank you for your supportive comments yesterday, I'm glad that I'm not alone in the feelings I expressed. The girls ended up sleeping for 1.5 hours, which was enough of a recharge for all of us to enjoy our afternoon together. I even got to prepare dinner without girls underfoot.


I took a quick walk around the flower garden this morning. Reliving my past Friday flowers posts. Despite not receiving as much attention as it needs, the garden is rewarding us with spring blooms. The daffodils and snowbells are over, the tulips are at their peak and the ranunculus is just starting to get going. The new flush of growth on the box hedge is ridiculously green.


Queen of the Nights in the garden.

Ad Rem tulips.

Golden Parade and Golden Apeldorn tulips.

Happy weekend!

Day 1 - Queen of the Night

Well so far so good. Today I start Blogtober Fest.

We planted tulips in the flower garden over two years, but we didn't lift the bulbs the second year. The varieties have responded to our treatment quite variably, but the tulip that has thrived is the evocatively named Queen of the Night. It has tripled in number and this is excellent as it is our favourite. The deep black/purple blooms look striking in the garden. When Sunday was going to be unseasonably warm and windy I rushed out and picked a bunch for our table. We have been enjoying them ever since, their upright form gradually bending as they continue to elongate in the vase to a more casual arrangement.

Friday Flowers

Today has been a long day.
Claudia woke us at 5am with persistent whining. This is not totally unusual, she jumped up on Rob, yet we still ignored her. She even tried to wake me (this is unheard of, she knows I won't usually get up). Rob looked out the window and saw some wallabies on the lawn in front of the hut and we assumed she wanted to chase them.
The next thing we heard as we tried to fall back asleep was Niagara Falls. Poor Claudia must have been absolutely busting! Luckily she picked the dog bed in our breezeway (with a concrete floor) as a spot to christen when her silly humans wouldn't let her out. We felt so mean.

Then we had to take our car to be serviced, something we always put off as long as we can (maybe we have learnt our lesson here), the brakes haven't been all that great recently. Sure enough they needed replacing, ahem as well as all four tyres. Hmm. An expensive day out for the commodore wagon.

So I wil distract myself and you with pretty photos of the block and garden.

Rob took these last weekend, while I was still snoozing.

I have saved the best tulip to last, the Queen of the Night has just started to flower.

The ranunculus is just starting to get going too.

And these two? They love their early morning rambles in the wet grass, wrestling with each other and munching on fresh wallaby poop.

This weekend I need to get writing, I'm joining in with Sarah's Good Mail Club, so I need to decorate some envelopes and write a few notes. Also on the agenda is spring cleaning the shed and the pantry, both of which have gotten out of control over winter.
What do you have planned this weekend?

Friday Flowers

Tasmanian spring weather - I don't know how we forget it from year to year. Yesterday was warm (well for Tasmania) but the wind picked up early. I found out via the ABC news website that power went out at the hut at about 10am. Luckily we'd already been invited to my parents for dinner- as a hut without power wasn't that appealing!
The wind hadn't died down much during the day, when we drove home at 8pm we came across the electric company work team dealing with a tree and power lines just down the road from us. The hut was in darkness. After Rob rescued the Weber bbq (it had travelled around the side of the shed on it's trolley!) and some seedlings growing in trays we lit some candles and headed to bed.
This morning we were able to survey the damage. One tray of seedlings (quite sadly some Tangerine fluff poppies I'd won from Phoebe) had flown off in the wind, a few of our eucalypts had been damaged on the fenceline, and most distressing was our big eucalypt we'd been growing near the dam for the last 5 years has lost a significant amount of the main leader trunk (it had already suffered in the terrible wind a few weeks ago, but it's height has been reduced by half now!) The broad beans and peas look a bit worse for wear too, but hopefully they perk back up.
Somehow my tulips survived. Which is something, as a few warm days had brought on the flowering. Thankfully Rob took these photos last week in some morning sunlight.

The vegetable garden is looking so promising, everything is so green.

With any luck the weekend will at least be less windy, and best of all daylight savings starts this weekend!

Friday flowers {tulips}

Today dawned grey and a little gloomy, especially in comparison to yesterday, which was a lovely, balmy, 24 degrees. About the perfect temperature! This morning I quickly snapped some photos for a Friday post, only with my iPhone, so hopefully the weather is kind enough over the weekend to take some with the real camera too.

I had looked into my flower garden yesterday morning, and noticed that the yellow Golden Parade tulips were looking to start soon, but one warm day was enough to tip a few into blooming, along with the first of the red Ad Rem tulips.

It's so lovely to see them from our bedroom window each morning (although I'm not sure I need to check them at 5.50am thank you very much Claudia).

I now am impatiently waiting for the other tulips to start properly (the Queen of the Night and the rest of the Ad Rem's) and my ranunculus.

I'm already planning next year's spring planting, with more tulips, anemones and ranunculus and some daffodils. We do have some daffodils, but I planted them under the hazel and quince trees out in the paddock. Apparently they are tasty for wallabies so they're not exactly thriving.

Happy weekend.

Friday Flowers

Finally something to share. I meant to take photos the week before but the weather was so terrible I didn't get a chance to.

My spring flowers have started. Bright red tulips, deep blue anemones, lipstick pink anemones, white anemones, pale blue spring star flowers, nodding Hellebores, and just the last couple of days the pink Claudia tulips have started to expand and colour.

It's so nice to look out our bedroom window and see them in the morning. The blue wrens have been a bit confused by the blue anemones. The poor males are having to compete with 50 bright blue anemones, to which the females are irresistibly drawn!



The vegetable garden is starting to get going too. We're eating fresh silver beet several times a week. The broad beans and peas are flowering which hints of tasty fresh beans and peas to come.
Garlic and shallots are hopefully fattening up beneath the soil, if their leaves are any indication of their happiness.
The carrots and parsnips are starting to actually grow so we may get a few of those too sometime soon.
We're even eating the tops of the Savoy cabbages (we put them in a little late to actually have cabbages).
We're hoping to put some new lettuce seedlings in soon, as well as a new sowing of rocket.
Fine little asparagus spears have emerged, but we will have to be good and let them be for this year. I'm already looking forward to our first harvest of home grown asparagus next year. One of my favourite vegetables.
The orchard has started to bloom, almonds, the peach and nectarine, plums, apricots and now the apples. The alpine strawberries are flowering and expanding too.

Hopefully Friday flowers is now back for the season!

Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Growing and planning

A cool wet week at the hut.
The little seedlings are growing well in the vegetable garden, broad beans and peas, the lettuce has slowed down, but we thought we might harvest some mini rocket for a little salad with dinner tonight. I'm not usually into the micro-herbs thing. We bought a Bruny Island cheese yesterday, a 1792, and it is beyond ripe, it was so smelly we put it in two plastic containers, which may now need to be thrown away! But I'm sure it will taste fine. Friday cheese night is back!


I couldn't resist a little more garden retail therapy this week, and justified it by purchasing vegetables and flowers, it's so not frivolous that way.
So I ordered some (ahem 48) Mary Washington asparagus crowns, some red Ad Rem tulips, Golden Parade tulips, red ranunculus, and Gerbera Garvinea plants in red, pink, yellow and white. Apparently they are cold hardy. I haven't seen any leaves pop up yet from the other bulbs we planted, but I guess I'm being impatient.


All images courtesy of Garden Express and Tesselaar.
It's a big weekend coming up, tomorrow is my niece's 1st birthday party! I can't believe it's a year since I went to visit my sister in hospital and got to hold her tiny baby, less than a day old. She and I are making a Giggle and Hoot birthday cake, tonight we're decorating the top of it. I hope it works out ok.
I might drop by here over the weekend, the weather is shaping up for an inside kind of weekend.

Garden planning {bulbs and roses}

I am so ready for this weekend. This week has been all over the place for me. Work is busy, and I had a few days that were tough to get through. I try not to let work stress me out too much, but this week it did. But by the end of the week I've found some perspective, so it will be ok.

During the week to keep my spirits up, I indulged in some online retail therapy.
My flower garden looks fantastic, but apart from my lilies it's rather empty. So firstly I ordered 250 tulips, 300 anemones and 240 ranunculus bulbs from Tesselaar.

All of these images are from the Tesselaar website.

Next were my roses. Now Rob and I don't see eye to eye on roses. He loathes them with a passion. I however, would love to be able to pick roses for the hut and for friends and family. This partly led to the separation of the two gardens, so that Rob would not have to go near the roses! They are in the u shaped bed that surround the quadrant beds, so even I won't catch myself on a thorn whilst gardening around them. For the last 5 years I have sent away for the Treloar catalogue, which is in colour and mulled over the roses writing lists of my favourites. But eventually I narrowed it down to 40. Ten each of red, pink, yellow and white. They are all hybrid teas, which I know not everybody appreciates, but at the moment that's what I'd like. We certainly have room later to expand!

All of these images are from the Treloar website.

Last Saturday we had another load of soil delivered and Rob finished his vegetable beds. Although not the best time for planting we couldn't resist, so we planted some self-seeded Speckles lettuce and coriander. On Sunday we visited the Tas Farmgate market and picked up some chinese celery, dill and broccoli seedlings from Paulette at Provenance Growers. We also sowed carrot, parsnip, silverbeet, spinach, broad bean, rocket and savoy cabbage seed.

Watering in the speckles lettuce.

Lastly I just thought I'd share a little diagram I drew of our dream harvest year. I've joined in Chantelle's  April Photo-a-day challenge. Today's photo was something I drew. Believe me I don't draw very often. But this was fun. Not so sure about the likelihood of growing tangelos and mandarins in Tasmania, but the rest should be doable.

Happy weekend, I hope to drop by your blogs over the next few days, sorry I've been a bit slack at commenting this week. Well it must be almost beer o'clock! Yippee.