Orchards and a Birdsnest

It rained a lot yesterday. I meant to take a photo of our new little broad bean seedlings popping up, but I ran out of time this morning.
On Wednesday we ordered nine new fruit trees for our collection from here, they were:
Gravenstein apple
Huonville crabapple
Mcintosh apple
Coe's Golden Drop plum
Sloe
Damson
Fullers quince
Van de Man quince
Medlar
We had stalked the website for weeks waiting for the new trees to be available and as soon as the site was live we went crazy.

Yesterday I was killing some time in Hobart while poor Rob had a dental appointment. I was looking for a top to go with my raspberry skirt I found in a second hand shop a couple of months ago. I had a very specific colour of blue in mind. I went into Espirit and found several tops in the perfect blue. But sadly not in my size.
I was a little disappointed, but when I got back to a computer I looked up Birdsnest, and found the top in my size.  It was my first purchase via Birdsnest, and I clicked the button at about 11am . I can't tell you how delighted I was to find it already at my doorstep this morning. But it was not just the promptness, or the cute bag it came in that made me happy. I can't believe they took the time to write me a personalised handwritten note. This is by far the best service I've had in person or online, and it has made my day. (I've sent them an email to let them know this). I like to recognise people or companies that impress me, and these girls are doing a fantastic job.
There was also a big box full of my bulbs, so we'll be busy planting in my flower garden this weekend.
What are you up to this 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.