Sitting pretty

I've got rather a lot of work on at the moment, which is keeping me beak down and tail feathers up, so to speak.

It's a rather nice job with lots of words about wool and woolly events that, unfortunately, makes me want to stop working and start playing with the actual stuff.

Writing's a bit like knitting: one word or stitch at a time will result in something whole.

I figure if a couple of doves can sit in the tree outside my desk window for what seems hours on end, I can sit on my chair and keep tapping away.

Or maybe I'm trying to pull the wool over my eyes with that one.

Red mist

My tomato growing days are over. The Grosse Lisse was floury. Ditto for Mama's Delight. Still waiting on the Tommy Toe and Black Russian to ripen, but don't have high hopes. Even worse than the texture, though, is the battle of the fruit fly. Too disheartening to go through all that planting and watering to discover motley little holes throughout the crop and the creator of the holes having a little rest of the biggest tomato after all its hard work. I shake my first at its awful twitchy little wings but it just sits there. Not worth getting angry over. I give up.

Next year, I will just buy tomatoes from the farmers' markets at the height of summer when they're juicy, perfect and cheap. Which is what I've been making my daily Greek salad lunches from. To me, a Greek salad is like summer in a bowl, and as there are only a few days of summer left, I raise my glass to it. At least the cucumbers were ours.

The only variety to have worked so far is the Tomato Berry, but I'm not sure all that water and garden space can be justified on two handfuls of cherry tomatoes - so goodbye to those too. If I adapted the cost-per-wear fashion equation for these I may be looking at the Louis Vuitton of tomatoes.

For anyone who'd like some tomato-growing tips from someone who knows what they're doing - clearly not me - The Mother-in-Law's pal Mildred who's a champion grower says tomatoes like a bit of milk. Who knew? Mildred fills an almost empty 2-litre milk container with water and uses that on the soil. Also likes to grind up egg shells and toss ground coffee about.

Suspect my troubles had more to do with lack of sun than the tomatoes' desire for an omelette with a latte on the side, but heartfelf thanks to Mildred. I think it's fair to say I need all the help I can get.

Dove sanctuary

I seem to have unwittingly created a dove sanctuary. Everywhere I look, there's a dove in our garden.

What started as feeding two breeding doves whose eggs kept being stolen by currawongs, has turned into my own flock.

On our teeny tiny patch of grass this morning, I counted 12 breakfasting - three quarters of them babies.

Some sit in our tree afterward, others just loll about on the grass.

They don't bother the native birds, even the two willie wagtails who seem to spend most of the day in the same tree don't tell them off - and they're birds who like to give everything a telling off with their telltale shaking-maracca sound, which means they're annoyed.

One landed in front of The Cat, who was sitting around doing nothing, a couple of weeks ago and gave her a beakful. The Cat looked at the bird with a "what-the-hell" expression but didn't move towards it. So the willie wagtail walked straight up to The Cat's face and let loose again. Luckily for the wagtail, The Cat was a mild beast.

While I'm not encouraging any more doves into the garden, I have to admit that I find the cooing, their weird dovey dancing and the proximity of their general animalness comforting. When a pet dies, the house feels quiet. Thanks to the menagerie of birds in the garden, though, I'm assured of at least one, if not 12, pairs of beady eyes that register my presence whenever I walk outside.

Big red

The first tomatoey crop of the urban mini farm is in. All five varieties have fruit but it's a Grosse Lisse that's first ripe for the picking.

Firm, very sweet and... slightly floury. Now waiting for some Tommy Toes, Mama's Delights, Black Russians and Tomato Berries to turn red so we can test them and see if our little garden is capable of growing good tomatoes.

Unfortunately, if all varieties aren't up to scratch may have to experiment again next year as we won't know if they're floury due to not enough sun or to too much water (extremely wet summer here). Last year's tomatoes were floury but were grown in pots, so I've eliminated that as a factor.

All good things take time.

Heckle and Jeckle

I love a bird, but even I draw the line at the Indian Myna, or cane toads of the air. Seems they don't draw the same line with us, unfortunately.

There are a pair of them, which we've nicknamed Heckle and Jeckle, after the ancient cartoon, that sit in the tree opposite our house looking straight in at us. They do this because they wait until the coast is clear and fly inside our house to eat The Cat's food.

I've tried leaving the door shut for days on end to try and break them of this habit, but they're smart. The moment the door is opened and we walk away, they're in.

They also like to sit in a tree in our garden, well within hose range, so I thought I'd start squirting them in an effort to encourage them to move on. Thought this would definitely work as it seems to have done with the currawongs, who don't come round much anymore.

So there was Heckle, or possibly Jeckle, in our tree and within hose range. So I gave it a blast, waiting for it to fly off issuing an angry screech as it left. Instead, it lifted one wing and then the other. Even danced around a bit. It was having a shower.

I suppose even pests can be funny. Sometimes.

Twisted tale

During dinner with friends recently, I was complaining about how I couldn't find a simple hose tidy that wasn't a twee reproduction number in heritage colours, plastic or just plain ugly.

I was invited to take a look at their hose tidy as, if I liked it, they had a spare one as they had been given two by female friend's parents yet were only going to use one. Friend's husband, The Cameraman Who's Always Right, while a generous man in every other way, can be a teeny bit of a hoarder and tried to pretend it was still in storage (they'd been renovating). No it's not, was his wife's reply that came accompanied with an eye roll.

I managed to get it into the car and drilled it into the wall early next morning before he could invent some dubious reason for its return, such as using it to keep his camera cords neat.

Came from a market in Canberra (don't know which one, unfortunately) and I love it.

Seedy business

These are surely the prettiest seed packets around. Heirloom seeds, $4.50 each, from Melbourne-based The Little Veggie Patch Co, whose book I've also been coveting for a while too.

The seeds are all heirloom varieties and a quick click on the packets shown on the website tells you all you need to know about the variety and when and how to plant.

Looks good enough to eat. And that's just the packaging.

Images via The Little Veggie Patch Co.

Blooming marvellous

The Friend Who Knows About Bees also knows about growing stuff. So when he asked me if I'd planted tomatoes yet and said, "oh", when I told him I hadn't I knew that I'd left it too late. Sure enough, a quick check revealed that tomatoes take between 3-5 months to grow from seed. Since summer officially starts tomorrow, I decided to take some shorts cuts and bought some biggish seedlings from the nursery.

Faced with an abundance of varieties, each one claiming super power such as "Australia's favourite", "Easiest to Grow", "Heirloom Variety" "Masses of Fruit & Sweet Flavour", I decided to have a crack at most of them.

At the very least, I'll see which ones suit the urban mini-farm best (if at all). Last year, I tried growing some in pots and they were the flouriest things I'd ever tasted. Hoping for better luck this year.

Something that's been growing very successfully are the crochet flowers from the pattern I posted a few weeks back. Megan, who must have one of the most stylish caravans travelling around Australia at the moment, sent me this pic of her successful woolly garden.

My tomatoes probably won't get quite as much sun but hopefully they too will bloom as easily as Megan's.

To bee or not to bee

This is taking the urban mini-farm one step too far. Looks like a swarm of bees are trying to make a hive in the magnolia tree, which is really more like a magnolia twig, that's only a few metres from our back door.

"We need to find a Bee Man", was The Husband's not-particularly-helpful advice. In the meantime, I'll be scouring markets this weekend for three human and one cat shaped set of bee-protection overalls. Smoke guns optional.

Have a lovely weekend. x

Pot bound

It's southerly buster time in Sydney. Long hot days that are broken by a "southo", or cool southerly wind, in the evening. It's a fantastic and much-loved weather phenomenon that sees people all across the city opening their front doors, clothes and hair fluttering all around them, and letting the strong breeze move through homes to do its work. The temperature can drop 10 degrees in seconds. Best air-conditioning in the world.

As I've planted bok choy, spinach and lettuce in pots rather than in our little garden bed, as that's currently busy growing cucumbers, it means slipping into a routine of watering the pots in the morning or evening so they can cope with the heat. Makes me feel like a little old granny wandering around in my pyjamas with a battered watering can - but in a good way.

Found the little brown Ikea pots the perfect size for this job and putting some of them in the old jam-making pot makes them easier to move around. While these pots don't have a drainage hole, I always make one with a drill and a masonry bit.

If all goes well, I'll rotate the "crop" as it gets eaten bringing the biggest closest to the kitchen doorstep and prime northerly direction that these lettuces are currently enjoying.

All I need now is a sourdough baguette, some goats' cheese, tomatoes, olives and olive oil.

Baby bird

We now have three chicken doves who peck seeds in our garden each morning, despite the best efforts of the currawongs to keep this family's number down to two.

I hadn't been posting much about our doves nesting efforts since the first slaying as it's been like something out of a Tarantino movie around here. I came out onto our back deck once to see a currawong sitting on our fence holding a cracked egg in its claw like a bottle of beer. It quickly sculled the contents before flying off.

On Saturday evening, though, I was sitting on the deck while the husband cooked dinner. I looked up into the tree and saw what I thought was our two doves, and then I realised there were three - and one quite a bit smaller than the other two. (One of the parents had dropped to the grass for a bit of a peck when this pic was taken.)

As you can see he or she has yet to grow into its looks - or its beak - and hasn't yet developed the spotted band around its neck. But, right now, I think this is probably the prettiest bird I've ever seen.

Bean busy

First of our spring broad beans. Young and fresh so no need for double podding.

To be tossed through with pasta, olive oil and garlic tonight.

Puff of spring

Spring on the urban 'farm' continues. The 5cm-wide pink pom-pom blossoms of the Lilly Pilly make the trees look like they've been covered by a fall of raspberry powderpuffs.

/

The trunk of the tea-tree is covered in too-small shedded cicada skins (it's clearly going to be a noisy summer).

And the chicken-dove waits on the fence for his breakfast.

Have a lovely weekend.

If you're reading this...
Jana, your comment yesterday made me laugh, particularly as I can surf - albeit sensationally badly!

Growing pains

We are successful urban farmers!

While our teeny, tiny vegetable patch has been supplying us with spinach for the last month, it's now producing big, fat heads of broccoli. Wasn't allowed to actually harvest this one until The Child's friend could see it.

There's even a row of broadbeans behind the broccoli, which will be ready to pick any day now too.

Possibly taking things a step too far by throwing seed to one of our resident doves each morning and pretending he's a chicken. Even The Cat thinks he lives here as they ignore each other when they're both on the ground in the garden.

The Cat has never gone after a bird in her life, for anyone concerned about the chicken-dove's welfare. Unless you count one that's golden brown and has just come out of the oven.

Big sky

Going...

going...

going...

gone.

Our little world looks different today. The sky seems bigger. Three houses up was a massive tree that took up most of the eastern sky.

Next door to the owner of the non-native tree lives a family with four small children (three of them are under 5) and one of the branches fell into their back garden, which could have been a disaster if one of the kids had been outside playing. The owner of the tree had planted it himself many years ago but today he had it cut down.

Good man.

Bird brain

This little blue wren is pretty, but has no mercy.

He flits about outside my office window while I sit inside buried in work.

Enjoying lunch, which I've not yet found time for.

Mint condition

The best cup of herbal tea I've ever had was in an upmarket country restaurant in Ireland the year before last.

It was a work trip and I was travelling with three other journalists as Tourism Ireland was looking to promote Northern Ireland as a holiday spot. One of our crew, a male journalist from a Melbourne newspaper, always ordered peppermint tea when we were out, which was strange in itself as male newspaper journalists generally like a drink. Turns out he actually did fit the general mould, but was using this trip as a bit of detox.

Now, just the smell of peppermint tea is usually enough to involuntarily make my lip curl. But then, in a really lovely restaurant, he was presented with some fresh mint leaves and boiling water in a cup. Absolutely nothing more to it. It smelt so good I ordered one.

I'd forgotten all about this until I saw our mint had gone a bit haywire in the garden and tried a cup last night. Just as good as I'd remembered. Sweet, light and refreshing.

Not everything has to be complicated.

Sunshine in a cup

When I last had a moment to myself (that'd be Friday evening) these potted tulips were still closed.

The three of us ran around like mad things all weekend as there was so much on. No complaints. It was lovely to catch up with friends and help celebrate birthdays. Wouldn't change a thing.

What the flowers reminded me of, though, is that down-time is also important. Having time to appreciate the small moments in life that are easily missed if you're always rushing. Taking a moment to sniff the roses, or, in this case, tulips.

As rejuvenating as sunshine in a cup.

Blooming marvellous

More than a month ago I made The Husband stop his car as I'd seen some branches by the side of the road that I wanted to bring home. He wasn't particularly happy about it as he's a bit precious about his little French car, but I insisted.

I dragged them down our hallway, not caring I was scraping the walls as I went much to The Husband's and Child's amazement, and then cut them to size. Shortly after I used the branches in a previous post to display some crochet and then did nothing but occasionally change the water.

Much to our surprise, the branches, or sticks as the rest of the family refers to them, have bloomed at the same rate as the trees outside. The flowers and leaves are starting to get a bit droopy now but I'm wondering what the rest of the buds will do.

We'll see.

If you're reading this...
Kylie, thanks so much for yesterday's plant identification. I'm seriously considering growing the Orange Trumpet Creeper over our back fence.

Urban beauty

Even today's drizzling grey sky didn't diminish this little bit of urban loveliness when I popped round to the corner shop.

I have no idea what this bright orange creeper is but, every year, it blooms over a shabby shed and turns it into something that makes me smile every time I walk past.

Made running out of milk this morning a good thing.