Boxing Day at the Beach

Christmas day was wonderful, but Boxing Day has its own special charm. DH and I have a tradition of starting it off by going for a walk along Mullaloo Beach, which is only 10 minutes or so from our house.

This is a time to kick off the thongs, get your feet wet, smell the sea breeze and relax.

Boxing Day is a time for reading the books we got as gifts yesterday, for minimal housework (enough to clear a space to sit) and for afternoon naps.

We go to the beach and we always are aware of how lucky we are to live here in WA, with all of this right here and free for us to enjoy. I hope you like the pictures.

The pictures were taken with my new Agfa camera, which was my Christmas present. I need to learn all its features but I am looking forward to enjoying taking lots of pictures this year.

With a bit of luck, we intend to walk on the beach every day from now until we have to go back to work, and then we will walk every Saturday until the weather changes.

DH calls it "Mullaloo Cathedral"!

Constructive gardening!

My DH has been busy this morning creating climbing structures for the garden. This is the passion fruit vine trellis -it has to be large and sturdy as a passion fruit grows quickly to over 4 metres in spread. When grown, we won't be able to see the less than attractive fence, but instead will see lovely leaves and -hopefully-lots o fruit.

In the corner you can see a circle of wire which we are training the cucumber to grow on, and at the back of the photo, some wire to assist the tomatoes and beans. The roma tomatoes are setting fruit now and I have a very impressive Grosse Lisse also setting fruit.

Poor DH had to get into the corner where there is an old rose, which was very prickly, but such is the commitment of my garden helper, he didn't even complain! Thanks DH!

In the front of the picture you can see the Mexican tarragon, which is really liking the extra mulch and coir we used in this bed. I have just planted some curly basis and some beetroot here too.

Last year this bed was not productive, but we are hoping that improvements we have made to the soil and the watering regime will overcome these problems.

I think that my garden is showing the benefits of the experiences I had last year. I have learned the hard way about what seems to work here but I am still worried that the real hot weather has not hit us yet and the improvements we have made have not been tested under the conditions that saw an end to nearly everything I tried to grow last year.


The new raised garden has been having a makeover. The celery I planted first in this new bed, recently showed signs of being attacked by aphids and ants of course, who follow aphids.

I had planted more celery than we could use anyway, so I chose to empty the bed and instead have planted more lettuces today as that will be in most demand over the summer. I have planted a punnet of celery in other parts of the garden as an experiment.

The rainbow chard has been huge in this bed, and the strawberries and asparagus are doing well for their first year.

I have a couple of experimental cherry tomatoes in here too. I wondered if the shade would be too much but they are flowering and setting fruit.

We are now harvesting the zucchini from the wicking bed and the silverbeet of course, and the lettuce I planted some months ago. I have had one feed from the beans, but I must get more into the ground.

I get such a 'kick' from using things in my cooking that have come directly from my garden. On the menu this week will be zucchini slice and vegetarian quiche. I have a lot of herbs which I use to flavour the cooking too

The seedlings I got were from the Market stall at the Wanneroo market. I also bought some lemon basil and some sweet basil from the ladies there and they have gone into a large waterwell pot which has purple basil in it.

This gardening stuff is a huge learning curve but I am very happy to see the results I am getting.

My new books from the Good Life book club should be here this week !

Drip irrigation

We have finished putting the drip lines in the front garden.
The idea is that we reduce the amount of water that we waste when using microsprays, which either evaporates or is blown away in the wind, and instead put the water where the plants can actually use it.
This new kind of dripper line is much superior to the old kind which used to get clogged up easily.

There is nothing DH likes more than 're-jigging the retic"! I swear it is his favourite hobby! Over the years we have had several systems, but we hope that this one will be fairly robust and easy to manage, once we bury it under the mulch. This is what it looks like now.
We are just checking how the water is going, and making sure that the plants are being watered, then it will disappear under the mulch.

Getting ready for Christmas

It is our tradition that, on the first day of Advent, we put up the Christmas tree. We have just spent several hectic hours doing this and what fun!

We insist that this is a family event. Christmas music playing on the CD.

DH gets the boxes from the roof. Then we unwrap and unwrap-each one greeted as if it is an old friend, and indeed some of them are very old.

The tree has a pair of baby shoes from DD and DS and we always have fun thinking of them once being THAT small! There are the ones DD made in Brownies, and the ones we made together with cookie cutters. There are the slightly munted and the very special.

Collections of angels, musical instruments, Father Christmases (no Santa here!) , stars, nativities, etc. Some of them I have made special trips to find (Rick's place in the blue mountains!) and lots were found in op shops.

There is lots of laughter and good natured ribbing -especially of me and my Christmas collection.

Taking pride of place this year my home-made Christmas Tree skirt and the Angel quilt I made recently (see earlier blogs).

Some people get stressed at Christmas, and some people are lonely and some are struggling with old hurts and new losses. I hope that they can find some joy in the simple things and the old traditions.

Makeup for gardens -and food too

We have been mulching all week.
We purchased some lovely black mulch made mostly of pine and compost, from the people at Gardeners Direct. This forms a clumping mat which nicely shades the soil, supresses weeds and conserves moisture. We call it 'makeup for gardens' because it makes a poor garden look well-cared for, and the black colour really shows off the plants that are there. Our front garden is almost recovered from the changes we have made lately.

We also bought a huge bag of lupin mulch from Gardeners Direct.
Now this is different! Loose, smells wonderful and is magic for plants. Holds lots of moisture and feeds the plants with lovely nitrogen. You can almost see the plants grow the minute you use it.
Does not last as long as the black stuff, but is great for vegetables, roses and fruit trees.

I have combined the two mulches in the veggie patch out the back -the black makes a little path to keep my feet clean when I go to tend it or to pick something, but the lupin mulch feeds the veggies. Since I put this on last week, the beans have started to flower.

We have added a cape gooseberry to the garden and a passionfruit. We are thinking of long-term fruits as well as the vegetables we have now. We have limes, lemons, grapefruit and mandarins now, but only the limes and the lemons are big enough to fruit regularly. I hope this season we will get some of the other citrus.

My tomatoes are growing and the zucchini in the wicking bed is doing well.
We are still harvesting celery and silverbeet daily. I pulled out the first lettuces of the season which were going to seed, and the new ones are just about ready to pick again.

It feels great to be providing these fresh things for the family. The other interesting effect is that there is more room in the fridge, because the food I used to keep there is now in the garden until just before I need it!

The Christmas Tree skirt I made!

Well, I must say I had fun doing this. I did not have a pattern (as usual) but I used what I had around pretty much.
The excitement came when my trusty sewing machine died -what a time to go on the blink!
It is now in the sewing shop for repairs, so thank goodness my lovely SIL loaned me her 35 year old Elna. This is still a lovely machine and I was so grateful to my SIL because otherwise my craft week would have ended rather abruptly.

Still 2 days of my holiday leave to go, so I might get something else done.

Christmas inspiration

I have a week on leave from work, so I am getting down to some crafty stuff for Christmas.
I find the Rick Rutherford book "Country Christmas at Wroxton" a real inspiration.

So today I am working on a Christmas Tree skirt.
Have done the applique, now it is time to tackle the quilting. Feeling a little nervous about the binding, because it will be the first circular item I have made.

I have some other ideas from Rick's book too. I am thinking of adding a Christmas stocking to my Raggedy Ann doll, with the words "I've been good!" embroidered on it.
I plan to make a couple of rustic looking choristers.

How much will I get done? That is the question, but I must say I am enjoying it very much.