I happened to take quite a few photos yesterday and they ended up making nice little story that illustrates what my life here is all about, on a good day...
I'm behind with all the chores, both inside and outside the house. I'm getting to the point where I have plants that will be urgently needed somewhere to be planted out, so the first major chore was to clear the weeds off one of the garden beds ready for planting.
It looked a total mess before I started, but it actually only took about five minutes to clear.
We need to check that all the
drip irrigators still work, then we can plant it up, as soon as the sweet potato slips have rooted well
enough...
And there in the corner of the bed is one self seeded giant radish. It's flowering, so hopefully it can either self pollinate or the other smaller ones that got yanked out have already pollinated it.
For all I know it's tough and inedible, but I'm more than willing to give it the benefit of the doubt if it's so happy to grow well here with zero input or assistance.
We planted a couple of cherry
trees last year, then it rained and rained and they grew like crazy, only to keel over in shock when the weather turned hot. I think the rain lulled them into a false sense of security.
Not one single leaf on this one this year, so we pulled it out to liberate the space for another tree.
"I'll take photos while you dig the hole. Fair?"
There's a
milk thistle there too. I'm trying to not cut them down when we strim the grass because I want to collect the seed. It grows everywhere, but the seed itself is very
medicinal - good for the liver apparently.
We even found a worm in the soil we dug out!
And then back into my garden to liberate a tree to plant in its final position. As you can see, I haven't cleared this end of the garden at all...
Somewhere in that bed, between the brambles and the rest of the weeds, are paw paws, apples and elder.
Austin is attempting to remove enough of the brambles to allow him to liberate the biggest
apple. They are ones we grew from the pips of a Pink Lady
apple, and are affectionately known as the Meninas Rosas.
Got it!
The
roots will no doubt be damaged, and it's going to struggle a bit, but we never got around to digging it up before it came into leaf so we have a choice of trying or not bothering.
No contest really...
I think that hole is now big enough for those roots.
We won't amend the soil as we want it to put down roots, not grow a ton of leaves. Poor thing will have enough of a struggle to survive as it is. I might add something as a surface mulch to
feed it very very slowly, more for next year than this one.
There. A perfect fit!
Nice and deep so the roots stand more chance of not drying out.
We gave it a post and watered it in well, and did the obligatory Rock-for-scale photo.
It's a bit bushy and leafy, which means that it's going to lose water at the rate it always did, only the roots are damaged now so it won't be able to take water up at the same rate.
I think I need to decide which bits to trim back, or off completely. I like to leave some to shade the young trunk a bit from excessively hot sun, but some of it has to go or the risk of losing the whole thing is far too high.
That might do.
Small branches near the bottom are cut back so there are no big leaves to lose water but there are buds ready to grow new leaves. Main shoots cut back, one main shoot left mostly intact.
I might raid Rosa's bag of plant ties and attach it to the post to encourage it not to give up and fall over in despair.
Rock is bored with all this posing stuff now and is enjoying a good scratch.
Rosa is one of my dragons. For those who don't understand, dragons are part of your psyche. Well, mine are anyway. Each one represents a different aspect of your psyche. Rosa is my somewhat undeveloped domestic, feminine side. We are trying to explore things like
'how to be a good housewife' and
'how to be organised' and
'how to successfully work with fabrics and needles and threads' together. Yesterday we had spent some time together patching up the boys' old t-shirts and de-constructing an old pair of work trousers in readiness for a
BB.
When Rosa heard that we'd planted one of her Meninas Rosas and that it had a post but no tie, so she delightedly rummaged in her new bag of Plant Ties and fetched out a nice big tie that until yesterday was a waistband on a pair of worn out work trousers.
Well done Rosa. I didn't realise you were good at tying knots!
She had a look at the milk thistle flowers while she was out there too.
And a quick check to see how the red vineyard peaches are coming along...
This is a three year old tree grown from seed by a friend, who got the seed from his friend who uses the trees in her vineyard in Germany. It's the most peach-leaf curl resistant peach tree we have and we have high hopes for the fruit.
Too soon to test it yet, by far. But we're keeping a close eye on them...
I had a bit of a break, and then after lunch I pottered around a bit more.
This is a tray of comfrey
root cuttings and some pumpkins I'd potted up the day before. I moved the tray back to the benches where it's supposed to live and set the area up for the next potting job.
This is the next potting job, but I wasn't sure if I'd have the
energy to tackle it. It's a pot of quince seedlings. I love stewed quince, and quince chutney. The trees grow very well here with minimal care and I wanted a lot of seedlings to experiment planting out on the back terrace behind the house, where the trees that need minimal care live. And also some on the very top terrace, which is where the trees that get no care whatsoever live. These seedlings were grown from fruit scrumped from a neighbour's tree which were overhanging the track and seemed like fair game. They'd already fallen off onto the ground, and he had far more than he seemed to be able to pick so I'm certain he won't mind.
There appears to be a stick insect ootheca on the side of the pot, too. Unhatched as yet, by the look of it...
I was actually pretty tired by then, so I spent a minute pulling a few weeds up from the next
garden bed before declaring that I'd done enough for the day and retreating indoors.
I did summon the energy to put a load of laundry into the machine and was contemplating taking a
shower when a panicked message appeared on my computer screen from a neighbour begging for help from anyone who lived nearby who knew how to milk a goat. It's been thirty years since I milked a goat, but he had one that desperately needed milking and he'd managed to end up in hospital and couldn't leave for a couple of days. He had visitors who had offered to look after the animals for him but they had, unsurprisingly, failed to get more than a few teaspoons of milk out of her and one side of her udder was beginning to look decidedly distended.
So, off to the rescue we went!
It was only a mile or so away, but down lots of little dirt tracks. We only made one false turn, and when we stopped to ask someone if they knew where the man with goats and a donkey and who was in hospital lived he pointed us in the right direction. The women who were attempting to look after the goats and other animals heard my voice and came racing down to open the gate and welcome us with open arms. They caught the relevant goat for me, who thankfully was very sweet and docile and very pleased to finally find someone who knew how to relieve her of her rather abundant milk supply. I was rather thankful that after three decades of not being used, my milking muscles still remembered how to do do the job. I even got a photo to prove it!
If I end up back there again (mercifully she's a once-a-day milker, not a twice-a-day one) I'll take a suitable and clean milking pan, and a container for bringing it home again, and try to get the right photos to chase the BB on milking a goat! But the prime concern this time was to get the milk out without terrorising the poor creature.
And then, the highlight of the day.
Cuddles with Dilly the Donkey!
Happy Burra...
18
but friends have goats and they say that it's actually hard to convince them to go out of their enclosure, they barely need any fencing. "It's the how", I guess...
