Cynthia's Birthday in Christine's Garden

I'm putting these photos here on Cynthia's behalf,  she really is a beautiful photographer, and it was such a lovely day it deserves two posts.

We're trying to decorate a cake in this photo, but Cynthia kept coming over to admire the garlic. Christine has a very causally placed kitchen glove over the cake to hide it. How impressive are those garlic braids?

 

May 2012 in Christine's garden

Once again my turn for hosting veggie group had rolled around.
I was pretty excited as I had managed to pick up some scrap pallets and star pickets during the week and hoped that those coming would be kind enough to form them into some sort of composting bay system for me..

...and they did!

Strategically positioning the pallets and securing them with stakes and wire..

I am in awe of Tash as she puts her hand up to operate the electric chainsaw! She did a fantastic job of removing those low, overhanging branches! Thankyou muchly, Tash.

Meanwhile, in the greenhouse, Susan and Kirsty (aka The Bowerbird) were busy weeding, digging and sowing pea seeds. Great work, ladies!

A visitor..

{Southern Brown Tree Frog}

Elsewhere, others weeded, weeded and weeded some more - thankyou so very much!

And the day wouldn't have been complete without a birthday cake for a dear lady..to mark a special very birthday.

Happy birthday, Cynthia, I hoped you enjoyed your day! xx

August in Christine's garden

My time for vegie group again seemed to roll around really fast. The weather didn't look promising although the rain held off with the sun even peeking out around lunchtime!

Here are a few pics of what we got up to at my place yesterday:

Hard at work clearing the  beds in preparation for spring planting

The Footwear

Clearing out potatoes and digging over soil to receive summer crops in the coming weeks

Chitted potatoes from last year's harvests being planted out

Nice work, girls!

Waffles
2 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
2 tbs raw sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
2 tbs natural yoghurt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the wet ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients and whisk to combine. Allow to stand if there is time, around 10-20 minutes is fine. If not, don't worry. Cook in preheated waffle maker according to your maker's directions.
To re-heat later, toast on low setting and serve warm with your favourite topping/sauce.

Brownie recipe originally from HERE


Thanks for your help, ladies. As always it was a pleasure to have you here!

Christine's garden

This is my fourth year in vegie group. I started coming along shortly after we moved to this area, not knowing many people and having a 4 year old who went to kindergarten on Fridays.
It quickly became a firm routine for me and I found myself anticipating the end of each week with quiet excitement. My 4 year old was also known to 'skip' kinder on occasions and come along with me to vegie group for a good dose of socialising, baked goodies and of course vegetables and soil.  The kids really do love it as much as the parents!

My garden was non existant when I had the group over for the first time. We planted a small 1m x 2m patch with some seedlings and spent the rest of the time drinking coffee and chatting! Since then it has grown to include half a dozen circular beds which I like to rotate chooks over to weed/fertilise and also a fenced off area with long traditional style beds. I much prefer the chook beds and the soil quality is 200% compared to what it was when we started. Last year saw the addition of a modest fruit tree area which was all thanks to vegie group! 

At the moment my garden is looking very bare with all of the 'bones' showing. I have been spending time this week collecting autumn leaves and putting a lot of my beds to sleep for the winter as we miss out on a lot of sun during this time of year due to large trees.

I look forward to sharing more updates when my turn for vegie group rolls around again and perhaps a recipe or two!