Did you know this existed?

A web site specifically designed to find public toilets! Not only that you can save your favorite toilets if you register and log in to 'My toilets'. Admittedly a handy web site for those with tiny bladders, but still rather odd.

Stranger still I stumbled across this web site when I was looking for web site for the Cooby library.

Be my singing lesson be my song...

Sitting in my study I'm listen to the last lingering drops of rain as a pleasant night time shower comes to an end. The garden will just love this extra bit of water, but I can't help but imagine with the rain comes all the snails who just love to eat my poor little tender seedlings.

My back aches, and all muscles are weary after a big day of gardening, but I am pleased to say the results are well worth it. It amazes me how every weekend the garden looks more and more loved and cared for.

So I am now the proud owner of 3 Manzanillo olive trees where a garden of nothing but little white rocks once was. It has taken me near on forever to removes the little fuckers from the garden bed, but you'd hardly know they were ever there now. What kind of moron fills a garden bed with rocks, seriously? That can only ever go badly, and despite what you might think about them keeping weeds down, nope the things grow right through, and are harder to remove cause you have to get rid of the rocks to pull it out.

SO in addition to my olive trees I've also planted some pretty pink petunias, and some colourful snap dragons. I remember being fascinated with snap dragons as a kid, the little flowers opening and closing like a dragons mouth.

I was lucky enough to have a few left over to put in my front yard too. I did have some sunflower seedlings planted out there but they have all now disappeared, some little animal has made them it's dinner. Grrr! I think next time I will have to grow them larger before I put them directly in the ground, that way they might stand a chance.

So in addition to my olives, I have also today planted the butternut pumpkin and watermelon seedlings that I grew. I've planted them all the way at the back of the garden behind the garden shed.It's snail country up there, but I hope that I removed enough snail habitat for it to create a barrier. Also I have sprayed around each one a product called 'slug it'. It's a harmless copper solution that when snails or slugs slide over it they get a zap like an electric shock. Apparently the copper reacts with their slime and creates a chemical reaction that gives them the zap. I hope it works,because I don't like to put snail pellets down; I'd never forgive myself if Bosca ate them.

Also in gardening news we have a bit more lawn! We've been buying a few rolls each weekend or so and slowly we're building up to have a quite nice green lawn area. Tony is an absolute gem when it comes to digging out the weeds and laying this stuff, it's now a big enough area for a picnic!

This may be about the strangest sentence I have every blogged, but today I fell in love with mulch. We have had a bag of it sitting by our back door ever since we bought the house. It was pretty obvious that the previous owners mulched almost everything they could to make the yard look nicer, and they had a bag left. I've looked at it time and time again thinking I should use it for something, but have never had enough motivation. Today however after battling too many damn weeds in veggie patch number one I decided to break open the bag and mulch the garden to keep out the weeds. I couldn't get over what a difference it made! Not only would it keep down weeds and keep in water, it made everything look amazing! So inspiration now at full throttle I went down to Bunnings to get more. 5 bags of mulch later and what were horrid sandy garden beds looked beautiful and lush, amazing!

Lastly, behind the grass area is a small limestone wall that creates a little terrace, and behind that I am now growing more sage that self seeded from our ginormous sage bush that was here when we bought the house, ginger mint, little purple violets that also self seeded, and rhubarb. I have had the rhubarb seedlings for about a month now but not known where to put them as rhubarb will grow for about 3 years, that being the case you really need to think about where you put it. I read a funny thing the other day saying how rhubarb loves a freezing winter, but it the ground doesn't freeze where you are you can dig up the root stock, and put it in your freezer. Then when it's frozen solid for about a month re-plant it and you'll have the best crop of rhubarb you've ever had. As fascinating an idea as that if, I don't think I'll be doing that.

After all this hard work, watering, toiling, pulling weeds and mulching you may be wondering if we're actually getting to eat any of this? Well we're eating heaps! Today I harvested all our beetroot, which was being swallowed up by my gigantic tomato plants.Not only am I keeping the beetroot itself, but the smaller more tender leaves of the plant as these are beautiful to eat like a lettuce leaf. They have the earthy sweet taste a bit like the beetroot. Also we're still eating our mixed lettuce, they just go on and on, as does the rocket despite it having gone to seed. The dwarf snowpeas are still flowering and fruiting, and taste just amazing. Our two (now 3) strawberry plants keep producing fruit, and most days like a little red present one is sitting there ready for me to eat , yum! Our apple cucumber has mounds of fruit, 4 of which I picked today. Our tri-coloured chard or silverbeet is going mad, and we can't eat it fast enough, and lastly our herbs are just devine!

Veggie Patch

So a few weekends back Tony and I bought some seedling trays, seed raising mix, and most importantly seeds! I've not grown anything from seed in my whole life, and have prior to this point imagined it to be some very difficult elaborate task.

So I have now successfully sprouted sunflowers, watermelon, butternut pumpkin, yellow beetroot, radishes, carrot, purple king beans and zucchini. I've planted the sunflower seedlings along the fence that my veggie patch is on. I've put the zucchini near the compost bin hoping that any nutrient run off from the bin will help the zucchinis grow big and strong. The purple runner beans are along the other fence, and I am hoping the grow nice and big, and cover that ugly fence! The flowers of this bean are supposed to very pretty so here's hoping to that too.

The topic of compost can be so amazingly complex you have no idea! I have now read a few books and multiple web sites on the subject to try and give myself a rounded idea of how it all works. Most of my compost is made from weeds we have pulled from the garden. Some purists will say never to add weeds as the seeds can then grow when you use the compost. However if you can mange to to achieve hot composting you should be able to kill off the seeds. Anyway,my point to all this ramble was going to be that I used some of my compost today. So it wasn't from my traditional compost heap in the corner where I've tried to do it all 'by the book', but it was from just a great big pile of weeds that I add and add to as I pull the bastards out. So I turned it, and at the bottom was quiet usable compost. I was expecting that the whole process would take a lot longer to be usable. The top layer is mostly dried and and still whole plants, but the bottom was teaming with slaters, millipedes and all kinds of friendly little garden bugs helping to chew up and break down the organic matter.

So I'm just so excited to keep adding and adding to my garden. Slowly it just keeps evolving, getting bigger, better and more interesting. Also today I planted an artichoke, which from what I saw at the APACE garden in North Fremantle grows to be a beautiful noble plant. Lastly I planted asparagus, which is such a fascinating plant. It will need to stay untouched for about 3 years before we can start harvesting tasty spears from it, and each Autumn/Winter you cut all the plant away down to the soil and basically let it hibernate. This amazing little plant lives and keeps giving you it's yummy spears for about 30+ years. I have read tales of old farm house gardens being tidied only to find ancient asparagus plants still growing as well as ever.

The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten

Emo bedtime stories

This might cause me to jinx myself

I sometimes get the sense that the movie the Matrix wasn't too far off, or what the writers of 'the secret' were banging on about is actually real.

I have an incredibly lucky life, and some days it feels like it's almost to good to be true. I sit here and ponder my life, what I have (and by that I don't mean material possessions), how I got to where I am, and the future lined up for me.

For a long time, through my teenage years and early twenties I let life live me, I was a victim to the world around me. I felt like nothing was in my control, I didn't have choices, I just had chores, obligations; and society had certain expectations of me, which I would bend my will to for fear of being 'weird' or disliked.

I don't know when it changed, but sitting here now, I have sense that I can make ANYTHING in my life that I want, happen. Granted not everything happens as quickly as I would like, but ultimately all of my dreams and wishes are coming true. Oddly though, a few things I have thought that I always wanted, now that I can make it happen, seem less important, or off the radar all together.

If I think about the current run down, I like my job, in fact I like it a lot now it has changed, and I am comfortable in my work place. Tony is the best thing to happen to me EVER. I love my house and my little garden, I think I could be content forever amongst my tomatoes and beetroots. I have more friends than I care to count, and not just acquaintances, but really great genuine friends. My family are amazing, I live in a wonderful country, I have the most loving little doggie, and well the world in my oyster.

All this does however lead me to think if everything is so great all the time, will the lack of contrast, lead to unhappiness? By that I mean you can't enjoy the ups without the down to compare them to. I like to think not, and if life gets me down, I'll just go do something about it.

Here are some of the things that spin me out:
*This time last year there was no way we could afford to buy a house, I thought we'd be 5+ years away
*When we got the house I thought we'd be sooo poor, but with two very generous interest rate cuts we're saving a bomb, and living comfortably
* I didn't think we could afford to get married any time soon, but now we're making it happen
* I didn't think I'd be very good at gardening, but my garden looks amazing, I even inspired Steve to grow some veg!
*I thought I'd be about 40 by the time we could do the kids thing, now we're talking about trying as soon as we're married
*I thought my job wouldn't get better and I'd leave after a year, but a new job was offered to me out of the blue

Life just astounds me, and I've never been so content and so lacking the need to want.

Upside down dogs

Are freakin' hilarious!!!!

How does your garden grow...

I can understand why gardeining is such a popular hobby, why people dedicate their lives to the persuit of a beautiful landscape, and why Bunning's must be making an absolute killing.

Today I worked hard, I sweated, I shoveled, I lifted and I raked. Now we have what almost resembles a garden that is loved. Tony pulled out a big ugly plant near the vegie patch, and replaced it with some roll on lawn. Not much lawn mind you as Bunnings only had 3 rolls left, but we though we'd start with that and see where that takes us. It's just enough lawn to have a picnic for two.

I whiper snipered the weeds, so it almost kind looks like a rough lawn. Also I planted some seeds for the first time ever. I've always though seeds were probably more trouble that they are worth, but after spending about $3 a punnet on carrot seedings only to get 4 carrots, seeds seemed a bit more sensible, and a real way of saving money on vegies.

So now I'm about to have dinner, and enjoy what will feel like a deserved hearty meal.

Agreed

Thanks etsy