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!