Garden

A combination of simply glorious weather and family stress has seen me out in our garden for most of each day lately.  I've even taken to eating on the front verandah so I am still out in the soothing calm.  This is part of the front garden in the early afternoon shade.  The yard is heavily shaded at this time of year turning the grass to weed and moss.

 The garden from the other side (looking back towards where I took the previous photo from).  It's quite a green garden and there are times when I definitely miss riotous colour.  It's soothing though and so large that filling the gardens with flowers for cutting would be unmanageable.  All up we live on a bit under one and a half acres and at least two thirds of it is garden.

I'm adding a bit of colour here and there though in amongst the established plantings.

My irises are beginning to bloom in amongst the parsley. I love higgledy-piggledy type plantings.

I did have an extensive vegetable and herb garden down the back years ago but it became unmanageable once I became ill and then we had two naughty labradors who used it as their personal drive-through food source. Not to mention the possums and bandicoots.  As a result I've moved edible crops to the front garden away from scavenging dogs and I kitchen garden on a much smaller scale. I am limited by sunlight and space but that is ok.  I'm growing kale, underplanted by sweet potato here.

I have zucchini, french beans, tomatoes, snow peas, baby spinach, lettuce, leeks and strawberries planted in foam boxes and planted out in the garden.

My ginger is has died back and I pick it as I need it and allow it to do as it will. The clumps simply continue to grow larger each year.

Throughout the garden bed I have asparagus, the plantings mentioned earlier and my herbs.  I love herbs.  I have rosemary, parsley, thyme, basil, coriander, mint in abundance and continue to spread them throughout the garden via cuttings, divisions or collecting the seeds.

There is a large pentas in the centre of the garden which the butterflies adore.  I hacked it back (technical gardening term there), to about on quarter of its original size this week so I have no beautiful pink blooms to share with the wee creatures.  I did manage to get three more plants from this though and have transplanted them elsewhere.

I'll share some more garden photographs in the future and I PROMISE I'll share some more art too.  Art has been slow going but I do have a few things that you've not seen.

Thanks for popping by.

Sandy xxx