gardening and farming . two hemispheres . with pictures

Fall in Illinois and Spring in Melbourne make awkward bedfellows. But there you are. We are separated but together. We lean on each other.

Nov 02, 2025

First - how about a smile.

Do you struggle with proofreading? Well, apparently you are not the only one!

How about a smile.

This rather ordinary house (just down the road in the suburb) is being sold for close to a million dollars. Australian. The market is HOT apparently. The description of the house caught my eye. The errors are so prolific that I could not help but laugh out loud - out there on the street with the dog pulling me round the corner to a small tree.

The text runs along the bottom of an enormous sign outside the property. I am going to call the real estate agent and offer him my services. Oh, and there are four bedrooms not two but that seems the least of their grammatical challenges.

The Farmy in Illinois.

Rhonda sent me some pictures from the farm in Illinois for you. It is still terribly dry and the cold has arrived which leaves the farm with no fresh feed way too early in the season.

The left over pumpkins from down the road will come soon which will be a relief. I hope they have time to pick them up.

Here are Tima and Wai with a few of the chickens (who have stopped laying for the season already evidently).

Jude has arrived in the big field with access to his own room in the barn next door to Tima and Wai. With no other pigs arriving until I am back living on the farm - not for a few years with the immigration situation so precarious - and me being a mouthy immigrant - there is plenty of room.

So Jude has the run of the barn and the pig field for the forseeable future. And very happy about that he is. He gets a larger share of the pigs buckets now too - with the Pop Pops gone.

The cows have no grass left in the fields due to almost three months with very little rain. So they are in the kitchen’s garden field - and next they will go to clean up the field that Jude just left. Rhonda and John are feeding out hay way too early. But the cows look nicely rounded out.

They are getting to share the pigs buckets too.

Our cows are grass fed. No corn. So no rain is a real problem. With temperatures dipping below freezing already it is too late now for the fields to recover before next spring. I feel very nervous about not being there to do the winter set up but I must trust my people on the ground.

The little kitchen’s garden in the Melbourne suburbs.

It was 30c yesterday but dropping back down to 13c for next few days, with rain. The winter plants have been dug in and summer food has begun.

In direct contrast to the prairies we are getting a lot of rain here and the gardens and fields are green.

The two lemon trees are beginning to flower and the scent is heady! The bees continue to work overtime in our garden here. The lemons got a long overdue prune at the end of last summer and it shows. They are doing so much better. There is much more sunlight getting into the small trees. They have been regularly fed also.

The big lemon in that enormous pot, (came with the house) gets a bucket of water a day from the babies bath which has helped enormously. The soil in that big pot must be years old was hard to rewet properly. And there are slaters in there eating the roots. Soapy water helps get rid of slaters.

Zuchinni are setting. Flowers are forming. Both male and female, so if the pollinators do their job small zuchinni should be available in a week!

Tomatoes are setting. These are a big early heirloom variety.

And here is Lucy. ⬇️ The new apple tree. To train the tree, I have tied it to the fence. I pass string through the sleeves, of clothing the baby has grown out of, so the string does not wear grooves on the young branches of this Pink Lady variety.

Most of the clothing is passed on to other families with babies but the old cotton singlets go in the rag bag. They are very useful.

Let’s jump the ditch across to the West Coast of New Zealand. Fourth son sent me a picture of his garden. The one I was working in not long ago.

It is growing beautifully. Lots of good food in there. And this is only half of it! They have had all the rain on Kapiti Coast. He said there have been very few days without a shower since I left so this was a rare break in the clouds.

Singing in the chemist

I was pushing the stroller and a nosy baby through the pharmacy (we call them chemists here) the other day and Riptide came on the sound system. It is an Australian song that you might know by Vance Joy. It is about a shy person, scared of all the stuff who is drawn to a girl like a riptide.

“I was scared of dentists and the dark I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations. Now all my friends are turning green … etc etc.

Do you know it? It has a hoppy syncopated rhythm with tons of beat. Oddly framed with huge success. I love it. It pulls a body into dance.

Anyway, I started to hum it - throwing words in here and there wherever I knew them, making up others, singing aloud but quietly - you know. Dancing on the inside. We whipped round into the aisle of suntan screen and lotions, and an older lady with a basket was jigging ever so slightly to the same song as she filled her basket, singing just a little too. We caught each other’s eye and grooved quietly for a moment when through the shelves we heard a booming male voice belting out the lyrics. Singing in his own world.

We smiled out loud and sikently laughed with each other - these strangers - I had visions of the camera panning back to cover shoppers in each aisle, suddenly lavishly costumed, each dancing and singing exuberantly in perfect sync to Riptide, bursting into a Bollywood-style song and dance scene that took over the chemist’s. Then the music changed, and we all buttoned back down and went back to our shopping.

Funny.

I have had many comments and messages these last few days from people across America collecting food for food pantries and reporting on restaurants in their towns contributing free meals to those in need across the USA. It does not matter where you fall in the Political spectrum seeing families go hungry without assistance plain wrong but is bring out the best in people.

My kids and I relied on Social Welfare in New Zealand for a time - we had to - it was a tough time - it was not a lot of money but I am grateful for that system. It saved us. To have it suddenly shut down would have been devastating to my family.

Keep organizing. And I will keep organizing from here but put long term plans in place. This may go on for a while. Get personal. And make it a habit.

I hear rain on the roof. It is 4.30 in the morning. I am not even sure why I am awake writing to you so early. Sometimes you get a thought in your head and you can’t sleep until you write it down.

Do you know what I mean?

So now that I have finished writing to you, I will stretch back out under the blankets and go back to sleep listening to the rain.

I will awake in the morning and immediately look for your comments before baby arrives for his early morning reading in bed time. He loves books. All little ones do.

So leave a comment.

Maybe you can tell me about your latest unusual encounter in the shops - or how your town is helping feed the poor. How your garden grows. What your weather is like.

And if I get busy answer each others comments - join the thread - I love it when you talk to each other and support each other - it is safe here. Abd many of us have our own struggles. So. Be kind.

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