Trees, garlic, babies and sea air on a tired day. We took the littlest one to Hobson's Bay hoping the waves would lull him to sleep -but he stayed wide awake, taking it all in.
I've made it over to Substack from WordPress and I'm a fully paid up subscriber now 👋 Still getting to grips with the app but glad I can now comment!
The day out by the sea sounds wonderful. They say the sea air is good for you. I certainly slept better when I spent a week by the gorgeous Northumberland coast last month. Windswept beaches that go on for miles. I could quite happily live next to the sea. At least in the UK one is never too far from it.
Your garden looks wonderful. Mine is doing well. Two years ago we set out to make a wildlife habitat. Our small garden is now a refuge in this newbuild housing development with new houses popping up like mushrooms all the time. It took a while but we have regular visitors now, including a hedgehog who comes to eat the food we leave out. Nature finds a way, we just need more spaces to encourage it to move in...
Grace! Welcome to the other side! And thank you so much for upgrading! You can choose where we plant your tree this time. NZ (on the Kapiti Coast) or the Fellowship Forest. All but trees this year.
This past weekend we joined many of our friends and neighbors at the 31st annual local jazz festival. It is always free and brings world and local artists together for great music. Some rain one day couldn't stop it.
We added solar panels next to our house 6 years ago. They cut our electric bills to 40% of what they were in years before. The additional energy we buy from our electric company is supplied 40% from wind turbines. Arrangements like this lower the carbon footprint and benefit us all. Coal, oil, and gas simply cannot compete with that efficiency.
What a splendid result. Wind and solar. I am hoping that the new budget cuts don’t affect the maintenance of wind turbines. There are a lot of moving parts in those structures. But isn’t it satisfying to be able to literally make power from your own roof!
We have had 1.5 inches of rain starting Monday so I have not had to water yet this week. Yay! Our garden is struggling this year. We had a two week period where temps reached 100 everyday recently. The plants are not happy. The bell peppers are suffering from sunburn and the tomatoes aren’t producing as much as I would like. The cucumbers have succumbed to the heat. The zucchini isn’t producing much either. I fertilize regularly with organic liquid fertilizer and bone meal. Shade cloth has been recommended, but the area where the plants is not conducive to it. I am planning for next year in my head about how to plant and where to plant to be able to use shade cloth. Your garlic looks gorgeous! It should be cured by the time you get home. I did manage to harvest the onions that we planted, so there is that. Bill, the cook, will use them in short order, I’m sure. They are finishing up drying out in my sewing room in the dark with a fan. I have been turning them. They aren’t huge, but the stalks were dying out and it was time. Your rhubarb looks beautiful! On the plus side, we have a ton of trees on our property and fireflies at dusk.
Sounds like you are having quite the summer. It might be time to stop fertilizing the zuchinni - they seem to gets lots of green but not enough fruit when overfed. And.
You are learning heaps about your environment though. With all those trees you might be able to create a garden that gets light afternoon shade? Oh!
You have raised beds right? You could make a hoop of cattle panel high over a bed and grow beans or melons on the hoop. Tomatoes too actually. By late summer the plants below will be shaded. Plus you have doubled your growing space.
I love hoops from cattle panel. You could even put them up between the raised beds for the same effect.
Next year will be better. This year was for lessons. That heat is hard on plants. Lots of straw mulch. (I need to get some too - it get in the 100s here too .
Thanks, Cecilia. I’m enjoying your walks, thoughts and memories while you are in Melbourne. Wasn’t Sheila the most perfect pig? What news on Wai? Photo of mother and baby is lovely and one to make it into your memory book. We are all devastated at the news around the world. The floods and death toll in Texas; the ongoing fights in the Ukraine and Israel and the terrible ICE in the US. Reading your post every morning to ground me and makes me start my day with peace and hope for the future of our beleaguered planet.
Not sure whether it's raining on the Farmy, but we've had more rain this summer than in the past 14 years we've lived here. The lakes and rivers are full. It's very unusual. But I always welcome the rain as we often have long dry spells. And the gardens are loving it too! The weeds especially! Pulling them is wearing me out, and it seems that they are winning the battle! :(
Just love seeing the picture of Sheila and Ton! And of course I had to go back to reread the old post! :) Also love the pic of baby and daughter. So very precious. xo
I am reading through all the old posts looking for recipes - but I almost NEVER wrote in a header that there was a recipe so I also am having a nice time wandering through the archives. So many pictures! No wonder I kept running out of room! Not sure about rain in Illinois - John is terrible at answering my questions. A text can go unanswered for days then he says something totally different. Glad you are getting rain though - your little lakes must be doing great!
Well, Bull Shoals Lake, just a few minutes from us, covers 1,050 miles of shoreline with 71,240 acres of lake area, so it's not so little. And Norfork Lake has more than 550 miles of shoreline and covers some 22,000 acres. It's about 1/2 hour from us. So we have two big, beautiful lakes for swimming and fishing right on our doorstep. We are very fortunate indeed!!! I bet John is harvesting tomatoes and all sorts of other veggies right about now on the Farmy! My John actually grew artichokes this year! And they are big and delicious! :)
Those lakes sound marvelous. For some reason, I thought you had a smaller kind of pond. Don’t know about John and his tomatoes as usual he is the most terrible communicator, but they are harvesting the garlic. How are you eating those artichokes I never really got that whole leaf thing together. I saw them quarters and roasted the other day.
You are right, we do have a small pond on our property, and it is full too! But it's the crystal clear lake, just across the road that is so wonderful for swimming and immersing oneself in nature. We steam the artichokes and then pull off the petals and dip the lower, fleshy parts in melted butter. Very delicious!!! :)
This post had everything. Baby grizzles, garlic glory, garden plans, global grief, and a gargoyle that made me laugh out loud. You’re right too. Bad sleep = cranky people, but this post = calm heart. I feel awful for those families in Texas :(
And as always - you are very welcome. It takes me so long to write a post now with all the baby interruptions that the posts end up in Chapters. Adaptation. We are good at it.
That lovely view of the Melbourne CBD across Hobson's Bay from Williamstown is one I have in an oil painting, complete with sailing dinghies in the foreground. It's one of the things I miss most acutely about Melbourne life.
I have volunteer zucchini and sweet potatoes sprouting in my winter vegie garden. They will either make it on their own, or they won't. We just cut the first stem of sugar (Ducasse) bananas to save them from the flying foxes. It's hanging in the garage, ripening slowly, delicious tiny sweet bananas the length of your middle finger and about twice as thick around. Also coming along are the dozens of passionfruit ripening on the vines on my back fence. And since the days are slowly getting longer again, the hens are coming back on the lay.
That is great! I especially am happy to hear about the passionfruit. I have had one tamarillo seed strike in the last few days! That should be interesting!
My daughter hates to put him down to bed preferring to sit with him asleep on her. Which is doable when you have help in the house. This will change when I am away for a few weeks. There is very little a person can do with a wee baby attached. We are preparing for that though.
And I just don’t know where to put this feeling - you know? This feeling of powerlessness crossed with the deep fear of an immigrant. I don’t think there is even a word for it.
Your vegetables are looking great. I tried growing cauliflowers last year, but they all bolted. This year I'm doing celeriac instead. My garlic looks like it has dried out properly now so I need to trim it and store it today.
I am in the final stages of moving to my new house. I have four garden spaces: backyard, side yard, strip of land behind a retaining wall, and curb strip. My land is south and west-facing. I have plenty of cardboard and newspaper, but no leaves, straw or finished compost (I'm just starting to compost eggshells, coffee, tea, and vegetable and fruit scraps. Since three of my garden areas are mostly weeds, I cut them down and remove flowers and seed heads to the municipal yard waste. Should I buy a worm bin, or finished compost (like you having to buy straw!)? I am a layerer, not a digger. Can worms stay alive in a climate where it freezes in the winter? I want to make use of my cardboard supply, which is probably the most I'll ever have at one time.
The worms will want to be deep in the ground when it freezes. But they do like to get into the cardboard too. I like my worm compost because the worms multiply in there and there are always a few that get out into the gardens and pots. I know you were on the west coast but I can't remember where you shifted to?
Congratulations on getting a house with gardens! I am sure there will be leaves in the fall to help you. We don't have that many deciduous trees round here.
I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Port Angeles, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula near the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Freezes were rare in the Bay Area, so food scraps never froze. I went out to the general store to get a worm bin or other outdoor composter. They were out and not planning to get any more. I need to go to the Tractor Supply store to see if they have something. Sigh. I only have one small tree in my mostly bare yards -- I'll plant fruit trees, but I need to reduce the weed population and build soil first.
How delightful to catch up on the gardens you are planning and planting from South to North, the care for the garden of our world, and the vision of new life sucking it all in. Pigs and garlic and gargoyles and rhubarb and, most delightful of all, the baby's wide-eyed wonder. Cheers!
So much gardening going on and today I have not even got outside yet. Appointments, etc. 😂 And windy stormy weather. I will put on a stew for dinner then I will go out for a look around. .
I've made it over to Substack from WordPress and I'm a fully paid up subscriber now 👋 Still getting to grips with the app but glad I can now comment!
The day out by the sea sounds wonderful. They say the sea air is good for you. I certainly slept better when I spent a week by the gorgeous Northumberland coast last month. Windswept beaches that go on for miles. I could quite happily live next to the sea. At least in the UK one is never too far from it.
Your garden looks wonderful. Mine is doing well. Two years ago we set out to make a wildlife habitat. Our small garden is now a refuge in this newbuild housing development with new houses popping up like mushrooms all the time. It took a while but we have regular visitors now, including a hedgehog who comes to eat the food we leave out. Nature finds a way, we just need more spaces to encourage it to move in...
Grace! Welcome to the other side! And thank you so much for upgrading! You can choose where we plant your tree this time. NZ (on the Kapiti Coast) or the Fellowship Forest. All but trees this year.
This past weekend we joined many of our friends and neighbors at the 31st annual local jazz festival. It is always free and brings world and local artists together for great music. Some rain one day couldn't stop it.
We added solar panels next to our house 6 years ago. They cut our electric bills to 40% of what they were in years before. The additional energy we buy from our electric company is supplied 40% from wind turbines. Arrangements like this lower the carbon footprint and benefit us all. Coal, oil, and gas simply cannot compete with that efficiency.
What a splendid result. Wind and solar. I am hoping that the new budget cuts don’t affect the maintenance of wind turbines. There are a lot of moving parts in those structures. But isn’t it satisfying to be able to literally make power from your own roof!
We have had 1.5 inches of rain starting Monday so I have not had to water yet this week. Yay! Our garden is struggling this year. We had a two week period where temps reached 100 everyday recently. The plants are not happy. The bell peppers are suffering from sunburn and the tomatoes aren’t producing as much as I would like. The cucumbers have succumbed to the heat. The zucchini isn’t producing much either. I fertilize regularly with organic liquid fertilizer and bone meal. Shade cloth has been recommended, but the area where the plants is not conducive to it. I am planning for next year in my head about how to plant and where to plant to be able to use shade cloth. Your garlic looks gorgeous! It should be cured by the time you get home. I did manage to harvest the onions that we planted, so there is that. Bill, the cook, will use them in short order, I’m sure. They are finishing up drying out in my sewing room in the dark with a fan. I have been turning them. They aren’t huge, but the stalks were dying out and it was time. Your rhubarb looks beautiful! On the plus side, we have a ton of trees on our property and fireflies at dusk.
Sounds like you are having quite the summer. It might be time to stop fertilizing the zuchinni - they seem to gets lots of green but not enough fruit when overfed. And.
You are learning heaps about your environment though. With all those trees you might be able to create a garden that gets light afternoon shade? Oh!
You have raised beds right? You could make a hoop of cattle panel high over a bed and grow beans or melons on the hoop. Tomatoes too actually. By late summer the plants below will be shaded. Plus you have doubled your growing space.
I love hoops from cattle panel. You could even put them up between the raised beds for the same effect.
Next year will be better. This year was for lessons. That heat is hard on plants. Lots of straw mulch. (I need to get some too - it get in the 100s here too .
💕🌱🌳💚👍🏽
🌻
Thanks, Cecilia. I’m enjoying your walks, thoughts and memories while you are in Melbourne. Wasn’t Sheila the most perfect pig? What news on Wai? Photo of mother and baby is lovely and one to make it into your memory book. We are all devastated at the news around the world. The floods and death toll in Texas; the ongoing fights in the Ukraine and Israel and the terrible ICE in the US. Reading your post every morning to ground me and makes me start my day with peace and hope for the future of our beleaguered planet.
So much going on. We have to have hope - hope is critical to life.
I’m going to make a cup of coffee, and then I’ll come enjoy this piece, Cecilia. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Giovanna. I am baby trapped so I will have to wait for my coffee to browse with you! 🤣☕️
Oh, I know the feeling of being nap trapped very well. Enjoy 🤍
Be the change you want to be - I forgot about that one. It is a good one to try to remember.
I have it on a magnet on my fridge in Illinois! Lest I forget. Have a great evening, friend.
Not sure whether it's raining on the Farmy, but we've had more rain this summer than in the past 14 years we've lived here. The lakes and rivers are full. It's very unusual. But I always welcome the rain as we often have long dry spells. And the gardens are loving it too! The weeds especially! Pulling them is wearing me out, and it seems that they are winning the battle! :(
Just love seeing the picture of Sheila and Ton! And of course I had to go back to reread the old post! :) Also love the pic of baby and daughter. So very precious. xo
I am reading through all the old posts looking for recipes - but I almost NEVER wrote in a header that there was a recipe so I also am having a nice time wandering through the archives. So many pictures! No wonder I kept running out of room! Not sure about rain in Illinois - John is terrible at answering my questions. A text can go unanswered for days then he says something totally different. Glad you are getting rain though - your little lakes must be doing great!
Well, Bull Shoals Lake, just a few minutes from us, covers 1,050 miles of shoreline with 71,240 acres of lake area, so it's not so little. And Norfork Lake has more than 550 miles of shoreline and covers some 22,000 acres. It's about 1/2 hour from us. So we have two big, beautiful lakes for swimming and fishing right on our doorstep. We are very fortunate indeed!!! I bet John is harvesting tomatoes and all sorts of other veggies right about now on the Farmy! My John actually grew artichokes this year! And they are big and delicious! :)
Those lakes sound marvelous. For some reason, I thought you had a smaller kind of pond. Don’t know about John and his tomatoes as usual he is the most terrible communicator, but they are harvesting the garlic. How are you eating those artichokes I never really got that whole leaf thing together. I saw them quarters and roasted the other day.
You are right, we do have a small pond on our property, and it is full too! But it's the crystal clear lake, just across the road that is so wonderful for swimming and immersing oneself in nature. We steam the artichokes and then pull off the petals and dip the lower, fleshy parts in melted butter. Very delicious!!! :)
This post had everything. Baby grizzles, garlic glory, garden plans, global grief, and a gargoyle that made me laugh out loud. You’re right too. Bad sleep = cranky people, but this post = calm heart. I feel awful for those families in Texas :(
Thank you, as always, Cecilia...
And as always - you are very welcome. It takes me so long to write a post now with all the baby interruptions that the posts end up in Chapters. Adaptation. We are good at it.
You do a pretty good job Cecilia.
That lovely view of the Melbourne CBD across Hobson's Bay from Williamstown is one I have in an oil painting, complete with sailing dinghies in the foreground. It's one of the things I miss most acutely about Melbourne life.
I have volunteer zucchini and sweet potatoes sprouting in my winter vegie garden. They will either make it on their own, or they won't. We just cut the first stem of sugar (Ducasse) bananas to save them from the flying foxes. It's hanging in the garage, ripening slowly, delicious tiny sweet bananas the length of your middle finger and about twice as thick around. Also coming along are the dozens of passionfruit ripening on the vines on my back fence. And since the days are slowly getting longer again, the hens are coming back on the lay.
That is great! I especially am happy to hear about the passionfruit. I have had one tamarillo seed strike in the last few days! That should be interesting!
it's all looking good and that beautiful babe is staying awake to look after the two of you!
My daughter hates to put him down to bed preferring to sit with him asleep on her. Which is doable when you have help in the house. This will change when I am away for a few weeks. There is very little a person can do with a wee baby attached. We are preparing for that though.
😆
“I ache with this knowledge. This total disregard for the future.” Yes, yes, yes. Solidarity.
And I just don’t know where to put this feeling - you know? This feeling of powerlessness crossed with the deep fear of an immigrant. I don’t think there is even a word for it.
It’s kind of like terror but deeper and sadder somehow? No words. It feels historic though.
I agree, Lindsey, we have seen the underbelly and things will never be the same again.
Your vegetables are looking great. I tried growing cauliflowers last year, but they all bolted. This year I'm doing celeriac instead. My garlic looks like it has dried out properly now so I need to trim it and store it today.
I love the picture of Sheila and Ton Ton!
Yes! I loved that old shot too. She was so - um - well rounded in those days! 😆
I am in the final stages of moving to my new house. I have four garden spaces: backyard, side yard, strip of land behind a retaining wall, and curb strip. My land is south and west-facing. I have plenty of cardboard and newspaper, but no leaves, straw or finished compost (I'm just starting to compost eggshells, coffee, tea, and vegetable and fruit scraps. Since three of my garden areas are mostly weeds, I cut them down and remove flowers and seed heads to the municipal yard waste. Should I buy a worm bin, or finished compost (like you having to buy straw!)? I am a layerer, not a digger. Can worms stay alive in a climate where it freezes in the winter? I want to make use of my cardboard supply, which is probably the most I'll ever have at one time.
The worms will want to be deep in the ground when it freezes. But they do like to get into the cardboard too. I like my worm compost because the worms multiply in there and there are always a few that get out into the gardens and pots. I know you were on the west coast but I can't remember where you shifted to?
Congratulations on getting a house with gardens! I am sure there will be leaves in the fall to help you. We don't have that many deciduous trees round here.
I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Port Angeles, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula near the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Freezes were rare in the Bay Area, so food scraps never froze. I went out to the general store to get a worm bin or other outdoor composter. They were out and not planning to get any more. I need to go to the Tractor Supply store to see if they have something. Sigh. I only have one small tree in my mostly bare yards -- I'll plant fruit trees, but I need to reduce the weed population and build soil first.
How delightful to catch up on the gardens you are planning and planting from South to North, the care for the garden of our world, and the vision of new life sucking it all in. Pigs and garlic and gargoyles and rhubarb and, most delightful of all, the baby's wide-eyed wonder. Cheers!
So much gardening going on and today I have not even got outside yet. Appointments, etc. 😂 And windy stormy weather. I will put on a stew for dinner then I will go out for a look around. .