It’s been…quick count…nearly a year since I was here last. I can’t believe it’s been that long!

Things have changed…evolved…moved on…& some are still blissfully the same. The weather has been pretty crap (not to mention pretty cold!) all winter. It seems like it’s been raining every day so far, although I’m sure it hasn’t. My garden isn’t happy. Even the pesky couch grass is giving up the ghost.

Yet, my golden queen peach has decided the dead middle of winter is the perfect time to begin flowering O_o What is up with that?! With all this rain, none of my stone fruit are going to be looking nice this year. I can hear the leaf curl developing from here.

Back in March, I finally got around to clearing out all the space around the chook coops & put in a shady productive garden. It’s full of a wide range of salad greens, arrowroot, alpine strawberries, salal, mints (in containers), peppermint-scented pelargonium, angelica, violas, & a wormwood that is doing surprisingly well. Some cute recycled bricks made handy footings for getting to the coop. I’m very pleased with it – much nicer than the tangle of weeds that was there before & both the family & the guinea pigs are enjoying the fruits of my labour.

We also added a play house for the kids & I’ve been slowly working my way round, adding more herbs & veges to the garden bed around the playhouse.

Yesterday a friend did a trade (raw milk & assorted veges for straw bales) & I got stuck into the bed under the kitchen window. Layered about half of it with newspaper/chook & piggie poo/straw before the rain came. Spent today clearing out my very old potato cages. I haven’t moved them in ages. Yes, I’m aware this is not the time to harvest potatoes but the lack of sunlight (due to trees nearby that had grown bigger) & the continual rain meant I needed to move them or risk loosing them. I’ve decided to go in-ground. I saved the plants & started digging my trenches (again, before the rain came). Am hoping to get the plants in tomorrow (they’re currently bedded down in the soil left over from the Jerusalem artichoke harvest a few days ago).

Soooo…that was probably the quickest catch up of all time. Loads has been happening but most of it is boring…lol. It’s good to be back…