life in b&w

Some garden produce: brocollini, lettuce & thyme. Not much else is growing this winter except Italian flat leaf parsley, some sage and rosemary.

The speckled light pic is of a peace lily which is in flower and I don't seem to be able to stop photographing it!

Last pic is of my boo, sunning herself yesterday in the lovely winter light.

Carving continues but is slow going as I'm distracted with thinking/planning for the trip to Arnhem Land coming up. The northern heat will be a bit of a shock coming from Melbourne winter at this time of year.

What are you drinking at the moment? I'm sipping some black Daintree tea and it's good & strong. I have to really stop myself from drinking too much hot chocolate at this time of year. But I will make Stephanie's double choc brownies later today. A rainy winter's day just screams out for them.

light

Late afternoon light. That first pic is of one of our apricot trees in flower (growing in a pot). A friend grew it from seed!

I just love early spring weather.

Are you doing anything special today?

a study in chillies

All picked from the garden this morning. There are plenty more to come from a couple of healthy looking chilli bushes we have happening. Crazy curly looking things, some of them.

The tomatoes are almost fully ripe. Amazingly one plant has 17 full size tomatoes on it! It's loaded down and has made it through the heat wave without too much damage.

We had a friend drop off some super sized plums from her tree last weekend and then another friend dropped by with apricots from her neighbours' tree. That same friend also gave us home made ice cream flavoured with cardamon and apricots from her garden. Delicious! It's a regular locally grown fruit bounty swapping session around here these days.

Ah summer...........

garden surprise

Can you believe this garden marvel? A small round green not overly pretty succulent plant that can produce such an enormous and utterly lovely white flower. That stem is about 12 cm in length! I've been watching it grow over the last week or so. This plant only blossoms about every 1-2 years so finding it in full bloom this morning just made my heart sing.

take a stroll

Allow me to take you on a little tour of what's happening in my back garden. The spring onions flowered. And then we ate them all up.
The succulents are looking quite handsome. Some have flowered. Some are looking very busy and stripey.Others are looking very pretty. Almost edible.
Some are lovely and green. They make me feel cool on a hot day. And ones like these have a lot going on in their homes.Some are looking very soft and gentle.And others all perky and bright.

more thyme please

More garden talk.... my excuse is that everything is growing madly from the warm weather despite the lack of rain. We're back to using the bucket in the shower to water the garden. If you're unfamiliar with this little routine (most Australians know it well), one stands in the shower with a bucket between one's legs to catch the run off water. Then it is hauled from the bathroom to whichever part of the garden is looking the most dry. This is all fine if your lower back to doesn't get niggly from time to time like mine does. We just need some rain. Please.

Most of us need more time/thyme. Our herb patch is doing well. Note the thyme and oregano in the pic above. These herbs don't mind the dry weather so much. Tomato seedlings have just gone in too in keeping with the Melbourne vegie garden tradition of planting them around Cup Day now that the soil is nice and warm.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this is a garden blog. It's not. I just think gardening is good for the soul and compliments doodling around in a sketch book.

pink

A teeny tiny flower from a succulent plant in the garden. Well, ok yes, I did tweak this one which is why it's so fluro-like. Is it just too weird? I must confess to liking this kind of hot pink colour in a flower. (by the way, the natural colour is a softer pink).

cactus flower one day wonder

When I woke up a few days ago, I noticed that one of my succulents just outside the back door had overnight produced this amazing looking flower. If you look closely you'll see why this is a wild and beautiful accomplishment of the natural world. That huge white flower came out of the small, round, green succulent on the left (the one with the small white spikey dots all over it). And the most incredible thing is the flower only blossomed for one day and then it collapsed, suggesting the force of pushing it out into the world for that short time, was all it could muster. It was a wonderful thing to have witnessed. I'm always impressed by the gorgeous and unusual range of flowers that succulents produce from their spikey and sometimes rubbery bodies. I have another in my kitchen that is quite ugly to look at, yet when it flowers, pushes out bright pink little buds all over it's round prickly base. I think I might even make a print with some of the flower images someday.