Spring, oh where have you gone?

Mea maxima culpa for not blogging, even though I did promise to. No rest for the wicked alas. Life just got in the way of, well, everything.
Here's an update on our garden (I will try and blog about something else in future):
- the drainage system we had put in works like a treat. It has astounded us a couple of times already. Hard earned money well spent. No more flooding in the direct vicinity around the house.
- we bought two chickens for Crazy Neighbour because his four chickens weren't laying eggs as they were supposed to. Alas a couple of days later they were all slaughtered by a fox. A week later his new chickens were also killed, he found them neatly stacked next to the enclosure. We lent him some netting and rope for electrifying meadows. The chicken coop now looks like some sort of friendly concentration camp. The fox has not returned so far.
Here's a snap of the two beautiful chicks that are no longer.

- Dr Livingstone sowed the meadow but it didn't really kick off growing, for lack of water, even though we sprayed it daily. Thanks to a few heavy showers, it has finally started growing. We've even put on some manure and it looks like it is working. Our nice neighbour (not the Crazy One, the other one) has one of those lawn mowers you can sit on. He surprised us the other week by having mowed the entire meadow! Lovely geezer. We awarded him with an Iron Maiden Trooper Beer.

- our greenhouse has been spared the bombardment of the Hail Stones of Death that came down in several parts of Belgium last week. We had been a bit anxious and Dr Livingstone had devised a diabolical plan to counter this. Putting inflated air matrasses on top of the construction. In my honest opinion they wouldn't last five minutes, wind gusts were so severe, they would have ended up in Crazy Neighbour's pond anyway.

We did sit out in the garden awaiting a brief storm on the 9th and I managed to capture some very rare Altostratus undulatus asperatus.

I will leave you with a picture of Mouser who has taken the not unseemly task to hand paw to guard the hortensias.

As you can see it is extremely exhausting work and I'm not sure how long Kitteh with actually last under the heavy burden.

Steadily growing

One month on and I've spent a lot of hours in the garden so far. Mainly weeding and watering. It hasn't rained since the greenhouse went up.
We had to pump water from Crazy Neighbour's pond into our water tanks just to do our daily spraying.

Luckily, it rained last night! About 7mm for a prolonged 20 minutes or so.
Phew!

So we haven't kept still all this time. We did get the odd spell of frost, which killed off an aubergine, some marigolds, basil and some Blue Mink Ageratum which I planted a few days prior. The courgettes also turned black, but they came through all right in the end. Also my hortensias (a blue and a white one) weren't too happy about the cold spell. I hope they will eventually pull through.

I've already harvested all my raddish. They were extremely tasty. A second batch are already sown and growing.

Our greenhouse has so far provided us with the perfect seating and drinking opportunity. It was an investment well worth the hassle. Just for the added pleasure of a prolonged evening under the glass roof. It's our own little drinking parlour, the table is my birthday gift from last year.Glad we decided on the 9 meter version of greenhouse, not the 6 meter. The price difference wasn't that great anyhow.

We have planted a number of seedlings that need to evolve into yummy veggies. 

From top to bottom we have three different tomato plants (I think Roma is one of them), a yellow and a red paprika, a cayenne pepper, more cherry tomato plants (about twelve of them!), cucumber, and two Frankenthaler grapevines. Also passiflora, kiwi, Van der Laan grapes and some salad are in the greenhouse.

Dr Livingstone bought a drip lead, which we snaked around all the things in the ground, so we only need to turn on the pump to water everything in one go! He also hooked the gutters up to a drain that in turn empties into a water butt which in turn opens up in a trench to get rid of excess water.

Outside I made beds for all of the strawberry shoots I managed to transplant. I also got in some three other varieties of strawberries which gives us a grand total of 5 now.
They are already yielding copious amounts of sweet fruits, which is exactly what I wanted.
Alas the beds look like I've buried the Belgian Red Devils there.

We made two veggie beds in front of the greenhouse, it is filling up with stuff as the time is right to put more things out. 

I leave you with a picture from the stable side of the garden. I'm trying to build some form of wild garden (managed of course), but due to lack of time it's not yet finished. The bulge with slates on top is the bee hotel facility. The trench I was talking about is seen on the right hand side. It's a kind of cloaca for the drainage system we had put in under the meadow (them orange things sticking out).

Drilling for bees

Every woman should have power tools.
But she needs to use the right ones to do the job.
Of course this woman likes using power tools. But it's hard work.
Until Dr Livingstone points out after some time I've been using the wrong things...

Our bee hotels (4 of them) are already nearly booked solid, so I though it was time to enlarge our hotel corporation and fashion our own. We've got some logs lying about we're never going to burn in the stove (conifer, contains too much resin). So I was off to the garage, called up Dr Livingstone to find out where he kept the drill ("It's in a grey case") and started out drilling holes.
That was bloody hard work. The wood proved very difficult to bore holes into.
Even if I set it to 'hammer drill' it still didn't do anything...
So I packed it in after a good 10 holes.

Dr Livingstone arrived home and I showed him my hard day's graft and explained that it was tougher than I had imagined it would be.

'Well, of course it would be. You're not using a wood drill.'

/facepalm.

So he got the correct drill out (which was in another grey case) and accordingly started drilling holes like a hot knife through butter...

Seedlings

First time ever I've done this: sowing my own seeds and really intending to grow vegetables like a proper farmer.
Not on a grand scale mind you, but enjoying mucking about.
First thing I had in mind: only sow things you really like and are going to eat or are pleasant to look at or will propagate themselves the year after without having to sow again.
Last year we put in fennel, and I do not like the taste of anise at all.

I was very much the person in form last year and managed to recuperate sun flower seeds (which most of them were shared with the birds), dill seeds (loads of them), radish seeds and too much marigold seeds.
I also stripped the wild flowers that were in the front garden from some seeds so I will be sowing them a little bit later on directly into the ground.

But some trips to different garden centers for different seeds got me started. I bought a little planter device to make little heaps to put the seeds in.

I thought I would help myself by labeling everything I've sown and mentioning the date I sowed them on.
They were in the heated conservatory for about 1,5 weeks and slowly started to bud. Spinach was first out.

Much to our astonishment, after we eagerly transported the containers to the greenhouse, just after a couple of hours nearly 50% of everything had come up!
Just like putting a cake in the oven, and a couple of hours later: hey presto!

Amazing. We were quite chuffed to be honest!

So here's a picture of stuff trying to evolve into yummy vegetables for us:

In no particular order I've sown:

- spinach

- carrots

- onions (barletta and long thing ones)

- raddish

- pees

- beetroot

- water melon

- regular melon

- round salad

- paprika

- cayenne pepper

- parsley

- leek

- small tomatoes (2 varieties)

- cucumber

Flowers:

- low sunflowers

- tagates (marigold orange and yellow)

- larkspur

- snapdragon

- petunia

- lobelia

- Livingstone daisies (a fitting name!)

All are starting to bring forth small, but confident little green leaves, bar the larkspur. Perhaps I was a bit too early in sowing them. 

I also used old seeds ('to be sown before 2005') it said on the packing. But they're doing fine. 

Once everything is of an acceptable size it will be warm enough to put them in the soil outdoors.

The marigolds are going in rows between vegetables to keep away unwanted insects from roots and what have you. We also put them in the front garden last year, to that patch of ground has now been 'cleaned up' and we will put veggies in on that spot.

More from the garden in a next post...

Greenhouse treat part 2

So after the first step of ground moving stuff was completed we got in touch again with the greenhouse guys telling them that all was ready.

Again an early start for us as they were ready to build the structure before the crack of dawn. I was at the ready with coffee at some time before 7 a.m.

First up they put in some concrete foundation, we don't want it to be blown away when there's an intensified storm.

On top of these come the steel struts and in between the rest of the foundation. It immediately gives a good impression how it's going to look.

Next up the gutters go on top and then the roof and the support beams for the glass and hatches.

We chose to have a big sliding door of 1,5 meters fitted, it will allow a better air flow once temperatures climb up to 40ºC in summer.
Also two manual hatches and two automatic hatches that open according to the temperature inside.

The new greenhouse is huge (3 x 9 meters). It's that big because we wanted to have a little chill out spot inside it so we can have a beer when it is just a bit too nippy out and when there's a tad of annoying wind up.

The greenhouse in its entirety was put up in half a day. We put in the (recuperated) concrete slabs the following day (with Middle Teen's help) and were having a nice chilled beer by 4 pm.

We also started putting some things in it I'd sown a week or so earlier in our heated conservatory. It's got a tray holder at the back at a very convenient hight.

But I bundled the frail plants indoors again at night. Last week saw 20+ºC temperatures and temps just above freezing level at night.

More on the little seedlings in another post...

Garden thrift

I was browsing through some pictures of the insects in my garden last year, how I miss the lush, colourful vegetation!
Things are starting to bud here and there (peonies are go!) but we're still a long way away from spiders, bees and butterflies dangling from every available leaf and flower.
Although we did spot Polygonia c-album, Inachis Io and two Goneptherix rhamni fluttering about.
Anyway, here's a snap of Hylotelephium telephium starting to grow again.

I'm quite up to speed on clearing up from last year. I've done most of the pruning and clearing away of dead material. OF course it's nothing compared to last year when we started from scratch. So yay for me.

Dr Livingstone cleared the veg garden in front, we're filling it with new earth and making plans to plant lots of yummy stuff once its warm enough to sow or plant outdoors. We've also re-arranged the self-made crates to make access easier for weeding.

I know I promised to blog about stuff going on so here's a small update on loads of stuff that has been going on all year.

1) Last year we introduced flowers on the drive way, not only to please ourselves and our neighbours but also to prevent people from parking in front of our door. This really helps and (we hope) will keep away contractors once the owner of a piece of land next to our mad neighbour starts to prepare for building (but let's hope not).
Two weeks ago I bought 11 different colours of primula and kept them indoors for another week. Last week I put them in our home-made receptacles together with some violets. Of course it froze the very next night (doh!), so they have withered a bit.

I've left some space open to plant petunia's later on, when they've matured enough to go out.

The flower boxes are made out of plastic gutters and are mounted on 50cm high poles, whacked into the ground with a big, wooden mallet.
It was a much cheaper alternative to buying ready made ones. And it was fun making them too.

So stay tuned for a next installment about my garden thrift.

Kicked in

Spring has kicked in last weekend, setting record breaking temperatures since -er- records began. Two days in a row some 20ºC+. Lovely.

Loads of butterflies about, a greenhouse installed (oh yes!, more on that later) and already some seedlings rearing their fragile heads...

We've survived it

Yep, no trick or treaters because we were in the pub. And Mouser guarded the pumpkins.

The dove from above

Stuff always happens after I have finally decided to clean the windows.
It is an event, cleaning those windows but I finally managed to find a rapid, effective way to do them.
We've still got the moat running round the house and using a ladder has now been circumnavigated. I can get at the windows now with stuff mounted on poles.
Anyway, stuff always happens. Like heavy rainfall that puts streaks all over them. Or birds flying into the windows.
We used to have a lot of them flying into the conservatory, remember the big lovely Jay nursed by Dr Livingstone.
So this dove was no exception.

I didn't see it at first, but in the morning when the condensation was on the outside of the window, the imprint became quite apparent.
Caught in mid-flight. It's ghostlike appearance hovering in the line of sight.
It's on a window of the room where the administration gets done.
It's still there.
I might consider cleaning the windows again.
But twice in one month's time is a lot you know...

Rubus stealus

I spotted an over-succulent raspberry on one of the bushes a couple of days ago and I just had to take a picture.

The bush is teeming with berries getting ready to turn all red and sweet.
When Dr Livingstone came home one evening I forgot to tell him all about it.
So I did the following evening.
'I know there's one. I already ate it this morning before I got in the car.'

-_-

A carrot shaped like...what exactly?

No turnips here shaped exactly like a thingy, but we have pulled out some extraordinarily shaped carrots. They look like they changed their mind half way and started growing in the opposite direction.

Dr Livingstone thinks the ground is probably too hard and they're having trouble  moving in the right direction.

Summer still here

Luckily the summer hasn't left us yet, so nice warm weather, lots of sun.

We could do with the odd shower though for the garden. And our water reservoir. It's empty. It usually holds 5000 liters.

Make jam, not war

A perfectly heart-shaped sweet strawberry. It had to be captured in a picture and broadcast to the world.
Sweet love for everyone!

For scale's sake

The courgette plant has been supplying us with humongous vegetables for a couple of weeks now. Tried all kinds of recipes to keep enjoying them.
To give you an impression of the kind of copious amounts we have to deal with on a regular basis: here's a photo to clarify. I added my garden glove for scale's sake.
We currently have two plants doing very well and not likely to stop growing as of yet.
We are strongly considering planting just the one next year!

Mouser mushroom

Mouser is waiting for the garden gnomes to come home from a hard day's work down in the diamond mine.

Oh wait. They were dwarves. And they lived in a cottage.

Meh.

Come to think of it: What did they actually do with the diamonds they found?

Is that ever explained? Do they just keep them in a vault and leave them there?

This is one of those story lines which should have been explored in the sequels.

Subs on holiday

The subs of of one of the national newspapers are on a summer break and monkeys are filling in for them once more.

These gems were in the paper's online edition last Sunday:

First up is National News.
It reads "19 people dead in traffic accident in Egypt."

Second one from Wednesday's edition in Foreign News:
It reads: "Magnetic field of Sun about to turn."

You can't get any more foreign than that.
What happened to the Science News section by the way?

Butterfly-in

I've been roaming around the garden since the weekend before last with my camera. It was a very long time since I snapped some wildlife and I went in headlong. There was a butterfly counting weekend, so we made ourselves useful. We've not too good at naming the insects so I took pictures, we compared them to others on the insecternet and hey presto; some eight different species popped out:

Polyommatus icarus (which I hoped would have been the very rare Adonis butterfly (Polyommatus bellargus).

Autographa gamma

Gonepteryx rhamni

Pieris rapae

Colias crocae

Celastrina argiolus

Maniola jurtina

Aglais io

This was more than I had expected to see in the garden.
Looks like the combination of wild flowers, a veg garden and a manicured garden with a lawn, herbs and the surrounding fruit trees are a very good combination for attracting all sorts.
What a difference compared to where we used to live. We realize what an unhealthy environment that was, notwithstanding we were in the middle of greenery and fruit trees too. But it just shows that all those pesticides they used on the fruit trees and the farmland were a complete disaster for the fauna over there.

Summer wild flowers

I'll treat you to a picture of my lovely summer border full of wild flowers and gladiolus which have finally brought forth up to five different shades of colours.

Garden delights

I was taking a break from my studying, and chanced upon the beans Dr Livingstone had sown a while back. I thought it was still just some greenery with flowers, but they are already sporting a huge amount of beans.
So as you might have already guessed, this is what we will be eating for the following couple of days, with come courgette thrown in for variety.

Much against my will, this entry will look like a cookery blog for once.
We're having a lovely salad this evening made with fresh ingredients from the garden:
- 1 red paprika
- 1/2 cucumber (from our neighbour)
- about 20 large pole snapbeans
- 1 tomato
- rosemary
- basil
- mint
- dill

And for extra spunk: pasta (farfalle), one carrot, balsamico vinegar, olive oil and some ground black pepper.

Fresh from the garden

We have been harvesting our own vegetables for some time now. The courgettes are incredible. This thing yields us a fresh, humongous piece every other day. We've been racking our brains how to prepare it. Fried, cooked, raw. We've make courgette smoothies and courgette soup.
So they're a big succes. We only planted two of them, just in case one would die or something, but against all odds it went fine.

Also the pumpkin plant is bringing forth huge pumpkins. It is slowly taking over the front garden, creeping along unnoticed. Until we eat everything in the fall.

And of course the lovely strawberries are a special treat. Once I plucked a whole bowl of them. They went down with some yoghurt.

We've also been giving away fennel, sharing bundles of raddish and Dr Livingstone has been eating lettuce in copious amounts over the past weeks. He had planted too much and everything was ready to eat at the same time. He bought some new seedlings for harvesting in 2-3 weeks time and also some rhubarb. Yum!

I also managed to harvest a handfull of green peas, haven't cooked them yet.

And our F1-tomato plant and the cherry tomato plants are giving us 2 to 3 small tomatoes a day. It will be pasta all the way for rest of the week I think.

More to come as summer progresses!