making plant tags

Our garden it's an eclectic mix of plants, weeds, edibles, chickens, green tree frog, blue tongue lizard, geckos, insects and various items re-purposed to be garden features. A melting pot of inspirations and enjoyable moments. Recently I've been turning a small section into what I'm calling 'The Salad Bowl' a bed filled with a variety of herbs, lettuces, tomatoes, spinach, beans & rocket. A small area that we can wonder out to and pick a salad as needed. I often let a couple of the lettuces, rocket, basil & flat leaf parsley go to seed so fresh crops can pop through and I weed out the older plants. So I can keep track of what's what I've been labeling and having a wonderful time making these painted sticks to hold the labels.

The materials: sticks, an assortment of beads, sharpie pen, correction fluid pen, leftover house paint, wire and fabric & netting scraps (I used a few of the pieces leftover over from the disintegrate/integrate project). The how began with painting the sticks. Once dry I used the correction fluid pen to draw patterns on two of the sticks. I've wrapped the others sticks with the fabrics, beads and wire. I've attached the labels with either a piece of wire or cutting a slot in the top of the stick.

it's like china

Taking a moment to enjoy natures' gifts, I noticed the bud forming yesterday and it bloomed overnight. The flower is so delicate and elegant; it reminds me of precious china. A beautiful flower that usually only lasts one to two days.

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hooray the kookaburras are back

Washing the dishes is so much more enjoyable in spring than any other time of the year. I do enjoy gazing out the kitchen window in spring and seeing which birds return. The kookaburras had a wonderful time hanging around while we were working in the garden today, waiting to see how many worms and grabs we came across. As we restore the side garden which neighbors onto parkland we're replacing a few of the exotics with native plants which will then naturally feed the birds and attract bees etc 

Today we planted a few Gravillea plants

zygocactus in flower

 Each season brings new enjoyments - we're currently enjoying the flowering Zygocactus. We started with a coral coloured Zygocactus, which I featured in my first blog posting - our collection now includes a purple variety (top picture) and a white variety (bottom image). We're not sure what the middle plant is - it's been one of the many surprises we've found as part of renovating our humble home and garden.

brilliant pink, brilliant green - dragonfruit

The plan this morning was to heavily trim back the dragon fruit plant that we have growing. To date it hasn't fruited much and of course we haven't maintained the pruning of it so it's a bit out of control. So we were planning on pruning it right back this morning and shifting it to a different location within the garden - a spot with more sun. Well once wonderful husband got up on the ladder to reach the top section of the plant we discovered several fruits. So the heavy pruning became a light trim.

Not only are these tropical fruits nice to eat, the colors of this variety are quite striking.
We'll look at heavy pruning once it's finished fruiting

Tommy Toes

We've got back on top of the veggie patch this year, today's harvest was some Tommy Toe tomatoes. They just looked so good I decided to have a bit of a play with setting up still life shots and photographing food.  

friend or foe - a matter of perspective

As well as working on my pieces for the up-coming exhibition, we've also been catching up in the garden and of course the camera is never far away. This time it's been the pesky weeds that have had center stage. I stumbled across some information on edible weeds while researching companion planting. Who would have thought that some weeds actually have alternative uses. So camera in hand I've captured some shots, printed them onto fabric (using the Ink Aid method) went through my fabric stash, picked out a few floral prints and now working them into a collage. Apparently the following are just a few of the possible culinary delights: Dandelion, Purslane, chickweed, stinging nettle (once cooked the tiny hairs on these leaves are no longer an irritant), chicory and even one of the most annoying weeds in the garden is edible - the cobblers pegs (apparently an Aztec herb) One must always remember to correctly identify these plants before plunging in for a feast as some have similar looking cousins that are definitely not safe to consume.

little helper