Time to move on

This was always a practice garden.  We've had plans for many years to move to acreage where we could take what we've learnt from our suburban attempts onto a larger palate.  So we've now headed north and found outselves five acres to play with.  So from here, new new blog is http://barefootbounty.blogspot.com/ which my husband Shaun and I will be doing together.  See you there!

Ever more beautiful

In going from missing my opportunity to try my first home grown artichoke to letting it flower.  And now I find it's saved its greatest delights until the last.

One of the greatest pleasures of gardening are the constant surprises that await

Things are getting hot

I planted a few Thai chillis in a nice sunny spot and they are starting to come into their own.  Shaun is a huge chilli fan and loves to come and pick them when he's cooking up a storm.

My bee magnets

When I first started, I was very focused on productive plants only and got busy removing anything that would provide the family with food.  I very quickly realised that if I didn't have more than that in the garden, there'd be no visitors and no pollination, so I got a few packets of seeds, some for flowers than I loved such as cosmos and poppies and then mixed packets as a lottery, just for fun.  What's showed up has surprised me, such as blue cornflowers and red carnations but the other surprise was the flowers on the veggies themselves.  We let our artichoke go to full flower as Mum said they are very attractive and are used in flower decorations.  as with all things, she was right.

Here are some of our other beauties

Who's coming over for a pumpkin curry?

I'm excited by the volume of the crop, but who's going to eat it all?  And this picture was taken after I gave the neighbours a cut.

Solar

I forgot to mention that we put solar panels on the roof prior to the rebate changing (my mother says that her higher energy bills are my fault).  We put it on the west side of the roof as the north facing roof was too small.  The only downside was that I had to walk a block away to get this shot....

We've only had one bill since and did see a reduction, but it was a mixed bill from th period prior to connection as well.  So I'm looking forward to the next one saying $0

Should I be worried.....

Happily, it tasted good in the vegetarian lasagne we made tonight