This is our new cottage garden. I started it in August and it's growing well but it's not quite finished. We've gone from tending a very productive vegetable garden for about 30 years, to a small cottage garden that fits into a third of the old garden. We've taken out some gardens, they're lawn now, the rest are flowers, herbs and fruit.
This is our winter garden in 2006. Now the garden closest to the camera and the middle garden are gone, and the cottage garden is growing in the two gardens closest to the picket fence.
And this is today's garden taken from a different angle. The picket fence in the last photo is on the left of this garden.
Hello sewers. I've started a sewing bee involving recycling old fabric. You can recycle unused old fabric from your stash, an old dress, sheets, towels, coats or whatever you have enough of to make something you'll use. I'm making pillow cases from an old white cotton bed skirt. Would you like to join in? There are no fees and no pressure; we'll all have a bit of fun and learn more about sewing and recycling. I'm hoping new sewers join in as well as our intermediates and experienced sewers. Everyone is welcome. You can join either here or on Instagram - #downtoearthsewingbee.
This is the old bed skirt I'm using to make pillow cases. What will you use?
The item should be finished by Thursday 21 November (or close to it) and when you finish, I'd like you to take a photo and send it to me so I can add it to my Instagram sewing bee gallery. I'm always interested in what other people sew so I'm looking forward to seeing what you create. Start now, let me know what you're sewing and when you finish send a photo of your finished project to downtoearthsewingbee@gmail.com so it can be added to the photo gallery.
It will be cloudy here today with a minimal chance of rain so I'll be out in the garden planting up geranium Rozanne, a Lillipop Soda Pop gaura and a rosea, the final plants in our newish cottage garden. Before that though I want to write about the last legs of our vegetable garden - a thriving collection of common and not-so-common vegetables and fruits we started growing here in 1998.
I've been working in my garden for a few weeks transitioning from a vegetable to a cottage garden and trying to get everything ready for spring. Spring is the season that sets our gardens up for the year and if you get good rain in spring, as we did, it's even better. But I have no illusions of a lush floral display throughout summer, I just hope I can help most of it through the prolonged heat that I know is coming. Our average annual rainfall is about 1800mm and that is one of the reasons we chose to live in this area. However, so far this year we've had 755.4mm, 286mm less than the previous year. This was the first year two of our tanks ran out of water, and the big 10,000 litre tank had only about 2000 litres left. I wouldn't grow vegetables without the safety net of tanks. They're expensive to put in, but like solar panels, they earn their place in most environmentally sound houses. We saved for our tanks, one went in soon after we arrived here, and the big one was established about ten years ago; again, when we had the cash to pay for it. When you set yourself up with tanks, you can water liberally most of the time and know that you're producing food with no hidden costs.
We set off on our first book tour just before Down to Earth was to be published on 22 February, 2012. We had no idea what to expect or if anyone would come along to meet us. There was no need to worry though because at every stop along the way so many lovely people travelled in, often bringing gifts of jams, relish, soap, dish cloths, bread, cake, kombucha and magazines to read on the journey, as well as their good wishes.
What generosity! Just some of the many gifts we received on the road.
Being interviewed by Richard Stubbs in Melbourne. I also had the good fortune to meet Jon Faine and Clare Bowditch on their radio programs too.
Feeding the chooks. I think this was Channel 7.
A few new readers have ask about my books, how I got published and how I fit writing into my daily routine, so I thought there may be others interested in that. I've written three books -
Down to Earth, The Simple Life and
The Simple Home, all were published by Penguin | Random House.
I used to earn a living as a technical writer/journalist and when we moved to where we live now, in 1997, I transferred my business to the Sunshine Coast. Hanno retired soon after we arrived and bought a shop in Montville. I continued writing technical manuals and travelled up to the mines to gather information and photos and then I'd write the manuals in an office I had close to home. I had a couple of people working for me at the time and life was hectic. But when I settled in here at home, I started looking at my life with a more critical eye and realised I was far from happy. To make a long story short, I closed my business, started working in my home and that simple decision changed my life completely.
And things started to get better.
Life is bubbling along nicely here. Hanno and I have been decluttering, again, we've had numerous visitors, Jamie spent the day with us yesterday, of course I've been baking and cooking, but most of my attention and energy has been given to the garden. What else can you do at this time of year? Spring is almost here, the days here are getting warmer and plants are starting to grow again.
We grow French lavender here, in our climate it's much better than the others. This bush is about a metre tall now, is covered with flowers and bees visit it from early morning to late afternoon.
Sunny, Kerry and Jamie flew back from Korea on Tuesday after Sun Ja's funeral. Thanks to everyone who send kind and loving messages to our family on her passing.
🐝🍓🐝
If you've been wondering what I've been doing during the silence here on the blog, here's a clue - it's the end of winter, todays temp is supposed to be 29C and my seasonal dormancy is coming to a close. I've been taking cuttings, sowing seeds and generally getting ready for spring.
In the foreground above are some almost ready to plant fuchsias that were sent as cuttings by Kristiina a couple of months ago. I can also see a passionfruit vine slowly growing leaves, and many salvia cuttings. I love salvias.
I've just realised that a significant blogging milestone has been reached - there have been 30 million page views here on my blog! I knew is was close because I did a couple of workshops on the weekend and showed my blogging class behind the scenes on my blog, including the statistics. I smiled when I saw it and kept going, thinking I'd do something about it later. And then I forgot.
I started this blog because I'd written the beginnings of a book about how Hanno and I had changed our lives for the better. I couldn't find any Australian books then about this change of lifestyle and I was desperate to share how we'd been enriched and energised by the changes we made. I sent the book proposal off to some publishers and all of them rejected it. I was absolutely sure that other people would be able to make their own changes if I got the information out, so I started this blog. Very soon, readers started pouring in.
Back in those early days, I had no idea about blogging and just wrote, every day, about what we were doing. And over the 12 years I've been here, that's what I kept doing. What I didn't know back then was that I'd grow close to the people who read here, I'd care about their families, sometimes I'd visit them, I'd meet them in book shops, libraries and halls and often I'd come away with phone numbers, jars of jam, bottles of home brew, cakes, chutneys and so many more little tokens of love. I have been truly amazed at the number of people who came to meet us and the thousands of emails we received over the years.
Thank you for being part of it all. It's been a pleasure to write for you and to show with my photos what is possible in a small home with a backyard vegetable plot and chickens, and to help spread the message of a splendid, slow, simple life.
♥️ ~*~ ♥️ ~*~ ♥️
Over on my Instagram pages recently, I created a photo gallery for an
online sewing bee. It never fails to amaze me how talented and creative our makers are and of course, photos of wonderful creations came rolling in.
The one that stood out for me was Fran's homemade facial wipes. Fran had crocheted round cotton, washable wipes and packaged them in a small glass preserving jar. Sometimes I think the thing that elevates a particular product is its packaging. The preserving jar was a wise move because it presented the wipes in a recyclable container, you could clearly see the product and it looked sweet - something you'd love to have on your dressing table or in the bathroom.
Hanno has picked the last of the oranges and we have a bucket full sitting outside the kitchen door. We'll use them in the coming days to make the finest orange juice we're ever likely to drink, then the orange season will fade to black and we'll prune the tree to open it up a bit for the next season. Further down the garden, our flock of hens are producing so many eggs. It's like they're trying to make up for the months when the nests remained empty. I'm so pleased to have fresh eggs again. Eggs tie so many meals and sweet treats together. We have them for breakfast, for baking, for deliciously warm baked egg custard and to give away. Everyone loves backyard eggs. We still have about 10 passionfruit on the vine but soon they'll be gone, we'll prune the vine back and wait for another good crop next year.
Eggs and oranges are very simple, ordinary foods but when they come from your own backyard, they taste much better.
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