Flowers Lately

* Making a flower crown as a test for a friends wedding. Rosemary, carnation, chrysanthemum, sedum, lambs ear.

* A little jug of leftovers from crown making.

* A new awesome vase from the junk shop! Filled with roses, zinnias, buddleia, elderflower, potato vine from the garden.

* A birthday bouquet for my Mumma also from the garden. Rose, elderflower, fennel, lambs ears and white salvia plus some cuttings from a stunning weeping lime coloured tree that I don't know the name of.
* Mummas birthday cake. A lemon and blueberry number, filled with lemon curd and iced with cream cheese icing.

Do you hear that?

Rain! Finally! Oh... and radio silence from me. We've finally jumped into Christmas here and will be doing a fair bit of travelling over the next 2 weeks (3 states to be precise!). So probably more quiet from me is to be expected. But here are a couple more flower arrangements I've done recently, and hopefully I find my blogging mojo again in the New Year. Merry Christmas lovely readers.

 Sunflower, allium, onion, elderflower, fennel, artichoke, succulents, borage and queen annes lace all from my garden.

Lilly, eucalyptus, lavender, bottlebrush from a friends garden (who lets me pick his flowers and put flower arrangements in his house!) sadly only captured on an iphone.

Garden Update - the highs and lows of a learning gardener

* Big Time Low - I came home from a weekend in Sydney to find all my roses looking very sick. I had been so excited to be coming home to them as I was sure they would be just starting to bloom. And then I just had to deflower every single one. I'm still trying to work out what the disease/pest is, but I know with roses if something's sick you want to remove that part and get it out of the garden asap. So sad that my line of cheery white roses are now green bushes, and my David Austin's that I was so excited to see bloom for the first time have been a no show, except for tiny brown shadows of what they should be. Time to get to the gardening section of the library.

* High - we've had a record amount of broad beans - which we have been diligently shelling and freezing.

* Low - the super late frost killed all but two of my abundant pumpkin seedlings.

* High - We are about to harvest a butt load of onion and garlic!

* Low - my Russel Lupins which I painstakingly grew from seed and carefully potted out into the garden keeled over in a day. Dead as door nails.

* High - Gazanias are very easy to grow and much less easy to kill apparently. They were planted out at the same time as the Lupins and are merrily doing their thing. (Hollyhocks pictured above)

* Low - after last years awesome parsnip success I have yet to coax any into germinating after multiple trys this year. Fussy buggers. (these are Allium Drumsticks)

* High - The garden is really taking shape now - we've acheived some major changes this year.

* Low - Watering. It takes so long keeping this garden alive at the moment - roll on the big job of installing an irrigation system (and more water tanks)!

* High - I have had success with watermelons after a heap of tries! Five little seedlings have germinated from a special packet of seeds sent to me by a sweet friend. Now to keep them alive and get them fruiting in time!

How does your garden grow?!

Homegrown Bouquet

The artichoke is still going. What an amazing thing.
Lambs ears, a bedraggled looking rose (they're sick!), Euphorbia and no idea what the little yellow guy is.
Allium drumstick and flowering lambs ears.
A stray almost neon poppy, Queen annes lace and almost neon blue penstemon.
And I did a little wedding floristry practice with the tape I bought and made a wee button hole (again with a rather sorry looking rose).

Homegrown Bouquet

Actually this one is more of a vignette and the artichoke was homegrown in my mums garden. A sweet card from a friend, one of Tim's old seashells from his collection, the egg and the nest were both found separately in our garden, so was the feather.

Homegrown bouquet

This week's homegrown bouquet, just queen annes lace - and me practicing to make a proper bridal shaped bouquet, with jute wrap and everything! Note to self - strip all excess leaves before wrapping with thin string!

Introducing...

Our newest family members:

Heather and Betty

These ladies are named after our maternal grandmothers - We have 2 more ladies coming and they will be named Gloria and Gelsina after our paternal grandmothers! Once I finally got Tim to come round to the idea the chooks simply had to have ladies names (He wanted to name them Godley and Creme!) we decided Grandma type names would be appropriate so why not honour our grandmas with our chickens.. we think its an honour anyway! These two ladies are leghorn crosses and apparently will be excellent layers. No eggs yet - but you can bet I'll be photographing it when it does happen! We eat about a dozen eggs a week here in chateau shinelittlelight, as vegos they're a great source of calcium and protein, plus I am a HUGE breakfast fan and we have a poached egg most days. Since living in Wagga it's been great helping my folks out with their surplus egg supply, but we've been wanting our own little flock from the beginning. Homegrown is the best peace of mind I can have about where my eggs come from, plus the taste difference is amazing.

Garden Update Spring

Our house is looking particularly sweet in it's spring glory at the moment.
The sweet peas are going absolutely nuts, they smell amazing and are a riot of pink purple and white.
Cucumbers and pumpkins coming up.
Bee's checking out the flowering onion heads.
Last of the anemones in the side garden.
The standard iceburgs out the front are blooming.
The white flowers of the front garden are just amazing - filling the beds to the brim - just the look I love (we've got seaside daisy, white ranunculus and dusty miller in shot here).
The porch has had a spring clean. Tim re-oiled the deck, we rearranged all the succulents and I finally got around to doing up that white cane chair - I'll show you a close up soon.

These are really September Spring pictures - more has happened - I just need to photograph it!

Homegrown Bouquet

Nothing like taking a bottle of wine and a homegrown bouquet to a friends place for dinner.
Dusty miller, fennel fronds, ranunculus, sweet pea, freesia, queen annes lace and something from my neighbours garden which I don't know the name of!
*EDIT* Robusta is my missing plant name! (Thanks mum!)

Garden Update. Winter 2013

Glorious sunsets. Broad beans doing their thing. Joy of joys in 5 of these homegrown beauties. We finished building our chook shed! Fencing wire up to hide the neighbours colossal shed. Random self seeded sunflower having a go at flowering in winter. Anemones and tulips!