Revival

A message from Brigid ....

I have been a blogger since 2005. At the height of my blogging busy-ness, I had "a small stable" of blogs on different topics: social and political commentary; desert spirituality; food; waste and ....

A few years ago I called time and ceased blogging altogether - although there was an occasional post. I had called it quits. I am an aged woman these days with a couple of serious illnesses. I am not allowed to drive. I am no longer active in organisations. I think it fair to say that I am housebound. I am active on Facebook, although I am not there as often as once I was. I have decided to embark on a re-entry into the blogging world ... beginning with The Trad Pad and, possibly, a return to my food blog, Oz Tucker. I have always used a lot of photographs on my blogs ... and I miss not being out and about with my camera.

The Trad Pad has been my blog for the lovely things of life. The controversial or political has seldom intruded. Occasionally, the spiritual has found its way in, but I kept spirituality for the blog, Desert. I don't yet know if I will revive that. I will stick pretty much to food and the lovely things of life. If I have some regularity with those two categories, I feel that I will be doing well. I hope that, with this blog new friendships can be formed and old friendships renewed; new lovelies discovered; new reflections can enter into the meaning of modern life. I would love to hear from you - particularly if you have suggestions for new topics to enter into the conversation. So, it is a new year. Let's see what it has in store, what it can bring to us. And I hope that those who share the spirit of The Trad Pad can spread the message of a world of beauty, the creativity of humanity, and the joys of simplicity and tradition. ~~~ February, 2017

Monday, June 23, 2008

The Week-end: Part 1 - The winter garden

Broad Bean - picture from Top Veg


Gardening in winter has NEVER been my thing - not even with the promise of the most beautiful and colourful spring annuals. But the habit - or lack of habit - of a lifetime has been broken. I have worked on the garden patch/es from last summer's rampaging, sexy pumpkins. The leaves from late autumn raked into big piles and rained and rained and rained upon by Melbourne's winter rain have turned into lovely mulchy humus. So this has been distributed. Soil disturbance revealed a worm or three which encouraged and reassured me no end.

Then on Friday afternoon I stepped into the plain old fashioned gardening wonderland that is Presti's Nursery on Ferntree Gully Road, Ferntree Gully and picked up some seedlings. I had already consulted Belinda's calendars (that girl is just so darn organised - and she has it all on a calendar on the kitchen wall, too!). So here is what I planted on Saturday morning:

Broad Beans
Snow Peas
Schallots
Leeks
Beetroot
Borage

The rain has seemed never ending in the last week or so with scarcely a sign of the sun so there has been some great after the planting rain. Now if the sun would put in an appearance, I am sure that would be a big help.
So, please Creator of the Universe, help this landmark Winter Garden to grow as you intend and give us in the coming spring a bumper crop.
BY THE WAY, last summer I planted rocket behind the tool shed. In typical rocket fashion, I got some harvests in but, far too soon for me, it bolted and went to seed. Now I have a lovely crop of baby rocket coming up behind said tool shed. Young, early greens.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

good luck with the broad beans - we are just about to pick ours!

Unknown said...

Thanks, topveg. I'm looking forward to see how mine go.

belinda said...

Congratulations on the Winter garden... I know how hard it can be to convince yourself its worth your while when you wake up to 5 days worth of frost in a row, at least it hasn't snowed up here yet this year.

Interested in a potted Lime Verbena?

Kind Regards
Belinda

Unknown said...

Belinda, I don't think we have had the frosts. I have a double impatiens which seems to be persevering. A Lime Verbena would be wonderful!

I had a nice surprise this afternoon. I set up a Google page ages ago but have not really used it. However, I find that I am using more and more of the Google stuff so I thought I would look at making the page a bit more useful and was coming to grips with the calendar - and looking to add what else I could and thus exploring the public calendars of Melbourne. And there was your Planting Calendar - so now it has been added to mine and I have it at the top of my calendar. Now that should be even more handy than the sidebar of your blog. How good is that!

Blessings and bliss

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