The Knitting Revolutionary

Mmm. I has a garden.

I had a client cancel an appointment at the last minute this morning, so on the way back to the office I swung by the local nursery, because the cute little plant that came with my office (it was almost dead and is now going CRAZY) needs repotting. So I got a new pot.

And some dirt. Er... potting mix.

And another pot.

With a bromeliad.

Just like this one, but smaller. Guzmania minor, it's called. I mean, how could I resist a plant with "mania" in its name?

Hehe... it's gorgeous. I also had to buy special orchid potting mix, which is just bits of chips n mulch really, because brommies are epiphytes, meaning they just drink the water from the rain, and hang out on other plants for support, like those big staghorn thingies that everyone seemed to have one of when I was a kid, but no one really owns any more. I wonder what happened to all those staghorn thingies?

Anyway, I got me an epiphyte. And I'm sooo happy about it - strangely happy. I'm actually quite a good gardener when I'm consistent. Problem is, I'm not very consistent with my garden at home, so it looks like a grass forest, with weeds for added texture. But with the office plants, they're just... there... and I have to fertilise them every 2 weeks, so no problemo, it's a regular job that I do on the same day that I submit my hours sheet now, you know, fill out the form, give to my co-ordinator, feed the plants their weird liquidy shit. Move on to the paperwork n stuff. Easy peasy. I split up the other plant too, and it looks great. Life is so much easier when you're surrounded by beautiful things. *happy squeak*

Summerrrrrr

Mmm. My succulents are flowering. Aren't they purty? I think I need to turn them around - they're all leaning toward the rising sun :)

Cooked, unripe strawberry, anyone?

OK, there's hot weather and there's ridiculous weather.

On days like yesterday, there is the strong temptation to try to rescue what's left of your crispy-fried garden by watering it. But there is nothing that you can actually do to save it in this sort of heat, so there is really no point. The water wouldn't have helped anyway.

Yesterday I picked a pale pink, unripe, soft, revolting, cooked strawberry from my poor strawberry plant. As well as the one that only need one more day to ripen, which was also soggy, disgusting and gently cooked by the sun and the searing wind.

*sigh* At least the plants survived - strawbs are tough little buggers. But my chilli plant gave up, and is a shrivelled mess, its tiny malformed fruit surrounded by pathetic ruined leaves. It's days like this I hate Canberra with a vengeance. Yesterday it 26 degrees in Sydney; it was 40 here with a wind that felt like it had bushfires behind it.

I think I'm gonna liberate some old umbrellas from somewhere (aren't they always lying around in the tip?) and make myself some plant shades. Hm... not a bad idea that. I'm not going to let this crappy outback town masquerading as a capital city beat me. *growls menacingly*

The weeds grow, the dirt don't

This is what most Canberra lawns look like at the moment...
Revolting, but just the way it goes here at the moment. Droughts are not fun things to experience, but at least for me it's just my lawn and not my livelihood and farm dwindling before my eyes. I tried to do this thing called weed-n-feed on the yard a while ago, apparently it encourages the grass to grow and kills off the weeds. Well, the weeds went wild anyway, and the grass got very very sunburned, and is now pretty much dead. So I'm dealing with the weeds the old-fashioned way.
This is about 20 minutes worth of yard-weeding, and I got probably about a third of the obvious weeds. I have this fantastic little tool that I got from Bunnings which you slip into the ground and yoink up the weed, roots and all.
I'm really getting into the garden at the moment. My current mission is to drought proof the front garden, which is starting to suffer a bit, by putting wood chip mulch all over it. So today was rose-feeding and woodchippin' day, and while I was on a roll, I filled in the blank corner with a yummy new grevillia. Yurm! I'm only half way through floofing up the front garden, so I'll photograph it when finished. I never had much of a green thumb until now, but David is taking his role of co-gardener rather seriously, and reminds me every second night to water the plants.
The current water restrictions for the ACT can be found here: http://www.actew.com.au/conservation/Stage3Restrictions.aspx and there's a link to download them as a pdf document. Fines start at $200 so do be careful! And as for the odds and evens system, every one talks about it, but I didn't actually know how it works until the ever-informative google came to the rescue. It merely means that if you live in an odd-numbered house you water your plants (can or hose only) on odd numbered dates between 7 and 10, and even numbered or unnumbered houses can water on even numbered days of the month. Simple, and it seems taken for granted that people know what this is. Now you know!

Strawberries!

Mmm. I now have strawwwwwwwwberries. This is the first one! They are destined for champagne, I just know it. I've been gardening quite a bit, I'm trying to get some coriander going, and have some rocket seedlings in the kitchen *droooool*

The other thing I've been doing is dyeing lots. My first batch is now up on ebay, so have a look at http://tinyurl.com/7hts9 and see if there's something there that tickles your fancy. Mmm.

I have a fantastic new dyeing project underway, and as soon as the wool dries (tomorrow arvo) I'll be winding it up and getting it into batches. What I'm making is a fair isle colour set, with three shades of seven different colours, so you can have awesome fair isle patterns with matching colours. Mmm. No more trying to match reds with pinks or oranges with peaches or browns with beige. I'm using the same colour dye for each three-shade set, with more dye used for the darker shades and a smidgen of dye for the paler ones. Yummmmm!

The initial batch of olive, logwood and citrus orange looks awesome, and the rest of it (sitting in the bathtub doing the long cool-down) is looking pretty good too.  This first set is of seven earthy sort of colours, and the second set will be pure lurid rainbow colours. Yummmm!

Finally, I got an email today and thought I'd share this to see if the total can't get boosted. Yeah, it's free advertising for this real estate bunch, but if you click on this link and it gets to 100,000 within 4 weeks they're going to sponsor DOCS to have Sydney's biggest billboard for the rest of it. Good cause, huh? Hopefully they'll get it for more than 2 days.

http://www.realestate.com.au/do_something_big_for_kids - click and forward! :D

Mmm.

The podcast didn't load fast enough, so I hit the weeds armed with Cast-On Episode 33. And I have a big fat bucket of dead weeds, and about 10 times as many still in the dirt. And... I'm about to start David the Astrophysicist's podcast now. :D Hm. Will I spin the caramel coloured llama or the lolly-coloured corriedale? Such are the tough decisions for someone thoroughly enjoying NOT studying and NOT working. *happy sigh* Actually, I might just start the scarf for my (now ex) supervisor, which I dyed the other day in mannish tones of violet-grey and deep green. While listening to my podcast. *faints with joy*

Oh, and if any brilliant gardeners out there can tell me what disease my yellow rose has... feel free to point it out. Most of this is still a mystery to me, mostly just being, stick stuff in the ground, put this liquid fertiliser stuff on it sometimes, water when you can with water restrictions being what they are, and pull weedy things out. Yep. High tech gardener, that's me.