Every night before I go to bed I’m busy slaying vampires. Not the blood sucking type, but the energy sucking type.

Instead of a wooden stake, my fingers fight these energy suckers as I turn power switches off to kill anything on standby.

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I just had to share this picture. A button squash is meant to be small right? Well not in Bellingen, NSW. Vegetables grow freakishly huge up there.

On a recent trip to a friend’s house in Thora – near Bellingen, we picked the hugest yellow button squash I have ever seen. It was bigger than my hand. In fact all the vegetables growing in my friend’s garden were freakishly huge. Read the rest of this entry

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Today is my mother’s birthday and to celebrate her life I ate the last fig from a tree she gave me. It was everything you would expect from a freshly picked fig - soft, sweet, juicy and a truly melt-in-the-mouth experience. Except the fig has an extra special significance because it was from a tree my mother gave me when she first got sick.

My mother passed away at the end of last year after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and so to me the fig tree represents her, and is a wonderful reminder of mum in my favourite place – my garden.

It is a lovely little tree that I keep in a half wine barrel, which is surrounded by succulents.

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Christmas is upon us and my faithful Wollemi Pine, which doubles as a Chrissie tree, has died.

Not only have I spent the past week mourning my favourite tree but I’ve also been trying to think of an alternative one for Christmas. I am not really one for buying a new pine tree every year and I really didn’t want to buy a plastic one. I have bought a few living potted trees in the past but they have all died on me, despite my repotting efforts - so I didn’t want to do that again either. Read the rest of this entry

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This year I left my garlic a little late to pull up. By the time I got to it all the stems had died down and mostly disappeared. So when I started to dig up the heads, I couldn’t find them.

Well I did eventually but I had to dig around a lot and I accidentally broke up a few of the heads, which is not ideal. I also probably missed a few, so no doubt some are still underneath the soil somewhere. Read the rest of this entry

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I have to admit I have become a bit of a lazy gardener. It is not intentional - more of a mix of  having a really bad back and lack of time due to my job and two little kids.

Never-the-less I love getting out into my vege patch and still manage to keep it full and productive. Rather than work too hard though, I love to make things in my garden work for themselves. That is why I really love companion planting, minimal fuss fruit and vege plus wild and self seeding plants. Also every-now-and-then I stumble upon a plant or process in my garden that is pure accidental genius. One such example, which I have been using for a few seasons now, is my lemongrass plant. Read the rest of this entry

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Today is  Blog Action Day and the theme is climate change. So what better day to write about a climate-saving feature packed house that I visited in Sydney on Sustainable House Day.

Visiting John’s sustainable house in Gordon was more than just checking out rainwater tanks, solar panels and a vege patch. It was more of a journey through John’s concepts and philosophies in life, which all in some way focused on sustainability. Read the rest of this entry

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It seems the rain in Sydney is over for the moment, and I’ve been enjoying the garden while it has been wet.

I really like planting out seedlings when it’s drizzling in spring. Seedlings seem to establish themselves better in the dirt and there is nothing better than the smell of good, damp, living soil.

I have replanted my three garden beds with some of my favourites – Tom Thumb tomatoes, sweet basil, lettuce, rocket, zucchini and shallots. My son ate the first mulberry to turn black today, small limes are forming on my tree and I am ever hopeful for the flowers sprouting on my avocado tree.

My garlic is still growing nicely, the native spinach is thriving and I have no idea where I am going to plant my space saver pumpkins this year. There is no room left!

How’s this for a low impact bath. My kids recently had a bath in my brother’s backyard.

The bath was found lying around my brother’s property – he previously used it as a worm farm.

The water was collected in a tank and the heating came from burning reclaimed wood (see the ashes under the bath).  The air conditioning and heating – well that was provided by Mother Nature.

A friend of mine has a fantastic worm farm that lives in the corner of his garden. When I say “in”, I mean literally in the vegetable patch.

The worm farm is basically a bottomless bucket that has been sunk into his vegetable patch. The top of the bucket is level with the top of the vegetable patch’s top soil. Read the rest of this entry

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