Snoskred – Life in the Country

Even though it is a rainy day here today nothing keeps us from the awesomeness of the backyard for too long, so in a break from the downpour when it was just spitting and rain was falling like flakes of snow instead of water, I opened the door and the kitties rushed out, then I followed with a tomato and apple treat for the chooky girls.

The Other Half was doing some weeding around the water feature when he thought he saw the body of the fish which died a few months ago. Turns out it was not a body it was a live fish, and it has been existing in there somehow for several months without us feeding it – I gave up when I kept not seeing it and figured it had expired.

It does not like people so it just hides under the fountain part of the water feature and that is why we never saw it..

We did some re-shaping of the garden

I put in some beans, celery, pumpkin and mizuna as well as cat grass, cat nip and tansy.

These plants have not enjoyed great weather, they have been rained on extensively and have suffered a bit as a result. Here is hoping for some better weather so they can go forth and prosper like the rest of the garden.

Which as you can see, is doing quite well.

Except we are having a little caterpillar issue.

The chickens enjoy eating them!

I have a few updates – lets start with the garden.

It once looked like this.

It now looks like this.

A lot of weeds had sprung up, so I have been slowly weeding and mulching. This is the half of the garden I have completed. I’ve put down sawdust formerly from the chook laying boxes, and also Zeolite and rice husks formerly from the run and coop.

A slightly closer view – you can see how much the seedlings have grown. What you can’t see is that my zucchini plant has flowers and a baby zucchini on it! I spotted that while out there today but couldn’t get good photos.

Strawberry flowers!

The chooks have been enjoying greens from the garden for a few months now. When they see me get in there, they go nuts bagerk-ing and took took-ing, hoping that greens will come to them as a surprise.

As you can see, there is still some work to do.

Unfortunately the weather has now turned to shyte, so it may not be done as soon as I would like.

Yes, that is a storage box full of weeds which I removed from the garden.

There is also a chook free ranging tent. That will be the next update.

Today we created a new garden bed! It was an absolutely gorgeous day out there today.

We began with this -

We put in the side piece, which is 60cm long.

While the other half dug out the trench, I started turning the dirt over. Not very far below the surface, maybe two shovels deep, we struck clay. So we decided to lay in some sand and chook poop we’d had fermenting since the rains after we changed from sand to Zeolite & rice husks for the chook pen flooring. Boy, did it stink. That is how you know it is the good stuff.

And this is how it ended.

Those are hibiscus which I’ve had for a few years now in pots and they have been waiting to be planted in the ground, so they are happy now. I’ve still got a couple more to plant, we need to get some fresh dirt in for the other end which was grass.

There are also some pansys which I bought the other day. I planted some poppys in the other garden bed today because they needed to get planted quick, they were in very tiny seedling trays.

Big kitty spent some time wandering outside today sniffing about. She is an indoor kitty and to go outside we keep right by her so she feels safe and comfortable, and so no native animals meet their makers. We have a bit of cat traffic in our yard who leave interesting smells plus some mice. But then a large cockatoo flew over making a heck of a noise and she bolted back to the safety of inside.