I Love Volunteers

(click on photo to enlarge)

These are all heritage tomatoes from last year. I’ve already potted up over one hundred of them and I have an idea to sell them on to neighbours (if I can). Mind you, I’ll have to call them “Lucky Dip” tomatoes as, naturally, I have no idea which heritage tomatoes they are as I had about four different types last year in the same tank.

In the top photo on the right hand side are two “Gardeners Delight” tomato plants that I left in the tank over winter in the grow house – and they’re already flowering.

So – tomatoes for Christmas ……

Jan

Boathouse to grow house

This is the latest project that M has been working on.

A local guy had come around to see him after hearing about the construction of grow houses that M has completed for various neighbours.

But he wanted a grow house with a difference. He is currently restoring a boat in his back yard, (something I can relate to!) but the weather is holding him up. So he asked if a grow house could be constructed around the boat so he could work in relative warmth and out of the wind and the rain. The plastic is yet to be stretched out over the framework as a few warm sunny days are required to make it more pliable; there are tarps over the top of the boat at the moment to try and keep it as dry as possible.

Now I can’t recall the measurements but I do know it’s the biggest grow house around here! I have asked how the boat will be removed from the grow house at the end of the project, but after a fair bit of mumbling I was told that it would all be okay….. And then it would be a real grow hose with real vegetables.

This fellow, the owner of the boat and presumably one of the largest grow houses in the district, lives in a caravan on his block. He hasn’t even finished building his shed yet, which he later plans to live in whilst he builds his house.

Now considering this guy is around 65 years old and complaining of chest pains and vertigo, you have to admire his optimism.

I will post photographs of the finished product as they come.

Jan

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

I’ve been struggling lately. Maybe it’s SAD syndrome as the weather has been pretty crap – up until today which is glorious. But I have been driving M crazy as he hates my moods. He’s sympathetic at first but then becomes impatient and gets bad-tempered. I woke at 5am this morning and I think I’ve sorted out what’s playing on my mind – I just don’t know how to fix it – yet.

But today I’ve had a cry and that usually means that I’ve “peaked” and the long haul out of the black pit has begun. It was a natural cry as today M had to slaughter Lulu the chook.

Before we went away she had leg mites and I had treated her with Vaseline on her legs and that seemed to do the trick. But when we returned after a couple of weeks both her legs were badly affected and before long she became lame and stopped laying.

Lulu has always been the rebellious one, content with her own company and wandering off on her own (except when Ron the rooster picked her out for his special attention) and gave me beautiful dark brown eggs. But when she became lame it was heart-breaking watching her flap about in the chook house to get to the food and water. When she stopped trying to come out with the others – well, that decided me. It was time to go.

M watched “how to” films on the internet and today was the day. So he removed her from the chook shed and took her over to the willow tree and did the deed. The body is now cleaned and sitting in the fridge ready to be made into a beautiful stock. Ron looked for her, but once he realised that I was cleaning out the chook shed he became much more interested in that and the clean straw.

I’ll miss Lulu and her rebellious streak but I’m sure that when I replace her with another two chooks, their personalities will make up for the loss.

    Lulu is the one with the tail up at the front of the picture.

 

Jan