Spring is in the air!!

The weather has been beautiful this past two weeks, lovely blue skies and sunny days. We are still in winter and traditionally this has been a very cold month but we’re getting a taste of things to come and work is starting on the summer garden again.

Roger has been getting all the berries sorted. He transplanted another row of raspberries this weekend so we now have 3 rows of 8 plants. He grows these up rows of wires with drip irrigation at the base, these still have to go in the latest row.

The blackberries have spread right down one side of the boundary fence so he removed the currants that were in front and transplanted to an area where he dug up a bit of what lawn remains. There are two red currant and two black – last year the birds got all the red so this year they will be covered in netting, that ain’t happening again!

The garlic finally got planted and I have been busy weeding and tidying up the front gardens, the cranberries, strawberries and herbs. Hopefully we now have escape proofed the chook run properly.  We now have 14 and I came home one day to find all of them in the winter garden eating our broccoli and brussell sprouts down to ground level. The past two weeks I have had to buy green vegetables and have not been happy about that. Which leads me to mention how we feel we have managed with our first year of storing enough food from summer to last through winter – how have we done? Well, darn good I think 🙂 We still have quite a bit of some things left however have just run out of tomato pulp and paste though still have plenty dried ones left.  We are having to buy potatoes, meals have needed alot more creativity to be based around what’s left but all in all we are pleased with how things have gone. However, it’s not going to be enough to last until new fruit is ready to process etc so next summer will need alot more work to get us through next year.

We do finally have drinkable wine, lots of red and it’s very drinkable! For our first effort we are very happy, should it be being drunk yet?…nope! but what the heck, if it’s drinkable it’s ready. I have been doing this and I can see it’s going to become something I want to try alot more of. A friend is brewing me up some vodka so I can make fruit liquers, something I have been wanting to try for ages.

Hubby has painted the first coat of the $22 glasshouse, he just needs to do the contrasting window trims. It’s already producing wee salad greens and baby spinach and we are about to start our tomatoes, peppers etc off here. He’s already collected enough for 3 walls of a bigger glasshouse for the bottom garden.

Yesterday he rung and asked if I would like to come out to work with him for the morning. He was driving out to “the back of beyond” to mend fencing and thought I would like it. We are still experiencing aftershocks here and had had a pretty decent one through the night so my nerves have been on edge, I had a very serene 5 hours in the sunshine in a lovely little valley between hills, listening to bell birds and collecting gorse petals for wine, until I decided that was not going to be a happening thing.  A necessary 10 litres of gorse petals means alot of ouching, I think I got 2!!

Anyway I took these, that dirt bank is the road we went down. My poor husband works hard, look at this fence he had to redo through swamp…. and he loves every bit of it 🙂