Crafty

Im having a craft attack,it must be the cold weather.I just finished cutting out this dress,ive used a beautiful rayon fabric,but I fear it will be a bugger to sew.Its to wear to a wedding in August.I also want to make Morgan a silver cowboy shirt,but both material and pattern are proving hard to get.These girls are an inspiration.

Ferny

Wouldn't these make great fabric patterns? Wallpaper? So arts and crafts!

Im in the mood to scan.

Ive been organising my pinboards ,from the layers built up over 6 years here are some favorite images.

Guerrilla Gardening.

Im planning a raid outside the local library.

Bye Dad

Get inside the flower

 

Here are a few snapshots of the flowers in my garden. So far, Digler hasn't found any of them to be too tastey. It's been pretty hot this year so I went for sun varieties that shouldn't get burned.



 

Citizen

Brace yourself Ireland! This man just became a citizen!

Garden Obsessed

At some point during each gardening season, I lose my mind. Usually I’m not aware of the exact moment, but this year I happened to notice. Today I finally got all the vegetables into the ground. It’s the second week of June, so I was getting just a bit panicky. In fact, I started panicking about a month ago, when I realized that the tomatoes I started back in March still didn’t have their secondary leaves yet. So I bought some Russian tomatoes that don’t care about the cold, and followed up a week later by buying tomatillos. All of them have been in the ground for weeks now. It’s been cold and raining for a month, mind, and they haven’t grown a bit, but they’re planted and busily developing their secret roots under that red “mulch” that’s supposed to help them set fruit better. The garden is so ugly early on.


Once the purchased plants were in, the tomatoes I started in March promptly developed their secondary leaves. I’ve been avoiding thinking about them, because the space that was to have been theirs is now full of Russians. But today, after planting the squash and the peppers, I was left with only the tray of struggling tomatoes and finally admitted to myself that because I caused them to germinate I now believe that I’m morally responsible for their little lives. Although they’re still only about an inch tall, I am not the kind of gardener who can just toss seedlings out because they happen to be less than robust. No, I’m the kind of sadist who will plant tiny leaflings that have no chance of fulfilling their biologic destiny before frost shuts them down, that's the kind of gardener I am.
















So out back there’s this patch of bare ground where I killed a bunch of invasive things this spring.















Because everything I killed had miles of insinuating, friable, tough roots, I haven’t planted anything perennial there yet, because I know that the weeds will all be back and need more killing next year. Suddenly the orphaned tomatoes and the bare patch seemed like a perfect match, and… I lost my mind. They’re much too close to each other. (Perhaps they’ll hold one another up, she weaseled.)




The dead-looking things on the right are columbines from the former cottage garden that I tossed there yesterday; believe it or not, they’ll be blooming by this time next year. I also planted an orphaned squash in an even less likely spot: between two of those tarps that I stretched over the former thorn bed to smother the canes. No baby pictures, but watch this space…

Todays project-lost love

I bought this photo at a tip shop in Hobart and when I opened the frame to clean it there was the envelope.As I do a lot of family research I set out to find Miss Jean Chalmers ,and perhaps the identity of the young man.I ended up contacting Jeans great nephew who told me that Jean lived into her 80s and never married.We assume the young man died in the first world war.

Cephalopods

I was walking across the wharves in Hobart one summers evening,when just ahead a fisherman pulled up a large bright red squid. It expelled it's ink on the wooden slats of the walkway and as we watched, it slowly changed colour . Glowing bronze with brown pulsating rings then a more transparent gold,icy light blue green and then it was clear.It really made an impression on me and I did some research about cephalopods,apparently they change skin colour to camouflage and to communicate .

The fantastic Pontani sisters

Happy daylilies

Nearly everything green in this photo is a weed of some kind. Last year I pulled all the weeds around the daylilies, thinking that I would be rewarded with a blizzard of bloom like this one. Instead, the daylily leaves all flopped over and died. Bloom time came and went, and the whole area was covered with what looked like moldy hay. I was sure these guys were goners, but look at them now! God, if I ever figure out how this garden thing works, I'll be so gratified.

I should mention that everything in the photo is also inherited: it was here when we moved in. Someone, or several someones, worked very hard on this property to have the gardens they dreamed of. And then they moved away. I'm trying to be very careful not to destroy their hard work while I put my stamp -- so far barely visible -- on this garden.

That said, I ruthlessly destroyed the charming cottage garden round the kitchen door, because it was all pink, a color I dislike, and I wanted a kitchen garden. Herbs, dammit! Something practical, not that dimity Thomas Kincaide nonsense. Interestingly (and maybe not surprisingly) the plants in the charming cottage garden were mostly invasive and indestructible; 3 years later I'm still digging up violets and columbines, though I think I've finally defeated the mallows. Do not mourn the cottage garden; I transplanted everything and its several components are now thriving elsewhere. The hostas are posted along the shady back of the house (to be joined one of these years, whenever I can find time to go dig some up, by ferns), though I unfortunately transplanted one of the gorgeous blue ones too close to the grey water outlet, and it's dying from thermal pollution. Or maybe it's the fact that it's also in the inevitable path of the garden cart and keeps getting crushed.

But this climate creates, for 3 months, the sort of jungle environment that so horrified certain 20th-century novelists and filmmakers. Vile fecundity; creeping, writhing, loathsome bounty ("It's the enormity of perfected and overwhelming murder. ... We have to humble ourselves in the face of all this overwhelming misery, fornication ..."). The summer is so short that everything has to burgeon rapidly, swell and reproduce and spit its progeny before frost, which on this hillside is not reliably over yet and can recommence in August. So that hosta, being motivated, has a prayer if I can get to it, dig it up, and move it soon.

World cup

Treat would love to go and peel the ball.

Toy gun.

Training the Koolie has proved tricky.

Dogs and How to know them.

Fur Children

Zeke.

He's a big fella.

Wali curled up by the fire on a cold rainy night.

Oh god Ive opened a nursery

Things to do this week.
run busy gardening buisness,
Bake bread 2 days,
Make 20 litres of Quince jam,
Make large planters,
Deliver herbs,
etc-etc-etc.
Don't panic.
This is the old stable at the back of the Conservatory Cafe in sunny Cygnet.Now it is the Conservatory Nursery,specialising in endemic Tasmanian plants and not very endemic Bali garden sculpture.
Here are some of my favorite plants.

Pandani

These are just stunning.

Huon pine

These little Huon pines could live for thousands of years.

Leatherwood

"purty dogs"

this may not be the way 

Purty dogs

I'm trying out the posting a picture thing so sorry if this shows up in the wrong place. This is a picture of my girlfriend who lives in Phoenix. The dog on the left is Kirby and the dog on the right is Sadie. 

Interact 10 ways

Do not click here unless you want to waste precious hours that you'll never get back.

Then again, you might think it's worthwhile.

Make lamps out of underwear

"It just makes sense to me," she said.

Our pipes froze

this morning.

Shack garden

My dear friend Annie is building a shack on Bruny Island


And Im doing the garden for her-I came across these beautifull photos of Derek Jarmans garden in Kent,while looking for ideas.

Unleash your inner soccer hooligan

Hell we love this.

How much money did I make in Melbourne?

This much.