Latte art... My husband's latest designs.

My lovely husband has found a new hobby. I'm pretty impressed!

The start of Summer in the garden.

This past week in my garden I have picked my first blueberries and boysenberries for the season (shh, don't tell the kids). I have pulled out the broad beans and decided not to bother planting them again next year, they are time consuming to prepare and we really don't eat them.
I have harvested half my garlic and picked my first ever squash. I have seen my first zucchini and cucumbers appearing, ready to pick in just a few days. I have seen my artichoke produce flower buds. What a week!

And what does this coming week hold?

Liquid seaweed diluted to the colour of weak tea on all the beds to build resilience and produce good crops. Repeat sowing of beans and sugar snap peas is needed, especially as my peas were so beaten around by the rain.
All my carrot crops have sprouted and then been eaten right off so I'll try once again with some better snail protection. I have pulled out most of my lettuce recently too, so I'd like to get more seedlings in, or perhaps I'll sow some seed that I collected last year.

And in your garden?

The essentials for a Summer garden that I'd suggest are a couple of tomato plants (provide a good stake); some basil plants; spring onions (just sprinkle the seeds over a defined patch, cover lightly with soil and keep moist); corn (but remember it is wind pollinated, so needs to be planted in a block and doesn't grow well in pots); peas and/or beans (need a frame to climb up - try growing it up your corn!); and just to fill in the gaps - pumpkins, whether Atlantic Giants or Golden Nuggets, pumpkins would have to be a favourite thing of mine to grow.

Happy gardening!

First squash

Walking through the garden is back to bountiful harvest. Recently I have had the disappointment of strawberries being damaged by that amazing rain - from 1kg a day harvests to just rotten strawberries, and now only 5 or 6 a day.

But now I have my beans, peas, rocket, garlic, onions as well as first tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber and my first ever home grown squash. Yum!

Chickens

The girls have made themselves right at home! I love the sound of happily 'bocking' chickens in the back yard...

Beyond Blue, Movember and Postnatal Depression (PND) Awareness Week

I choose to support a few causes through donations on an ongoing basis. One of these is Movember and the awareness and support for Beyond Blue National Depression Initiative and Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia. I have friends, family and colleagues who grow a mo and it's all a bit of fun.

But it is also very serious and personal for me.

A few days ago I saw a poster for Beyond Blue, just briefly, and I can't remember the exact wording, but it had pictured 5 people, 4 of which were blind folded and writing to the effect of '1 in 5 people have depressions, but the other 4 suffer too'. I went looking on the website thinking I might see it there, but I didn't get further than discovering that it is currently Postnatal Depression Awareness week.

Of the people pictured in the poster, I would have been the one not blind folded.

It has been 2 years now since I have escaped the depths of perinatal depression (depression whilst pregnant and post natal depression). I was so ashamed of the depression that I felt that I did not 'confess' this depression to many people. I sought help, I saw my doctor, had a mental health care plan drawn up and saw a Psychologist. This continued in various levels of severity for around 2 years. My husband and mother carried the burden of helping me through this difficult time, whilst having to deal with a depressed me.

Only since returning to a somewhat normal version of myself, do I see how difficult it was for them through that stage of our lives. My mother and husband still don't fully understand what I went through, but they tried to understand and worked with me to get me better. No one really understands what it is like to be depressed, unless they have been depressed. I wish now, that I had spoken up at mother's groups and with friends. I realise now how many other people have been through or are going through depression. To some degree I feel a connection with these people that I have since been able to talk to about PND and liberated to say out loud exactly what I was going through and know that to them, it isn't that outrageous.

My small support network could have been so much larger if more people were aware of what depression is, if the stigma was taken away, and if I had just spoken up. I feared that people would react with "she's just had a baby, what's she got to be depressed out about?" or "having a baby is hard work - get over it". To be honest, I think a few people I know still would say something like that. But most of the people that I know now and have started talking about it with, have said something more like "I wish you had just let me know!".

I am eternally grateful for the love and support that I did receive, without which, this would have been a very different story.

I still have my ups and downs, like most people, and sometimes I feel my downs getting a little too low. But it is manageable now and I know what to do to get myself out of it before it sinks back to depression. I can only hope that I can keep doing that.

I have my garden now, too, and as my daughter says "Mummy goes to her green house when she is upset", but she also knows I go there when I am happy too. I am driven into my garden by an internal force. I often say to my husband "I need to go into the garden" and there I find my relaxation and calm. I have garden walks to take people on, even if it is mostly my husband and children. They don't seem to mind being taken on a garden walk several times a week. In fact, my daughter has started taking me on garden walks to see her gardens now, too!

So, thank you to my family who suffered holding my hand, and thank you to those who suffered without really knowing what was wrong, yet are still friends with me now.

Thank you for all of you who are growing a mo and to those of you making donations.

Let's not be ignorant to depression. Learn more and help someone you know, because if 1 in 5 people suffer depression, if it is not you, it will be someone you love.

http://www.beyondblue.org.au

http://au.movember.com

The green consumerist?

I love my garden. I love having the space to plant things and watch them grow. I love thinking of how my garden will develop and imagining what it will look like in months and years to come. I love watching the daily progress of seedling and fruits and vegetables. I love eating meals with home grown produce. I love that my daughter has asked for her own garden bed, and when it was promptly built for her, and just as quickly planted out, she asked why is it that she only has one garden bed and Mummy has so many more.

Recently I was talking to a friend, about my garden and what I have planted recently and what plans I have when a thought grabbed me. Am I a consumerist greenie?

In setting up our greener life style am I just consuming in a different way? I went looking for a tea camellia the other day, so I can grow my own black tea. I am considering which nut trees would be good to grow. We have our little nectarine tree (with tiny baby nectarines!) and I am considering a peach, because they are supposed to be a little better suited to our climate. I have a kaffir lime because I occasionally like to cook Thai food. I have plans on where to put the passionfruit and need to start researching which grape I want to grow.

I am seeing success with what I have been growing (except for this year's broccoli, but that's a different story) and boosted by this I want to try and grow new things. I want my children to see different things growing and then eat them. In my garden I want an abundant supply of staple veg and an adequate supply of foods that I'd normally consider 'treats' simply because of the price at the grocer and the rate my children eat them when we get them. I want to eat organically grown produce, even if it means having to grow more so that we share a bit with the possums, snails and chickens (YES! We now have 4 hens!) To do this I need to buy stuff. And then the garden centre or hardware store start to softly call my name, beaconing me with the lure of a different heritage tomato or frame for the cucumbers to climb or some other such object that I desire...

Greening our home and lives has cost us a bit of money! The solar panels (although they are starting to pay themselves off), buying a smaller and more fuel efficient car, installing water tanks, the garden equipment, the garden set up, plants...

And I ask myself "am I being consumerist in my attempt to be greener?"...

Seed Sowing September

With the warmer weather becoming more common, I seem to be thinking about the garden so much more. My lack of posts is actually due to my excitement at being able to make an impact in the garden again and certainly not due to a lack of interest... Too much time planting and sowing and not enough blogging...

September really was seed sowing month and the green house is now so full if trays and pots I can hardly get in. I recall this time last year when I didn't have my green house, in fact it was just dream of mine. Until my husband saw the look of absolute delight on my face when in a friend's new green house. It didn't take long till he ordered me one!

My friend's is twice the size of mine and I loved it, but assured my husband that I didn't need one that big, perhaps just because I just wanted one and didn't care how big, just that I was getting it!

I love my green house, it is my happy place. I heard my just turned 4 year old daughter say to my Mum the other day "Mummy goes to her green house when she is cranky because it make her feel happy". Did I say that to her at some point, or did she observe that herself?

I think of how I can possibly fit a chair in there too as the compulsion to visit it, to see the germinating seeds, the budding flowers, the just out of season vegetables lures me to stay...

So my green house is full and I still have more seeds to so to ensure successive crops... and my husband commented that "perhaps we should have gotten you a bigger green house".