Green grows my bogling fork! Part... forgot where I'm up to.

Ok, I know I broke my promise of chook pictures in spectacular fashion, sorry. I've been a bit distracted with job interviews and anxiety on account of the same. That, coupled with the laptop moving with the speed of frozen treacle (a defrag fixed that), made me less than inclined to do much posting recently.

But, here are my girls!Now you can see why they are just "the chooks". Except for the chick on the front right - she is a bit of a stand-out. This photo is maybe a couple of weeks old now, they are starting to get their combs and wattles. They might just be real chooks soon. I just need to give the magpie who has been monstering them a boot up the date... cheeky bugger.

The veggie garden is going absolutely great guns:


We are eating quite a lot of spinach (silver beet), much to Rusty's great disappointment, the zucchinis are coming along apace, the beetroots are all going to need to be dug out soon or they will end up the size of footballs. We have also eaten:

nummy snow peas,my very first broccoli (there are now two more itty bitty baby ones on the way), as well as lettuce, radish, tomatoes, pumpkin, rocket, carrots, capsicum and cucumbers! Whew!

The despondency dog

The past few days have seen a big dog sniffing around, looks black, but is actually just dark blue in the sunlight. He wanted to let me know (in the nicest possible way, of course) that despite years of experience, and quite good skills, no-one wanted to give me a job. I have been for a couple of interviews, only to be told that I am overqualified for the position. A couple of agencies that I would have thought would have something on their books are proving to be dead-ends. I sent numerous applications off via Seek on Friday, and got only one response this week, despite this tactic working quite well last week. I still have an interview lined up for this Friday, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Anyhoo, today was shaping up to be a lovely day, so I kicked the DD in the nuts and told him to bugger off. A bit of gardening, a bit of tidying, a bit of washing, a bit of being followed all over the yard by the chickens, and all is right with the world again. In a rather exciting fashion, the veggie patch delivered all the veggies for dinner tonight, and most of my salad for lunch. I am still needing to think of interesting ways to serve silverbeet though - I like it, but R thinks it tastes like sick, so there has been a lot of disguising it with bacon...

I still wish someone would just give me money to stay at home.

Taties!

We grew these on our very own!

Yes, many of them are a level of tiny more closely associated with grapes, but still. It's amazing what happens when you stick some dud spuds in the ground and forget about them for 4 months...

Farmer Joe and the wankers

More as a remider to myself than anything else:

Yesterday I planted seeds for radishes, zucchini, carrotses, and peas, both sugar snap and regular. Now just need to wait 6-10 weeks to reap the fruits (or vegetables) of my labour.

As for the wankers... I had dropped R off at Homebush for his farewell thingy and huge piss-up, and then continued on to Rhodes. I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, and then left. On the way out of the carpark, I was stuck behind a couple of youfs in a phully sic, electric blue WRX with spoiler and enormous exhaust outlet. Or so I thought. As I got a bit closer, I realised that what the youfs were alctually driving was a Kia, just made to look like a WRX. Oh dear. Really, if you can't afford to drive a phully sic car with the phat subwoofers, don't try to make your poxy Korean el-cheapo look like one. It will just make you look like an idiot. Young people of today, eh?

Green grows my bogling fork! Part II

I don't think it quite got up to the 28 degrees that the BoM was promising for Parramatta today, but I am wearing a singlet top as we speak, so it's still quite pleasantly warm.

I have had a very productive day. I have spent a portion of the last few days preparing the garden beds - shifting soil, digging up weeds, digging in fertiliser, etc - and today I got to put things in them! Things that got planted:

• tomatoes - 3 different kinds
• lettuces
• snow peas
• beetroots
• silverbeet (Rusty reckons he's going to try to poison them when I'm not looking)
• broccoli
• rhubarb
• rasberry cane
• gooseberry bush
• two apple trees (granny smith and pink lady. You have to have at least 2 for cross pollination)
• thyme - lemon and regular
• oregano

I've got a bunch of seeds to plant in the next couple of days too.

I finally went to the little nursery on the corner of Great Western and Cumberland highways, opposite the F1 hotel. I always thought it was a bit small and pointless, so never managed to go. I am really glad that I finally gave it a shot. They are a bit small, but have the most amazing range of fruit trees/bushes and herbs that I have ever seen! Lots of really olde-worlde and European herbs that I have never seen at commercial nurseries - lovage, tansy, feverfew, rue, mustard greens, curry plant, fuzzy thyme, pyrethrum, and a whole lot more that I can't remember. Really cool stuff. They also have rasperries, gooseberries (that were only $12, hence me buying some to give them a go), blueberries, red and blackcurrants, and miniature peaches and pears. Not regular dwarfing, but miniature - tiny, tiny peach trees. So cute.

All in all, a very productive day. Now, just have to maintain this level of productive...

I can haz sleeps nao?