Beautiful Bordeaux and $7 bananas

Can't help but enjoy the lifestyle for the moment. My very productive days tend to be in foreign hotel rooms, and here's the view from this one:


And I love that the bananas are cheap compared to Australia.



One thing I have noticed in terms of food and wine quality, however. Huge variability - the great quality stuff is really good. But I did manage to find a fairly pedestrian 3 course meal as well.

I suppose that might tend to happen when one is aiming for great stuff - variability. But I suppose I sound like a carbon copy of many others when I reflect that the hundreds of years of culture tends to seep from every crack in the buildings here.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Love her

But I wish she'd stop harassing my chickens.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Brugmansia (Angel's Trumpet) on borrowed time

Gotta say, I resisted all the nervous nanny state stuff about toxic plants and readily planted (propagated) Angel's Trumpets around my garden but truly, they suck.


As a gardener I am constantly aware that everything about them is poisonous; and whilst the propagate easily they will grow with any real help to 3m tall in a year. So they shade everything and take over. Their flowers are nice enough, so if you're a neglectful gardener, I suppose it's the plant for you. Even a couple of pink varietals I bought - insipid stringy upside down trumpet flowers. Nope. A bit of a loser of a plant.


I'll keep one for posterity because my late grandmother dear Kathleen loved the one I gave her and dismissed the handwringers over it all.

Paraphrase: "if they're silly enough to take all the flowers of an known poisonous plant, boil them up and ingest them what can I do?"

But otherwise, bye bye Brugmansia. I have plenty of other plants that can use your sun and soil.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Plums long gone, goodbye figs hello loquats

A few leaves left on the old Santa Rosa at the back, a few fruit left on the white fig at the front, and flowers setting nicely on the loquat on the right hand side.


The circle of life, in three square metres.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Broccoli will be ready to plant after France

I sowed a little seed a few weeks ago. More than half got eaten. I sprayed something on them and the put in a little more seed - this time a variety called "purple dragon" or such.





I'll put the rest of the seed into the empty cells and by the time I get back from France I'll plant them into the garden.

Here's the little plot I've just "chicken/dog proofed:



Dutch Iris babies at the back, leeks at the front, I'll put lettuce and rocket in front of the leeks and then the broccoli.

A slightly random assortment of broccoli for a total of about $5 - and a little effort.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The winter ripening shelf

In summer I use this shelf to ripen tomatoes, and I've still got a few coming (see on the right) but we're into cold season now.


So a row of persimmons I got from the rare fruit society $2 seem to be just the answer. One needs to ripen them until they are almost rotten, but they're the closest thing you'll get to fresh fruit in winter. And Luigi my father in law remembers persimmons as a delicacy to fight over. This year I'll do a ripening experiment, and I think I'll put a tree in.

It IS nice to see something fresh in the chill of winter. I love a crunchy fresh fruit and you'll never get that with persimmons, but then in July you'll never get it with any other fruit either.

Unless you import stuff from the Atherton tablelands or like I'm doing next week GO TO THE SOUTH OF FRANCE! Sorry for yelling, it's exuberance.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ugly but functional - probably a little like me

Citrus love to be planted into a raised bed. I have an old dryer frame that has been kicking around the yard for years.


It will be next year's tangelo container. Poor little tangelo did it tough last season. $50 from Perry's then I put her in a little pot - I think she wanted to stretch her legs a little more. I'm getting a little fruit - golf balls - but I know it can do way better.


So next year she can. I'll give hr a heap of that compost I'm making, mix in a little soil from that old vegie bed. It'll be great.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone