Tony’s Special PRIZE!

I have decided to award my number one supporter (a.k.a. Tony) with a special hand crafted prize.

As some of you may know, I am a Graphic Designer. I run my own Graphic Design business – which is one of the things I do when I’m not in the garden. Gardening for me is just a hobby, albeit: a hobby with huge benefits.

Anyway, Tony is a budding Comic Strip artist. He was the first person to ever comment on my blog when I first started about a year ago and has faithfully supported me ever since. If you haven’t already done so, you might like to check out his blog here. 

So, the special hand crafted prize I created for him was a logo and some fan art for his comic strip "Ratbags"...

I hope you like it Tony, and thanks again for all your support!

I’m thinking of starting a new Blog featuring some of my other artwork. Let me know if you think this is a good idea.

Check out my Zazzle shop where you can buy a button/badge featuring this artwork.
Or if you prefer a t-shirt click here.

Update:
I finally got around to getting my creative blog off the ground – See it here

Blog Marks ONE YEAR!

My Blog has just turned a year old this month.
I didn’t want that milestone to pass without acknowledging and thanking all those who’ve visited my blog, especially those who’ve taken the trouble to make a comment.

As you can see from the stats shown left people are visiting from all over the world. I have been amazed at the interest shown in my posts regarding the sleepout I built earlier this year.

It’s taken me a while to figure out a few things but I’ve noticed that when I make the effort to keep it up to date, readership increases. So I’ll try to post more regularly and keep it as fresh as possible.

Some posts take a bit of time and require a bit of forward planning, but hopefully the effort is worth it so that what I post is of interest and it actually makes sense to you the reader.

Anyway, thanks again for visiting my blog! Come back again soon.

New Winter Garden

Over the last couple of years since I got serious about gardening I started taking more notice of how the suns daily path changes throughout the seasons. This is quite important in my garden as it's surrounded by trees and during the winter when the sun's lower there's only 1 or 2 spots in the garden that gets any sun and even then for only part of the day.

I often escape to this part of the garden where I built a simple macrocarpa bench to sit on and take in the rays. I decided this would be the perfect spot to build yet another garden (a small one) where I might be able to grow a few vegetables over the winter. 

Using a few lengths of macrocarpa I still had lying around I worked out where the garden was going to go, then started digging up the soil to about a spades depth. As expected there were a few tree roots from the ti-tree right next to the garden but I wasn't too bothered about digging them up and getting rid of them. Ti-trees are pretty tough and can handle it.

I mixed in  some home made compost, plus a few bags of the bought stuff and then planted my seedlings. I made sure to add some all-purpose fertiliser. I put in a half dozen each of lettuces, brocollis and cauliflowers. I planted them a week or so before the shortest day, which fell this year on June 22.

Within a month they were doing really well – much better than the vegetables I tried growing elsewhere in the garden.

About a month after that and we had already eaten 5 out of 6 of the lettuces and I was starting again with more. By then the brocolli was beginning to flower.

About 10 days following this and I was picking the biggest brocolli I've ever grown. 

Look at that thing – it's almost as big as my head!

That was a proud moment, and it tasted great. Izumi steamed it. I smothered mine with cheese sauce.

Plum Blossoms... nearly!

Spring has sprung! Right on time. 

In NZ we expect spring to arrive on September 1st. Our plum tree's a pretty good indicator regarding the arrival of Spring. These photos taken today (Sept 2nd) show the blossoms forming and almost ready to open. A half dozen or so have already opened but I'm looking forward to seeing the whole tree covered in blossoms. 

I'm expecting this to take place within the next few days.

I'll post more photos later.