you're a blight on my life...!

My tomatoes are dying.
Remember the beautiful green mass that was our tomato patch?
It is no more.
Melbourne had so much rain in the past couple of months- it was the 5th wettest year on record, and I think most of that came in Jan/Feb. So, it mightn't have been so bad if it was a rainy, rainy winter, but it was a year's worth of rain in a couple of months... and since I've read somewhere that tomatoes aren't great fans of water on their leaves, and to water them from the ground... well, I don't think they're too pleased.

We weren't this bad, but it was pretty wet. 

At first it was like; YAY! 

Now it's like: Booooooo...

So, between what I assume is blight (I have no idea, I'm making stuff up here), and birds eating my tomatoes when they're a day or two off ripe (despite having rigged up my strawberry-saving AntiBird system) I'm feeling a bit sad about my tomatoes. I know, it's autumn now and they're probably not meant to actually last that much longer, but there were just so many more we could have eaten. Here's some photographic evidence, and a new Anti-Bird system I'm trying out.

 

Ok so this looks like a bit of a mess, but basically the whole right side of my tomato patch is sort of dying, and the left is not as bad but still pretty bad and there are foil flags hanging everywhere to scare off blackbirds. Also there is basil. Much basil.

 I had to move my raspberries from on the wall of the veggie garden because I couldn't reach their tops any more. The big one is the one I actually got fruit off in its first year, and the smaller one is the one I thought was diseased and was going to die but actually looks really good now. The big one is probably 30cm off the roof-line now.

 

The rest of my garden. Some very sickly capsicums that didn't want to grow, zucchinis gone mad (and with rain spots on their leaves), lots of lettuce, spinach, leeks, a mess of spring onions, rhubarb and the tomatoes in the background. Did I plant too much? Possibly. 

As promised, a new Anti-Bird system. I wanted a picture with his front paws on the wood wall, but he always takes things too far. Then I armed him with which looks like a really serious knife but is actually a mini spade. But he looks ferocious all the same (or would like to think so, anyway). Can you tell he only holds things in his mouth out of duress/because I ask him to?

Meanwhile, every time I go into the garden, with or without Mallei, the kitten meows and squeaks and climbs the screen door. It's so pathetic, and she's so mewy and cute. I had my camera with me this time so I took a little clip of her. She didn't climb the door today though, just squeaked. This is pretty much the only time she meows- sometimes she just opens her mouth, and no sound comes out. This is when she wants food, or cuddles, or something I don't understand. It's only a minute long. Also there is Mallei, looking bored with his bird-protection duties, and me saying "Hey dude" and "Stupid tomatoes". Please excuse the sound of building in the background, and also enjoy the sounds of Australian bird life, if you're not from around here. There are crows, and magpies. 

tomato festival pt.II

More tomatoes!!
There's probably at least this many again out there still so I'm pretty excited.

Nic and I have a friend who recently had a cancer scare. Since then, he resolved to turn his life around, get fit and healthy, and generally look after himself more. One of the ways he decided to do this was to try and eat everything organic. Which is fine, aside from the fact that it's exorbitantly expensive in this country. Oh, and the fact that he seems to assume that organic=healthy.
Example:
"Oh! I got this great organic apple pie the other day! She used only organic flour and butter in the crust! And it was only $20!"
(Ok, pies aren't the worst example, but he said it in such a way that seemed to suggest he could eat five of them and would still be healthy).
Anyway, my point is this: These tomatoes have been pretty much hassle free, and as such, I've never had to spray them with anything- natural or otherwise (unlike my stupid raspberries and strawberries. Camelot is still holding up though, y'all.) and so I can say with (complete?) confidence, that my tomatoes are organic. Ha.

So I'm gonna bombard you with some photos again, because I like trying to get better at photography, and I don't know if I am, but hey, it made me wipe down the kitchen benches before taking the photos, and that has to be a good thing right? Anything that makes me clean in the name of doing something fun can't be a waste of time.
I ended up getting a whole little bucket worth of tomatoes today. And a strawberry. And some basil for artistic effects.

I made them small so you can click on them to see my 'artistic effects' if you want. Plus the yumminess of our tomatoes. I don't know if I wrote about why these tomatoes are so exciting, but basically we Nic grew them from seeds, had the seedlings all up along our kitchen window through the last of winter, and JUST before the trip we dumped them in the ground, asking our neighbor to come and water the garden, but not expecting much from them. I expected to come back to see scraggly little dead things... little did we know, Melbourne had a strange, wet and humid spring that turned out to be perfect growing weather, and we came back to a jungle. I thought they'd be dead, but here they are, giving us fruit!


Today we're off to do the V-Day things, and then we can relax tomorrow. I'm being given instructions on what to wear and still can't deduce what's going on or where we're going. Also, Reya has discovered how to pop the bubbles in bubble-wrap.

(Nic, standing in kitchen and listening to me type away on this post:
"Are you blogging it up?"
Me: "I'm just about to post one."
"Ooooo.... you're like a post-master demon!")

it's like a fricken tomato festival in here...

Hurrah!
My tomatoes have ripened (and are continuing to ripen!)

Despite Melbourne's massive amounts of rain, my garden seems to have come through unscathed! Of the 4 zucchini plants, one is flowering like mad, and the other three (which are in the garden itself, while the flowering one is just in a pot) are just trying to get as big and dominant as possible, but aren't worrying too much about the whole flowering/fruiting thing.

My strawberry, I think, needs more bees (for pollination, see?), as the fruits are small and gnarly, but I think that would involve more flowers other than the little strawberry ones, and I don't have any.

My basil has gone mad and I have a heap of basil bushes, which is exciting because I love basil, and I especially love pairing it with the hundreds of tomatoes! Today I went to check on the garden, noticed a heap of tomatoes were splitting open (too ripe!) and picked a few... which turned into a handful... which turned into me, using my t-shirt as some kind of peasant's apron. I tried to find a photo on google of what I mean by this, but nothing came up, which makes me wonder if I had invented the concept. Also the fact that Nic said:
"You look like your pregnant", when seeing said food-carrying-t-shirt-apron device wasn't entirely supportive, particularly since my tshirt was pulled up (because it was carrying so many mini-tomatoes) to expose my belly. Maybe I should have been mad about that comment.
Anyway.
Point of story.
There were too many tomatoes for my hands alone.
Some have already gone into our mouths via sandwhiches (delicious). Others still will go into our mouths via future meals. Not tonight, alas. Tonight we are attempting some sort of chicken, leak and corn disaster concoction (I was joking about the disaster part, I just thought it would be funny, and particularly since I like love using strikethrough, and frankly, don't abuse use it enough. Are you sick of it yet?), unfortunately with none of the ingredients coming from my garden. We could maybe have used the thyme but I think that while I was out there the other day pulling up the mint-that-had-gone-rampant, I stood on the thyme, which, to be honest, was in a bad shape already.
Truthfully I stood on it about five times. I did apologize, but since it was in the process of dying beforehand, I can't see it being too appreciative of my shoes on its... um... face? Whatever.
Here are some pictures of my tomatoes. Cos they're so shiny and pretty and tasty. And one terrible one of me. The whole close-ups-with-blurry-bits photos are what my Dad would term "Artistic Effects". He gets very excited doing these with the digital camera he bought with his frequent flier points (or whatever reward scheme it was). Though his photos are usually just super-close-ups of things.

Bowl of tomatoes! They don't look very red, but some were splitting from being ripe, and they came off the vine easily, so they are ripe, they just don't get more red. There's also basil leaves on the side. It is a small bowl, and they are small tomatoes.

Check out mah artistic effects. Pretty gnarly.

This is to prove that I have many more tomatoes to come. Also there are leeks and spring-onions in the background which may be ready by winter, if we're lucky.

Here's me. I mainly put this one in because then you can get a feel for the scale of the tomato-to-bowl ratio. Also, you may like to note in the background that the BirdScare100 (not to be confused with Bird-Eater100) is still in full-force. Camelot continues to fly her flags! The wind and storms did not destroy it! Unfortunately I think it has been slugs or something eating my berries, so the system, although brilliant and probably doing a great job at scaring birds and not being blown over by the wind, is, unfortunately, completely useless.

to scare a mockingbird...

The other day I had two raspberries and a strawberry in my garden that were all about a day or two off being ripe.
I left in the morning, came home in the evening, went out to water the plants and... my berries were gone.
DAMNED BIRDS.
So today, on my day off, I decided to do something about it. After spraying my raspberries with some pesticides for the little moths I'm convinced are evil, they seem to be doing a little better. There are about 3 or 4 berries left to ripen on the big plant. The little one has had a tough time of it and didn't get any berries, but since their packaging said they wouldn't get anything for a year or 2, I'm amazed I had any berries at all. GO BIG PLANT! Anyhoo.

I googled what to do about birds. Some sort of silver tape seemed to be effective. Or hanging CDs. I didn't want to buy any silver tape, I already had silver -stuff-.... So I made my own Bird-Repellent System*

In a lot of ways it reminds me, weirdly, of Camelot. Flags fluttering in the breeze, castle-shaped pot... and.. that's about all, really. Mostly it's about the flags.

*Not guaranteed to survive wind, rain, or weather.**
**Also not guaranteed to repel birds.

the start of a weekend...

I went outside this morning at about 7am, and the billions of ants that usually infest our drive weren't there. I figure they were sleeping in. Luckily for me, Reya has an inbuilt alarm clock that doesn't factor in weekend-time (really, I just want to sleep till 8. It's not that much to ask), but dictates that she (and so, by proxy, we) wake up at 6.00am every morning. If her attempts to actually get us to be exciting don't work then, she'll try again at 6.30. Subsequently, we were lucid by 6.40 this morning, which, ironically, is earlier than we've been awake all week, despite going to work, interviews, etc etc.

But as per my second-to-last blog post, I thought I'd share a bit more about the world here.

So, this is apparently how we spend a (not every) Saturday morning. Nic throws a teatowel over Mallei's shoulders and calls him a "Bar-tender-dog". Mallei mopes around looking depressed. He drops off his tea-towel in the laundry and comes back, looking a little more chipper.
Nic is aghast.
"What?!? Where's your bar-tending scarf?! Now you're just a regular dog!!!"
Mal and I go on a mission to find the scarf. It's been discarded. As I put it on, I realize this has much more potential than I originally considered. I tie it under his chin, and cover his ears. He instantly looks despondent, and together we trek back to the kitchen. Nic looks down from where he's making pancakes.
"Is he a maid!?!?!?!?"
"No! He's an old Polish lady!!"
"Oh! And he has to go toil in the fields, with a horse, and one of those stupid things that doesn't work!"
I look puzzled. "One of those stupid things that doesn't work?"
"Yeah, you know. And he gets beaten." Nic starts pretending to hit Mal with the spatula. Mal hangs his head.
"He looks pretty unhappy with his lot."
"Well, you'd be unhappy too if you had to toil in the fields."
And this is not an abnormal scenario for us. Which is slightly concerning.

 

This is how Reya helps me on the computer. She is going to be so much awesome fun when I'm back at Uni and have to type 6,000 word assignments again. 

And there is my garden. I'm calling it my garden because I planted everything in there. At the top is a tomato. We have many, many tomatoes currently growing. So many tomatoes I think we may need to throw some kind of ridiculous tomato party where we feed our guests nothing but tomato sauce, salsa and tomato salad.
Next to that is looking up the garden. You can't see my very sickly capsicum plants, but they are there. Also there are 'mixed salads' but I think a few varieties died, so now it is monotone salads. There are also zuccinis with not enough space, salad I tried to plant from seeds (nothing in this garden grows if planted as a seed. Seriously.) Then there are spinach, leeks which we've grown from seeds inside, then planted outside, and which seem to be taking a ridiculous amount of time to grow...Then there are spring onions, and covering all that is a rhubarb (Nic didn't tell me it was going to turn out like some tropical monstrosity with huge leaves so now it's poorly positioned. it was very small when I first planted it there, having come from a very small pot considering how big its grown). Then there are the tomato-plants-that-are-taller-than me.... Oh, and on the side is another zuccini in a pot (the pot where the rhubarb used to be), and you can't see it but there's also a 'perennial lettuce', and my beloved raspberry.
And the last photo is the herb section of the garden. With the ridiculous mint of doom, the still-new rosemary plant, the thyme, the too-much-oregano and the chives. Plus there are strawberries. OH! And Basil, which is near the tomatoes. Maybe a tomato-and-basil salad at our tomato party?
And that's my little garden. And it's poorly planned out, but things seem to be doing ok, considering, and we've eaten about 6 raspberries now which is amazing and so delicious, and soon we shall have tomatoes. And one day I'll pull some stalks off my rhubarb but not until it's a little more 'developed'. And then I'll feel bad. For destroying it.

Off to see about joining the gym!! I did a Body Pump class last night and now most of me is in pain. Good pain. But still, pain.