I've been feeling a bit lost and off focus of late. There are probably a multitude of causes for this and I'm still trying to get back on track and find something, anything, to try and bring some kind of goal or order back to my life. Even gardening has gone by the wayside, somewhat. I always share my gardening/homesteading updates on Facebook and my biggest reason for doing so is to keep family in England updated about a little bit of our life here in Australia. Probably our biggest fan was my mother-in-law, who loved to hear what we were doing. However, she passed away in January and I've just been wondering what the point was any more. Is anyone really that interested in even reading about it there any more? Well, maybe my sister if she sees it.
While we knew my mother-in-law was terminally ill, her death was sooner than expected and we still haven't been given a conclusive cause of death. It's odd, really, because I wouldn't have said I was close to her, but you don't realise how much you think about someone in your day to day life, until every memory reminds you that they are gone. She has been a part of my life for over 28 years, I guess.
In a way her sudden passing may have been a blessing for her, rather than the slow, painful decline that cancer brings, but there's a selfish part that wanted her to be with us a bit longer. Not that she wasn't already in pain and had indeed endured plenty since her early 30s when her rheumatoid arthritis started. She never got bitter and nasty about it, like some, and never blamed others around her for it.
So we've been grieving, while trying to keep moving forward, but not really seeing a goal or point. My daughter has been a champion in trying to motivate us, though. The garden has been half neglected while I try and get some spring cleaning done inside, with her practically taking me by the hand at times, when things became overwhelming. The 13+ year old sofa has been cleaned with a spot upholstery cleaner that she researched for cost effectiveness and efficiency for us before hubby was out of work. It's called a spot cleaner, but it's ended up cleaning over a decade of dirt from an entire 6 seater sofa and done an impressive job of it! Admittedly, it took several goes over, especially on the favourite seats. Those ones that have had several food and drink spillages over the years, along with the oils that come from human bodies. Yes, the resulting water was quite the sight to behold! Hopefully future cleans will be spot cleans now, though.
We can now see the carpet again in the dumping ground known as the spare room. My daughter got ruthless with me and pointed out when I was hanging onto things, "because I might be able to use it." If I couldn't give her an answer on what I could use it for, it went, either in the bin or to be donated. At the same time as we were doing this, my husband's friend was also clearing out a lot of stuff as his mother was going into a nursing home, so hubby would turn up with more stuff to sort through...one step forward, two steps back, anyone?
We don't often put our bins out for collection, but they've been out every week this last month, between us in the house and hubby in his shed. All this tidying and cleaning feels a little like us trying to get some semblance of mental order as much as household order. Trying to regain some form of control back in our lives.
Outside the second stage of restructuring the runs has begun. I finally sorted out the excess pigeons and the chicken flocks had to be integrated into one. Both stressful events. I ended up propping the aviary door open at half mast so that both runs could be accessed at the same time. The main flock moved the the one with the goosefoot forest, giving the smaller flock a bit of breathing space in the other. The original girls still made sure to come back through at regular intervals to remind the newcomers whose turf they are on, but things seemed to get a bit calmer than they were. So not calm enough it seems, because the Pancake the australorp ended up limping and former flock leader Toffee was still being terrorised by Peep, a newer girl to the small flock who seemed to have decided she should be head hen. So I shut the large flock into one side, with Peep joining them and getting a mild taste of her own medicine for a few days. Toffee resumed command of the small flock and I'm dealing with a slightly impacted crop in Willow who seems to have been stress eating while all this was going on.
That backwards glance of disapproval from Queen Ginger because I didn't have food after she'd expended energy racing the flock to me, along with the butts of the girls who were still trying to see if I had food.
I'd have preferred to move the larger flock to the smaller flock's turf, but that wasn't possible. It's a calmer integration when the majority are the ones in foreign territory.
I wrote about our discovery of termites in the plum tree branches last garden update and Nikv enlightened me to the fact that the termites were also the likely cause of the nutrition deficiency in the leaves of the tree, as there would be a colony in the roots. I cut off the worst looking branch to see how salvageable the tree is and even where it didn't look obviously damaged it revealed that the termites have basically tunnelled through the centre of the entire tree. They were quick to plug up the opening I made in their home when I removed the branch.
Excuse the moulting quail partially camouflaged in the shot. I don't think she was really wanting to be a model in that state.
So it seems that I've two options, let the soil dry out completely to kill the colony, which would also kill the tree, or compost like crazy to try and counteract the termite activity. I'm going with the second option, as the termites only chew up the dead wood, which is the centre of the tree. Of course this will still weaken the structure of the branches, but I'll slowly remove the large ones over time and let new ones replace them, at least for a long as the tree survives.
I gave the lawn a trim along with the wormwood and ran the mower over that as well. That's what you see at the base of the tree in the above photo. The quails are enjoyed digging themselves into it. Wormwood being anti-parasitic, it might help them with mite control, if they have any.
With root knot back in one of the growing beds and termites under the plum tree, with possibilities that they might be moving over the the old apple tree as well, I was rather surprised when hubby made a comment along the lines of the garden doing well. These things chip away under the surface, a bit like a lot of things in life really.
Yet an explosion of the largest, plumpest goji berries we've ever had greets me every time I step out into the front garden. A reminder to try and look for the good in life perhaps.
You can also find The Miniature Smallholding on:
