The brakes got hit as money haemorrhaged (we needed a new vacuum cleaner and some expensive medical shenanigans happened) which gave me a serious case of Veruca.
I "just" wanted to get more plants and some recycled rubber pavers to replace the concrete ones (the rubber pavers theoretically should move with the ground, the tree roots have heaved the path and one of the concrete pavers is broken and the rest of that part of the path is basically a constant trip hazard from end to middle and while gravel is the easiest option I also "just" want everything up that end to be barefoot friendly) because I "just" want the the yard to look nice for once.
"Just" wanting things is problematic.
J is partially on board with the idea of the pavers because he sees the sense but doesn't like the dollars.
He minds smaller dollars a bit less though, he went to Bunnings to buy some stuff for a chainmail vest (apparently it's just going to be a weighted vest, he thought it would be more fun to make chainmail than just buying a boring old weighted vest) and asked me if I wanted anything and I asked him to get Correas, didn't matter which type.
He returned with Correa albas and while I was a bit nervous as they apparently like a bit more sun than what they would get in the fence bed I was happy as I knew they had white flowers so we'd have a nice variety of colours if they did alright!
You can see in the above photo where he was led astray.
They've gone in and we'll see how they go, and I told him next Bunnings trip we need one more of them and then three more ACTUAL Correas and then I'd fill the rest of the fence bed with any aloes I couldn't jam into pots.
J told me that they would hate that area, I said we'll see how they go as that side of the fence bed gets slightly more sun than the other side where I started from and the ones that remain in filtered to part shade where they are now are doing better than the ones in full sun which look a bit crispy
The Grey Box got its first flower!
The Acanthus mollis are looking very wilty and unhappy but NOT DEAD YET. In their defence when they're sprouting was probably the worst time to move them but in my defence that was the only way I knew where they were and after I got stabbed multiple times they weren't staying there otherwise I would have done what I'm going to be doing with the lilies and noted where they were and dug them up after they'd gone dormant. And to add injury to injury they're basically planted just above the soil in leaf litter (the very big roots are on the soil, I Just didn't dig them into the soil as the whole plant would then have been completely buried in leaf litter), and the usual suspect chickens (Satan and Memo) managed to get out and scratched around them kicking them completely up and away. I did put them back but anyone's guess if they survive that ordeal.
This one (taken before moving obviously) looks like the last one I needed to relocate (at least for now, I dug up SO MANY rhizomes) as I haven't seen any since.
The furthest away Correa in the above photo has also become very droopy and I don't know why or if it's supposed to look like that. It seems to be chugging along other than that, even put out a bunch of new flowers recently.
When the weather has been comfortable to work in (basically not raining as we're going into winter) I've been continuing minor-but-important-at-least-to-me prettifications of the cottage garden (picking up sticks/branches, mulching with leaf litter and moving excess leaf litter into the sleeper bed, trying to level a little bit more and pondering the mystery of how some areas of the yard are way lumpier than others that isn't accounted for by tree roots, neatening up rock borders, identifying mystery plants to see if they're getting green mulched or transplanted) while supervising the chickens that I allow out late in the evening to mow the lawn.
They were super excited to be able to access this part of the yard again. Except for that one in the foreground which had followed one of the mothers out, the little chickens have been properly insitutionalised and were too scared to come out as when they were small enough to squeeze through the gate they would get chased back in every time we noticed them out there.
They have maybe an hour to mow the lawn and scratch around for other bugs before they take themselves back to the coop before it gets too dark.
freaking Satan and Memo are always the last ones back in
I need a watergun to attack them with every time they go into the gardens, they occasionally kick up some of the plants which have so far managed to recover but I get so annoyed when they are growing so nicely and then get bisected because chickens are stupid.
the chickens are somewhat learning where to avoid at least when I'm present
A much less interesting job is clearing the gravel out of the aquaponics and chicken areas.
I have no idea where all these freaking rocks came from, I am very sure they weren't here when we moved in. All I've got at the moment is that there was a lot more random garden waste that came in with our woodchips than we thought.
am sticking with our leaf litter for mulch from now on
The plan here is to grab the concrete pavers from the raised beds (now that they should no longer be needed to protect plants from chickens frantic to find anything at all to eat as they're clearly starving to death) and from the current cottage garden path and using them as bases for the aquaponics grow beds and ponds, replacing the bricks that were previously preventing the grow beds from slowly sinking into the earth.
Once that's all sorted we will hopefully order the new ponds.
After J had put together and erected the gate we found that the little chickens were able to squeeze under so I resolved that problem with some bricks.
It's completely not done "properly" as it's just dug into the ground (no gravel or sand) and a couple of the bricks are very slightly wobbly if you step on them but they are preventing chickens from burrowing underneath.
Since the chickens are now contained I have been able to start the bee garden.
I need a couple more lavenders to put around this one and will then plant some catmint around it. Around the same time I threw some insect mix seeds behind the olive tree and for a while it looked like nothing was happening so I figured maybe some doves which had been walking around there had eaten all the seeds, but after a few days of solid rain some tiny little sprouts have come up.
The phone camera tried to be helpful with cool dof things and made a couple of them slightly harder to see, and after taking a photo of these ones I realised there were quite a lot of them.
Without chicken interference/eating everything that might be digestible, some random stuff has been coming up too.
J took out the not-dwarf nectarine tree as it was apparently root stock, I suggested not replacing it with anything to give our poor old rosemary a chance and he agreed. I think the rosemary will be much happier now.
The chicken forage patch is doing less well. I did see some seedlings coming up but so did the chickens and with the way I had the fence before (laid out flat so they would be able to grab anything that grew through the top) the small chickens were able to stick their heads through and grab everything so I fenced it off completely and tried reseeding and now I have no idea what's going on. There's stuff coming up but I don't know if that's the older seeds or weeds.
Ergh.
My next hare-brained scheme is to transplant the not-sunflowers into the chicken area soon in the hopes that in summer they'll provide some shade and additional food (the chicken area was already a dustbowl but somehow managed to get worse now that they're contained in there almost full time) and then come spring try to move some nasturtiums under them and then maybe try the chicken forage mix in there too.
The nasturtiums in question escaped their pot and viciously reseeded and are currently trying to take over the catio patch, attempting to smother the existing aloe vera which took over some years back because a pot containing one single plant fell or was knocked over when we were on holiday and that's what we came back to.
The catio garden shuffled around again, I don't really keep track of what's going on in there, J just likes sprouting random things that will either eventually get used in the kitchen, transplanted into the garden or gifted to other people.
The cat plants will get transplated to the catio patch after I've cleared it.
The two passionfruit plants were finally planted out, J decided to put them inside the catio rather than outside like he did with the last ones that were growing up the catio.
The tree bed brings me an amount of joy that I find hilarious, sibling dearest reckons I'm going through my middle aged gardening/home improvement arc.
The porch bed has been doing slightly less well, I did end up moving the Hypoestes that looked like it was really suffering to the tree bed and see if it perks up. The two plants that survived pressure washing are currently surviving in the wall bed and everything else around is having a great time.
The mulberry tree is going to sleep for the winter and will probably wake up shorter in spring as I think J has plans to trim it down a little so it's easier to net, something about birds though the boys are equally likely candidates for no mulberries.
I think I have to hold off on more plants for a little while and focus on cleaning up.
This post also appears on my blog.
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