After.....

And here's the "after" panorama of the backyard:

Demolition - phase 1!

Today was D-day for the garage.  Thanks to the demolition crew who managed to not only destroy the garage but also to not need emergency medical treatment in the process.

Before....

Completed new fencing on 3 sides (out of 4 neighbours) this week, and it seems a good time to take some "before" photos, before the demolition crew gets here this afternoon!

Here's the front

and here's the back

More vegie bonanza

 Finally, the tomatoes are getting ripe, but every so slowly. 
In the meantime we've gotten lots of eggplants - I keep picking them small as they seem to have glossy, taut skin then, which gets wrinkly as they get older.




It's still not been very sunny, and only moderately warm but humid.  Sprayed a couple of times as the caterpillars were chewing holes in the tomatoes, green as they were.  But at least they're on their way now.... the trusses on the grape tomatoes are filling out well and even the beefsteaks are starting to show a little orange tint to them now.  I think the beans are nearly done and the zucchini seems pretty variable in quality but is still producing.

Strawberries forever

Not so much obvious happening in the patch this week - although strawberries are ripening fast now that we are having a few days of 30+ weather.  Still no colour change on the tomatoes though! But it looks like we definitely have 2 beefsteak (?), 2 grape and possibly 1 zebra type plants. I can't remember the types I bought last year (this lot have all come up on their own in the original bed and been transplated to a new bed).  The beefsteak ones are pretty big and on trusses of 4-5 close to the main stem, still getting bigger too; grapes in big trusses of up to 10 or so, and zebras also on long trusses.  But the zebras are small and still very green so it's hard to tell what size they'll end up.  Took out and tossed all the remaining lettuce yesterday - it was bolting to seed and even though we didn't get as many meals out of them as perhaps we should have, we still had quite a few.  Harvested probably at least a kilo of beans this week to.  They probably should have been picked earlier as they were starting to get a big bumpy and past that very early tender stage, but still good.  Eggplants are very long and skinny and don't seem to fatten up much, but that's ok as they are still seedless that way.  Still not very good germination success with the chives - not sure what's going wrong there but one batch have come up in a pot.  May try again when I transplant the spring onions and make some more space in a couple of weeks.  Also got the sign off from 3 out of 4 neighbours, so new fence is going ahead next week on all sides except the north west (driveway) side - that's ok as it's really the back that needs doing before we cut off access.

Vegie bonanza

This year is turning out to be huge in the vegie path - lots of rain and moderate amounts of sun seem to be making the patch bloom.  We've discovered that zucchini doesn't like cool, humid weather - it seems to make them blow up like balloons at one end and shrivel at the other.  But once the weather warms up/dries off they recover quickly.  We've had a good few kilos from the 2 plants already.  The eggplants are slow to mature, and we haven't eaten any yet, but they look promising.

The vegie beds with possum netting

 

 

 

 

 

Eggplants

 Beans are doing very well, with several meals out of half a dozen plants and still flowering, so more to come.  The tomatoes are looking great but everything is still very green and I'm impatient for them to ripen.

No signs of ripening yet

On the other hand, now that the weather is hotter and sunnier, the strawberries are really starting to ripen and we're getting about half a dozen ripe ones per day!  With the renovations, we not have a vegie patch for a year or so - just as it was really taking off, but at least we know now that the secret seems to be heaps of compost and water!

A little bit of chrome costs a lot

What is it about taps that makes them so expensive?  We went to the luxe tap store and chose taps and toilets and showerheads like making pick'n'mix and then got the prices - eeek.  But the luxe stuff is somehow so much nicer than the cheaper stuff..... almost indefinably so as they're just taps, for heaven's sake.  But it's really the design you're paying for, I guess.  And that was before we went to the oven showroom and started looking at teppenyaki add-ons for enornmous stainless less ovens.  There goes the budget (again).