I am so ashamed.........

A few years ago hubs and I bought some second hand picket fence panels and slapped them all together and made ourselves a fenced vegie patch.  We carted besser blocks by the thousand ( well tens - almost 100) and made raised garden beds, we carted trailer load after trailer load of soil and shovelled away until we had blisters on our hands and for the last 3 years have enjoyed the fruits of our labour.

But .........

This winter we let it all go to rack and ruin.  All of our hard work has been covered in an abundance of weeds and looks like a very unloved patch.  Despite our neglect the 2 black currant bushes and the pair of gooseberry bushes are still alive in amongst all of that mess.

The rhubarb too has flourished despite the neglect.  We were able to harvest an abundance of stems for cooking.  It was time that we made a stand and this weekend we rolled our sleeves up and gave our little patch some TLC.

I am now very proud to be able to show you the fruits of our labour.  My tired aching muscles can attest to the hard labour we both put in with the help of Amy and the the grandies. We managed to get it all cleaned up and even planted out some Lettuce & Black Zucchini along with "pink eye" potatoes.

The rhubarb bed is now much more loved

And they have some little golden zucchini cousins sharing their bed.

The gooseberries have forgiven us and are looking great this year.

And the Black Currant Bushes already have a visitor - Mr Bumble Bee

And Mr Wasp !  We still have 2 beds to weed and re-plant but we both need to recover now - LOL

Now that daylight savings is here it gives us the opportunity to potter around a little more when we get home from work.  This afternoon I checked out my Stella Cherry Tree which is in it's 3rd year.  It is planted next to the cat's outdoor garden run and it has lots of blossom which will mean lots of yummy fruit.

So whilst the sun was beating down this afternoon I thought I would take advantage of it and do a little potting.  I read somewhere once that you could grow potatoes in a container so as I had some seed potatoes left and this great big container I thought that I would experiment a little bit.  I drilled some holes in the bottom for drainage.

Put some soil in the bottom and then the seed potatoes.

And then topped it off with soil.  So now we will wait and see if we can get a nice crop out of this container.

I also potted up some baby tomato plants and some remaining lettuce seedlings from our planting day yesterday.  I like to plant my tomatoes in stages so that we don't have all of the produce at once.  These ones will be our late planting as I purchased 2 plants a few weeks ago which I have potted up in our back breeze through.

It is not safe to put tomatoes out here in Brighton until late October because of late frosts but our breeze through gets lots of sunshine and provides a nice safe warm growing spot for them.

And they are both loving it !  These will give us some nice early tomato's this year hopefully.

And just so that you don't think I have neglected everything - Remember when I showed you this poor dying creeper?  Well it has been saved from certain death.

I am very proud that I have been able to save him.  He is looking very healthy and is even sending off new tendrils.



I did get some time to stitch over the weekend too.  I am currently working on a new design for release in 2012.

I thought that you might enjoy a little peek at it.

Oh BTW the Cats won !!  I was one very happy girl on Saturday afternoon.

I will be back later in the week.

Hugs - Fee X