indoor gardening

Hello sweet friends, how are you? What’s been happening in your world lately?

Can you see Popcorn in the photo above? How she looks is exactly how I feel at the moment. I’m inside feeling cozy and dry looking out on yet another grey day of pouring rain and arctic temperatures. I’m so sick of this weather. I have a bit of a period headache, I have a hot water bottle on my lower back which is making me feel sleepy, I’m missing sunshine and light, I can’t be bothered doing anything, but I also can’t wait to be outside doing everything.

I feel content but a bit flat.

One of the things that always frustrates us at this time of the year, is how slow our growing season is to get started, compared to virtually all the rest of the farmers and gardeners around Australia. Our soil temps are still freezing cold, our daylight hours short, and realistically the high risk of frost won’t be over for about another eight weeks. It’s so hard watching cucumber and zucchini crops going in on instagram knowing that it’s not even time for us to plant seeds in the hot house yet.

So we made the decision a few weeks ago to try inside the house growing. We heat the house almost constantly at this time of the year, so the soil we plant into will be warm, and with a bed pushed right up against the window, hopefully it gets enough sunshine to give some veggies a bit of a head start.

First Bren built a cover for a wicking bed, then we filled the bottom up with water, and filled the rest up with a mixture of coir (coconut fibre) and sifted compost.

Then we planted it out with a mixture of different varieties of lettuces, spinach, parsley, and thyme.

We also planted a whole bunch of sticks in the garden bed to try and stop the cats from sleeping, digging, or using it as a toilet. It’s a shame because I think it ruins the look of it, but we’ve learned from experience that it’s just not worth taking the risk and being sorry.

I’ll keep you updated.

This is a photo of the inside of my Bracken sweater as requested by Lynne on my last post. I love that you asked to see it Lynne. Even after all these years of knitting, the magic of turning a couple of balls of yarn into a wearable, patterned sweater with a couple of sticks, astounds me. The fit, and the shape, and the pattern. I also find the inside just as beautiful and intriguing as the outside. I probably won’t ever wear it this way, but I am super proud of it anyway.

Thanks also to all those that encouraged me and helped me make my mind up to knit another Bracken in a dark grey with a light pattern. I have ordered the yarn and it’s on the way.

In the meantime I finished baby Zadie’s festival sweater.

And started another one for baby Esme.

Esme’s mum Elizabeth once helped me pick out those three colours for a shawl project we were knitting together, so it feels extra meaningful to be using them in a gift for her.

During the week I finished Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart which I loved but was also completely devastated by. I read This time Tomorrow by Emma Sraub which also broke my heart, but in a beautiful, hopeful way.

And I’m about halfway through The View WasExhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, which I ordered from the library because a few of my goodreads friends loved it, it got some great reviews, and it got blurbed by Taylor Jenkins Reid. But honestly I’m not sure about it. I can’t work out exactly what the point of it is. But I’m going to finish it just incase something happens, and also because it’s easy and a bit like the book version of the Kardashians which can be fun when you’re in the right mood.

What else? There are some pops of colour dotted around the place: daffodils, calendular, poppies, banksia, wattle and some of the fruit trees are in blossom.

Unfortunately poor old camellia is not coping with being constantly soggy and wet at all.

But everything looks better through a wider angled lens.

The sun actually came out for a few hours on Tuesday and we weeded the garden and Bren mowed the grass. Pepper came home from school and said it smelled like spring which made me smile. I love that feeling.

Other than that Pepper’s on school holidays for two weeks - yay, I’m still making stuff with clay and squishing it, I held the sweetest baby on Wednesday and realised that I can’t remember the last time I held a baby, also I couldn’t believe how tiny a two month old baby is and how precious, I didn’t get the Worldle today, I did get some new to me dahlia tuber varieties in the mail yesterday, which reminds me I have to sort through my vegetable seeds and make an order, and I bought a journal to start writing a minute before I go to bed each night but I still haven’t started.

Bren’s just finished putting up some portable electric fencing and he wants to move the goats before the next rain shower, so I’m going to bid you farewell and go and put my boots on.

Please tell me something that’s going on in your world. I don’t care what it is; something you’re dreaming about, or planning, or finishing, or learning, or making, or feeling.

See you next week x