visiting nan and grams.
Tag: gardening
A radish from my garden.
In response to Art Assignment 12 Imprint – Sopheap Pich
Veggie garden: wrap up.
Those of you who read this blog somewhat regularly will remember I started a balcony garden earlier this year. But now we’re moving state and it’s kind of hard to take a garden with you, so I thought I’d do a little summary of what’s happened and what I’ve learnt.
My biggest successes were the herbs. I used basil in salad, mint in iced tea, and oregano in pasta sauce.
But how about everything else?
The carrots and radish kind of go together. They grew. I ate them. There weren’t enough to make it feel worthwhile. (That’s the whole crop of carrots in that picture there. See how they’re all different shapes? That’s kind of cool.)
The buk choy went to seed. They never grew big enough for me to think it was time to eat them. I’m not sure if they needed more sun, more space, or both. A bit disappointing, but it’s kind of nice to have flowers on the balcony!
The strawberry struggled along as a teeny tiny plant for a long time before eventually dying off.
And, finally, the nasturtiums. I didn’t think they were going to grow at the start. They seemed so weak and sickly. But they seem to be doing okay now, and one of them flowered.
What have I learnt?
I think I want bigger pots next time, and preferably access to a space with more sunlight. I’m definitely going to get herbs straight away, regardless. As for the veggies? I want to try tomatoes this year and, if I have a bigger space, I’ll definitely grow the others too.
bits and bobs
I read, somewhere, that you should keep blog posts to one topic. Focus on one thing for each post. But in trying to do that, I didn’t post anything at all. So let me just tell you about my life lately.
Firstly, I’m moving back to Adelaide. Well, almost certainly. I mean I don’t have a job there and neither does my husband. But at least now we’ve started looking. If I’m honest I’ll be really surprised if we end up going somewhere else. (If we do go somewhere else we’re only going to go as far as Melbourne so there’s that.)
It’s weird living like this. I hated it, when I knew I was going to be moving to Perth, but had to finish honours first. And I hate it now. I hate that my life feels like it’s in the future and that the now is just something to get through. I sometimes think that this feeling is the only thing that was difficult about year 12. We know that this stage of life is almost over, so we want to start dealing with the new problems now.
In happier news, I had a birthday and went to the zoo and got some really cool presents that have encouraged me to keep working on my art. So I’ve mostly laid aside digital art for the time being and focused on learning to draw. I really love it. I can see my improvement and I’m also learning to draw more quickly. Plus, it’s just fun. Here are some of my favourites. (Is it weird to have favourites of your own work? I don’t care.)
On the topic of Achieving This Year’s Goals:
– Hot Key books announced their Young Writers Prize for this year so I’m about to get stuck into editing my NaNo novel for real this time.
– My garden is growing nicely. I don’t know what I’m gonna do when we leave though. Have a picture of a delicious carrot.
(Reference photos for Taylor Swift and Doc Martin.)
my favourite salad ever
One of the best things about having a garden is the excitement of getting to eat the food from it. So the other day I picked a whole lot of basil and made a super delicious salad.
2-3 tomatoes
1 lebanese cucumber
1 spring onion
1 avocado
150g danish feta
BASIL
The only real preparation I did (other than cutting up all the things) was to mash up the big basil leaves with olive oil and a little bit of salt.
For seasoning I just used olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Also, here’s a picture I made of my balcony today.
