Food!

My vegetable garden a few weeks ago, freshly planted and ready -

I love fresh food. When I was a kid, my mum went through a period of time where she had a veggie garden and it was so good to pick off the food whenever you wanted and eat it. We also had an orange tree, which for many years gave off the best fruit. It was pretty cool, that you could walk outside and grab fresh fruit.

After spending Christmas at the family house in Vinifera, eating fruit from the plum, mulberry and apricot trees I wanted to have my own garden. A bit hard when you can't really tend to it, but now that I'm home more (and food prices have risen, along with electricity, fuel, etc) I can have one. 

So I planted what we ate the most - tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkin, zucchini, capsicum, strawberries, basil, parsley, mint, cucumber and chillies. And now, we have this:

Not long now, we'll have tomatoes, strawberries and capsicum.

Zucchini in the back two, cucumber in the front.

The snake is to keep the birds away - I noticed they were having a nibble of the lettuce. Usually, I try and let nature take it's course and allow Lucy to catch them and kill them (Indian Mynas we're talking about here people, who are a pest and run out any native birds), but she's not allowed near the nice wet soil, because she likes to dig in it. So the rubber snake is there. 

Last Friday, I wanted to plant some more but from seedlings, so I can keep a cycle of plants going without in between stages. Below is the lettuce's effort in a couple of days - from seed. The other side has chilies, zucchini and pumpkin, all which are yet to show. 

Lettuce. Should do us for the next 12 months I think.

I don't know why, but for some reason I feel pretty chuffed that if anyone ever invaded Australia and supplies were cut off, I could (somewhat) sustain myself, haha. Don't expect cooks to appear any time soon - I hate them and Lucy would get in and kill them. We're on the outskirts of town, so now I'm looking for a farmer who raises lamb and beef for the butchers so I can convince them to sell to me wholesale.