Lurking in the Lair
17/05/2007 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIzzie's been a bit of a hermit serpent lately. Been a gorgeous crisp and crunchy day but instead of lurking around Lunatic Asylums and The Juicy Beetroot Cafe, decided to lurk around the Lair instead but with a minor deviation for lunch at Annalakshmi.
After last Wednesday's waste of a gorgeous afternoon, decided not to make the same mistake yesterday. In the not so distant past, nothing like a crisp and crunchy sunny day like today to get itchy feet and go off slinking on coffee crawls. That tendency has had to be rather more restrained since losing our entitlement to student concessions on bus fares. When it costs $$6.40 rather than $$2.60 in bus fares, pottering off at 2pm to get a bus to the beach after a day at work is no longer justified. Those sorts of prices mean a whole day or not at all.
So, decided that sitting with a coffee and big fat juicy book in the sun in our own garden would be just as good as paying bus fares and time to go some place else. So so wished we'd done that last Wednesday and had no intention of making the same mistake this time
But even better than a cuppa is a snooze in the garden and listening to the various birdses.
So that is exactly what we did today and yesterday. But not just play. Also a bit of proper pottering too. This included lots of pampering for the mango tree. Mainly by removing the wormwood that was growing like a weed around it, making a nice big circle and filling it with the blackest and most beautiful compost. This stuff - like the lupin mulch - is very good at holding moisture. Yesss. Looking after the soil and letting the water and plants take care of themselves is working so so much better than pampering the individual plants
Also made a circle of bricks around the baby orange tree out the back and filled it with this black stuff. It looks so so gorgeous now
Got to thinking that it all started with the woolly bush and fig tree on Tuesday 17 April. Put circles around them and that seemed to be the magical key to unlocking the long dormant gardening bug. The same week ordered the lupin mulch followed soon af ter by the ma's gift of straw and then those big bags of NASAA certified kosher compost.
Got more done in the last 4 weeks than the last 4 years. But funny thing is - all this juicy mulch is attracting all sorts of interesting creatures. The bees are making more of a buzz line for the Lair. There's more birdses - probably come to steal all those seedses that we are planting and even the neighbour hood cats have taken a shine to the layers of straw out the back
It's now become a place that the Izzie wants to lurk in rather than escape from.
Such simple pleasures - sitting under the big orange tree in the dappled sunlight watching the rainbow lorikeets raiding the grevillia and eucalyptus blossoms and the little willy wagtails and honey eaters munching assorted seeds and insects.
Critters love this mulch stuff and where there's insects, there's lizards and frogs and birds and very very happy serpents
Next mission will be clearing the bits of grass around the lime tree and giving it lots of tasty black mulch to munch on. There's still some blossoms and itsie bitsie teenie weenie baby limes and we got to make sure they don't drop off like they have done every other year
Will be off to the nursery next week when we start our two weeks holiday from house elf slavery. Now is the best time of year for planting trees and the Izzie's little green bit of plastic fantastic is getting rather itchy for exercise.
As time spent in the garden is not money spent in the shops, the Iz can afford to indulge in getting some serious trees. Not been near the shops or spent a single silver sickle from Sunday to Wednesday. A very painless and pleasant way of saving indeed. Especially now that we've finally found a cure to an insatiable addiction to basil. All previous atttempts to grow the stuff have failed until now. The snails always got there first but now there's other edibles to interest them.
PS Only 10 things left to find for the Izzie list. Will be posting it next week. Always good to have auspicious beginnings
After last Wednesday's waste of a gorgeous afternoon, decided not to make the same mistake yesterday. In the not so distant past, nothing like a crisp and crunchy sunny day like today to get itchy feet and go off slinking on coffee crawls. That tendency has had to be rather more restrained since losing our entitlement to student concessions on bus fares. When it costs $$6.40 rather than $$2.60 in bus fares, pottering off at 2pm to get a bus to the beach after a day at work is no longer justified. Those sorts of prices mean a whole day or not at all.
So, decided that sitting with a coffee and big fat juicy book in the sun in our own garden would be just as good as paying bus fares and time to go some place else. So so wished we'd done that last Wednesday and had no intention of making the same mistake this time
But even better than a cuppa is a snooze in the garden and listening to the various birdses.
So that is exactly what we did today and yesterday. But not just play. Also a bit of proper pottering too. This included lots of pampering for the mango tree. Mainly by removing the wormwood that was growing like a weed around it, making a nice big circle and filling it with the blackest and most beautiful compost. This stuff - like the lupin mulch - is very good at holding moisture. Yesss. Looking after the soil and letting the water and plants take care of themselves is working so so much better than pampering the individual plants
Also made a circle of bricks around the baby orange tree out the back and filled it with this black stuff. It looks so so gorgeous now
Got to thinking that it all started with the woolly bush and fig tree on Tuesday 17 April. Put circles around them and that seemed to be the magical key to unlocking the long dormant gardening bug. The same week ordered the lupin mulch followed soon af ter by the ma's gift of straw and then those big bags of NASAA certified kosher compost.
Got more done in the last 4 weeks than the last 4 years. But funny thing is - all this juicy mulch is attracting all sorts of interesting creatures. The bees are making more of a buzz line for the Lair. There's more birdses - probably come to steal all those seedses that we are planting and even the neighbour hood cats have taken a shine to the layers of straw out the back
It's now become a place that the Izzie wants to lurk in rather than escape from.
Such simple pleasures - sitting under the big orange tree in the dappled sunlight watching the rainbow lorikeets raiding the grevillia and eucalyptus blossoms and the little willy wagtails and honey eaters munching assorted seeds and insects.
Critters love this mulch stuff and where there's insects, there's lizards and frogs and birds and very very happy serpents
Next mission will be clearing the bits of grass around the lime tree and giving it lots of tasty black mulch to munch on. There's still some blossoms and itsie bitsie teenie weenie baby limes and we got to make sure they don't drop off like they have done every other year
Will be off to the nursery next week when we start our two weeks holiday from house elf slavery. Now is the best time of year for planting trees and the Izzie's little green bit of plastic fantastic is getting rather itchy for exercise.
As time spent in the garden is not money spent in the shops, the Iz can afford to indulge in getting some serious trees. Not been near the shops or spent a single silver sickle from Sunday to Wednesday. A very painless and pleasant way of saving indeed. Especially now that we've finally found a cure to an insatiable addiction to basil. All previous atttempts to grow the stuff have failed until now. The snails always got there first but now there's other edibles to interest them.
PS Only 10 things left to find for the Izzie list. Will be posting it next week. Always good to have auspicious beginnings
