Sep. 28, 2006 - Our garden patch

Sep. 28, 2006 - Our garden patch


We are starting our garden unit.

So far we have mostly done lots of reading.

The boys have become fascinated with bees. We enjoyed reading about them in “The Wonderland of Nature” by Nuri Mass. The boys sketched and labeled diagrams of bees in their nature diaries. Lachlan’s was purple and yellow. Toby painted a duck and a chicken on two tubs and these are against the wall of the new rooms full of mushroom compost. We have planted bush tomatoes in them. Did you know you can re-plant the root end of your spring onions? We have ours planted in these tubs in front of the tomato bushes. The boys have also designed and built with Clive a bean/sunflower house. We are hoping for great results in this. They are so looking forward to sleeping out in their house. Maybe some holy water might help the seeds they planted to sprout. Next to the sunflower house, where the trampoline used to be we have made a mini potager.

Hannah very carefully put in the bricks.(she thinks all these new gardens smack of “homely clutter”; a thing her 15yo sensibility can’t abide, but she is courageously entering in to the spirit of things!!).

We have so far planted in it cucumber (to grow up the veranda post!), more bush tomatoes, statice(next to the tomatoes to confuse the pests), dragon’s tongue bean(bush beans of a purple variety…we loved the name!), columbine(a new one for us, but they sounded as if they were meant for a potager, hollyhock(because they are great flowers to make fairy people with amongst other things!), and some lettuce. We are still thinking what to plant in the shady half. With our heat in summer I still think some things could grow there even if not as well as if they received their usual allotment of sun… we will experiment. We will add pictures as our garden develops. Normally our garden is dormant over summer because it gets so hot . We are all wanting this family effort to work out. Especially as Grandma will be here for Christmas! Finally our pigeon is laying a second lot of eggs. Great place to choose birds! Now we definitely won’t be finishing the verandah roof for a while. Ah well everything is growing and blooming in the Cromb garden at the moment, even Mary has to cope with a zealous shawl of nasturtiums. It’s true what they say isn’t it, to be close to nature is to be close to God.