Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Cockatoos are clever birds.

They perch atop our giant sunflowers and systematically pick out the seeds. Pete managed to chase one away before it had a chance to completely decimate the flower head above.

The smaller sunflowers remain unscathed…

Our mutant butternut trombie, as it’s now known, is sprawling vigorously…

…and already making more fruit than we can eat…

The basil plants are tall and lush…

Our self-sown snake beans are growing at a riotous pace, and just starting to flower. I love their orchid-like blooms…

They’re climbing up their A-frame support and heading for the sky…

The beans have started in earnest…

Speaking of A-frames, we now have three in the garden.

After years of hammering in stakes, we’ve finally figured out a reliable and economical trellis system for the plants to climb on. The frames can be folded up for storage when not in use, and are quite sturdy, even in strong winds.

Each frame is made using four long stakes for the legs, joined with a single screw in pairs. These are connected by horizontal stakes – one at the top and another half a metre (18″) from the bottom on either side. For rigidity, the sides are cross-braced with strong string under tension. Wire mesh is attached to provide a growing surface for the plants.

As you can see, the string is tied diagonally from the points where the horizontals are connected – we use strong nylon string which won’t rot (leftover from our kiteflying days)..

The string is basically just looped and tied around the wood to tension the frame and keep its shape…

The larger frame has cross bars and string bracing on both sides, but the smaller ones just have the bars and string on the front side…

I’m a rubbish artist, but I tried drawing a sketch nonetheless…

Our larger frame (made from merbau decking, cut lengthwise in half) is straddling two beds, with snake beans growing up one side, and regular (non-mutant) tromboncinos just starting on the other…

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And an update on the chooks…

We lost Rosemary just before Christmas. She really was a poor old chook – still eating and walking around, but too old and tired to fly up to the roost at night. She was the youngest of our first flock of six, so it wasn’t surprising that she was the last to go, and she died very peacefully one day, lying down in the dirt.  The day after she died, it was a scorching hot 36C (97F), and I couldn’t help but feel relieved for her.

The other five girls are all doing very well. Amber, Mrs Gronkle, Billie and Lorraine are laying, with little Esme yet to start. The Lohmann Browns don’t seem to lay as intensely as the ISA Browns did, which is a good thing – the ISAs laid almost daily, which I’m sure wasn’t great for their longevity. The Lohmanns have lovely temperaments, and the flock seems quite harmonious.

And whilst we’ve lost Rosemary, we now have (Not Quite) Lorraine, who is every bit as mad! She spends her time trying to escape from the dome kamikaze-style, or flying up to the roost to peer eye to eye at us whenever we approach. She’s very friendly though, and doesn’t mind being handled…

If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, I hope your gardens are all going well (and if you’re up north, I’ll keep taking photos for you until your turn comes).  As I mentioned a while back, our garden is mostly self-sown this year, but it’s certainly keeping us well fed!

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On my recent visit to Turkuaz Motif, I picked up some Turkish ceramic tiles to experiment with. They were just $8 each on special, and I thought that they’d make wonderful trivets to replace our worn and grotty bamboo ones…

I stopped in at Clark Rubber on the way home and bought a sheet of 3mm thick self-adhesive neoprene. The backs of the tiles are unfinished, so I gave them a quick wipe with a wet cloth to remove any loose particles (to improve adhesion)…

Five neoprene feet were stuck onto each tile (as far as DIY projects go, this one was ridiculously easy)…

As the pattern on this particular tile is centered, it can be used on its own, or the set can be tessellated in a variety of ways…

. . . . .

On our back deck, we have blue cushions and lights…

I bought four asymmetrical Turkish tiles to use as a trivet.  The blue is an almost perfect match, and they can be laid out with a central floral motif…

…or in a cross arrangement…

I’m very chuffed with how well they all turned out! If you have access to attractive tiles and a little bit of time, these would make fabulous Christmas gifts!

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We have new chickens!

As we’d planned, once Bertie died and we were left with just three, we added five hens to the flock. I’ll be blogging more on them later – at the moment, the new girls are still hiding in the roost and refusing to come down, so there hasn’t been much of a chance to photograph them!

Today though, I’d like to give a completely unsolicited plug to City Chicks.

We’re passionate about our chooks, so it was a great joy to be able to deal with a company that cares deeply for their birds. John Huntington and his wife Wendy own and run the Sydney franchise of City Chicks and, after a recommendation from our friends Christina and Steve (the Vet), we called them on Tuesday to order our new hens.

I was immediately encouraged when Pete had a ten minute conversation with Wendy on the phone – she wanted to know whether we’d had chickens before, what our set-up was, and she checked with John to see if he thought we were doing the right thing introducing five new hens into an existing flock of three. This wasn’t a company that was going to sell us chickens as a commodity – we could tell straight away that the welfare of their birds was important to them.

The following day, John arrived with our five new girls. They were in immaculate condition – not beak trimmed, although the sharpness of their beaks had been worn down from a pecking block they’d been nibbling at. John is the nicest man and a wonderful source of knowledge on all things chicken-related. He stayed and chatted with us for nearly an hour – I think he might secretly have been waiting for us to put the chooks into the dome so that he knew they were settled in properly before he left.

City Chicks offers a complete service – food, feeders, coops and anything else you need for backyard chooks. They offer a wide range of breeds (we stuck with hybrids), as well as a rental service so that folks can try out chickens in their backyard before making the commitment of purchasing their own.

They also offer a backyard chicken retirement service. As many of you will remember, I was extremely sceptical about this when I first heard about it, but you know what? Now that I’ve met John, and grilled him extensively about how it works, I completely believe him. When this new batch of girls stop laying, I’m confident that we’ll be able to retire them to a comfortable rural life in Queensland.

This is how it works – City Chicks charges $20 to take away your old chooks (if you get new hens at the same time, they take $10 off as a “trade-in”). That covers feed and the cost of freighting the birds to Queensland where they’re released onto a five acre enclosure. They’re provided with shelter and allowed to free range.  There is a cap on the maximum number of birds they’ll take for retirement (which tends to balance out as new retirees take the place of ones which die from natural causes) and, because of the size of the property, there’s enough room for the chickens not to have to fight all the time.

The Lohmann Brown chooks that we bought from City Chicks were $25 each, plus an extra $45 for delivery.  That isn’t the cheapest price for layer hens, but we think it was well worth the extra cost to deal with a company who provides fabulous service and takes such loving care of their chickens. If you’re in Sydney and interested in having backyard chooks, John and Wendy’s contact details are on the business card below. City Chicks also has interstate branches which can be reached through their website.

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