There's something about July!

Well, after nearly two years of silence, I've got the urge to blog again. So, I'm baaaaaack!  There must be something about July that makes me want to write up and share what's happening in the garden because I started this blog in July almost 3 years ago.

Quite a lot has happened on the food forest front since the last time I posted. We've eaten cherries, apricots, almonds, nectarines, mulberries, apples, peaches, broccoli, shallots, onions, cabbage, beetroot, mandarins, tomatoes, asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries, potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin, silverbeet and countless other things I can't remember from the garden. The grand-girlies love feeding the chooks, collecting the eggs and exploring the garden.

 I have established the front garden and am hopeful the frogs might move in this Spring and summer. The garden beds are full of chives, strawberries, garlic, asparagus and flowers for the bees. And a broccoli plant that just gives me the best seeds ever! So I keep it going ...

And then last year, for my birthday, my lovely boyfriend (who I've been married to for nearly 30 years!) bought me a proper glasshouse! It arrived in what he described as "a lot of flat-packery" and I set about constructing it. It took about a month but look!

I love it so much, and you can see the mandarins peeping through the foliage of the hedge. I love this too! 

And, despite being away for the whole month of April, we've managed to harvest bucket loads of tomatoes right up until about the end of June, so I got a cupboard full of preserved tomatoes and chutney.

The mandarin hedge is also developing nicely as you can see and we've had so many mandarins this year, I've had a go at mandarin marmalade. Yummy!

We have six chookies these days. Three young ones, two of which are part-Australorp, part-Isa Brown and a white Leghorn, dear old Lexie, the last remaining of my friend's flock who came home with use after shed looked after the others for me last year, Minnie the Moocher the Light Sussex and Big Red the Wellesummer.

I make all our own bread, and we still cook most of our food from scratch. The chicken pate below is from a blogger I followed a couple of years ago but I can't remember who it was. Best pate ever and so easy! Thanks blog-land.

Well, that's it for the update for now. Talk soon.

Greenie x