Upcycling an old chest of draws into a garden feature

After a cold morning spent drinking coffee and googling garden upcycling  ideas on my phone, I decided to use an old chest of draws from the 'to burn' pile as a useful garden feature. My daughter and I dragged it around to where we wanted it, lined the draws with builders plastic (also reclaimed), filled them with chook compost and potting mix and planted some Johnny Jump Ups in them. We also sprinkled around some seeds for Love in the Mist (Nigella), calendula (pot marigold) and marigolds to add some more colour to the mix.

We also planted out some old terracotta pots with flower seedlings and seeds and left them lying artfully around. I must say the entire experience was very satisfying.

Until recently I have not been a flowers person; I prefer to grow food and herbs, but lately I find myself drawn to colour and flowers in the garden. Maybe I'm getting old.

I can imagine this feature spilling over with green, purple and yellow in a month or so, can you?

Happy late Yule to all

Happy Yule to all

We were about two weeks late for Yule this year but when we did get to it we had a lot of fun.

Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice; the shortest day of the year which falls on the 21st/22nd of June here in the southern hemisphere. It is the time of the long, dark, cold night that reminds us of the suffering our ancestors went through to survive this time of year, when food is scarce and it seems that the warm days of spring may never come. To answer these feelings we have a feast (showing faith that we will be able to grow more food) and light a fire as a symbol that the sun will return and grows stronger from this time onwards to Litha (summer solstice).

We celebrate Yule by thanking the elements for another year of abundance, telling stories and lighting a candle each to symbolise the rebirth of the Sun. We also have a bonfire and swap handmade presents. This year I got a beautiful crochet poncho. In past years we have decorated an evergreen tree with solar symbols and decorated the circle with branches, but as there are only us old pagans left we toned it down to the essentials.
One element that is always present though is the gluhwein (mulled wine). It warms the blood and makes the long night speed by.

Getting everything ready for the ritual (making a list, checking it twice)

The master bonfire maker.

The apprentice

Our altar, ready to go as the darkness fell. Presents, candles and gluhwein (mulled, spiced wine)

The glorious bonfire, giving us warmth and light.

The candles burned down as the night went on, feasting and talking. They made frozen wax waterfalls.

The bonfire burned down to ashes too, but still kept us warm.

My gorgeous poncho

It makes much more sense to me to hold this celebration at midwinter rather than in December; the symbols all make sense now.
Have a happy Yule everyone.

Some more unusual vegetable beds made from old pallets

Yes...I did it again; I saw some old junk laying around and thought "That would make a really good garden bed"

This time it was an old pallet. My partner installs stand alone solar systems so he occasionally brings home a pallet that has been used to transport panels or batteries. They are usually used as fire starters (being made of pine they burn fast and hot).

I had cleaned out the trailer bed ready to be planted with more green pick for salads and stir fries, and was thinking I need more space for lettuce and baby spinach when I wandered past the 'to burn' pile and saw the pallet.

I propped it up with a stack of old tyres to be level with the trailer bed.

Lined the bottom and up the sides with black plastic from the 'take to the dump please' pile and stapled  it in place. 

Filed the lot up with soil, potting mix and compost and poked a lot of holes in the bottom. There it is; complete with bird cage covers to keep the chooks out of the lettuce.

The trailer bed is all cleared and ready for planting too.

The pallet bed is very shallow (about 10 cm) so it will be hard to grow anything but lettuce or baby spinach in it, but if the soil is rich enough and it doesn't dry out it should do the job.

Being made out of pine the whole thing will only last a year or two, but it re-uses something from my rubbish pile and makes a useful short term bed so I'm happy.

Using pallets for gardens isn't really unknown; I found these examples on the internet.

I guess I will be using more of the old pallets that make it home from now on.

What do you upcycle at your place?

From fleece to toe bag and all stops in between - the journey so far

A colourful pile of my home spun wool.

While I'm knitting the tote bag, I thought I would link all the posts in this series so far to one page. That way you can read it all together.

Just click the links below to read the entire story.

Part One 

Part two

Part three

Part four

From fleece to tote bag and all stops in between - part four

Now I have some dyed skeins of homespun wool to knit with, its time to cast on and start.

When I have an order for bags I ask the client some questions;
What bag shape?
What colours?
What stitch pattern?

In this case, my client has chosen the petite bag, in black and rainbow colours with the Asthore stitch pattern. So I dug out my bag of reclaimed embroidery wool and saved scraps of pure wool and spliced them together using the Russian join to make two rainbow balls of wool.

My reclaimed scrap wool pile.

Joined together to make...

Huge balls of rainbow wool

Now I have everything I need; black homespun, reclaimed rainbow, circular needles and coffee. Away we go.

My favourite bag pattern of the moment is the petite felted bag.

I begin by casting on eight stitches (four on each needle) using a 'figure 8 cast on'

I then knit the base of my bag by increasing stitches every second row., as indicated by the pattern.
Once the base is big enough I choose a slip stitch pattern and start knitting.
So far I have used these slip stitch patterns to make bags;
Asthore
Dog's tooth cross
Yin Yang
Fretted mosaic

The base of my bag is started. Eight stitches on each side have been increased to twelve.

The entire base is done; a total of 154 stitches. I am using the Asthore pattern so I needed to add a few stitches to make the number a multiple of 16 (Asthore is a 16 stitch pattern).

And the colour knitting begins. 

The pattern is beginning to emerge.

This is the quickest part of making felted bags, I can take my knitting anywhere and fill in free moments and I can settle down to a quiet evening watching a movie while I knit too.

Next step; felting. Stay tuned.

Note; I do apologise for my photography, most of the photos are taken in the evening with my phone so they don't show true colour and are not well focused.

Making kumquat marmalade

Many years ago..(in fact the amount of years qualifies for a 'Once upon a time.." beginning), my mother gave me a kumquat tree in a pot (for my 21st birthday). This little tree was lovingly tended and repotted as needed for a few years but never bore fruit. When we moved to another state I couldn't take the tree with me so I left it at my in-laws house. My father-in-law (Henceforth known as Dad) planted it out in his yard and the little tree grew like a weed. It began to bear fruit in the second year in the ground and Dad dutifully picked the fruit and either gave it away or gave it to us when we were visiting as he didn't like the taste of them.

So for years I have been collecting about 15kg of Kumquats once a year and making marmalade. We are not huge jam eaters in my house, so the little pots of distilled sunlight mostly became gifts and sale items on my market stalls.

I thought I would share my simple recipe with you;

Beautiful little orbs

My first step is to wash and chop the fruit; I take as many seeds as I see out as I go, but alway miss a few.

Chopped and deseeded

 Next I weigh the fruit and add two litres of water to every two kilos of fruit. I use a stainless steel boiler to make my jam as it has high sides and a heavy bottom.

Weighing the chopped fruit.

 The fruit and water mixture is boiled for about 20 minutes, or until the fruit is soft. At this stage I scoop any seeds out as they rise to the top of the water.

Fruit in the boiler with water.

The fruit all cooked and smelling lovely.

 When the fruit is cooked I gradually stir in one kilo of sugar to every kilo of fruit (weighed before cooking). You have to be careful to dissolve the sugar fully at this stage, so lots of stirring is required.

Jam boiling away, 

The jam needs to simmer away for a while to get it to set. The time required varies, but you can check for set by periodically dripping some jam onto a cold saucer and looking for gelling. When the jam is ready to set the drip will not run when the plate is tilted and it gets crinkles on the top when poked at.

The jam should be bottled into sterilised jars (I wash the jars then 'cook' them in the oven for 15 minutes) while it is still hot. Use jars with metal lids and put the lids on straight away to encourage a good seal.

Lots of little jars of sunlight, ready to be stored, sold or given away.

This year I also made some Kumquat liqueur by popping the chopped fruit into bottles of vodka. These bottles will be squirreled away until 2016 when they will be shared with reverence at a Yule party (or similar).

Some Kumquat liqueur aging slowly. 

This marmalade is a little runny (which would improve if I added a lemon to the mix) but has a wonderful sweet/tart taste that goes well with toast, on roasting pork or chicken and can be used as a topping for cakes and slices.

Local insects and animals - the brown quail

You can only see her head in this photo; we had to hold her securely as she really wanted to get away from the camera.

Yesterday we had a visitor in an old chook pen which has been empty for some time. My daughter heard a commotion, went to check the pens and found a little bird. The little quail was fluttering about trying to escape from the pen so my daughter caught her and bought her up to the house to be checked over (we weren't sure how long she was in the pen for). Thankfully she was Ok, but the encounter reminded me to check the empty pens regularly.

The brown quail is an unassuming bird at first glance; dull brownish plumage and a tendency to freeze when they hear anything make them hard to spot, but up close they reveal brilliant maroon eyes and soft satiny feathers. Their tiny little feet and legs remind me of chickens, but much more delicate.

They have an omnivorous diet of seeds, green shoots and insects, much like a miniature chook really. Brown quail live in social groups called coveys, breeding between December and January in tiny nests on the ground. Both sexes take turns incubating the eggs and the young leave the nest as soon as they hatch. The babies look like tiny brownish cotton balls with match stick legs, huddled under their mother or father for protection and warmth.

The babies are so beautiful.

The marking of brown quail are apparently very diverse.

I am glad we have a population of these delightful little birds in our backyard and I will be sure to provide plenty of low stubble and insect habitat for them to use.