Caged blueberries

The time is nearly here, the wait is nearly over. Very soon I will have my first pick of blueberries.

Aren't they a pretty colour before they turn blue? A lovely purple rosy colour.

But I am a little worried that they may be sampled by my feathered friends -  Half-tail the currawong and his/her jaunty partner Snappy, or Laurie and Keats the lorikeets. A blueberry protection device is in order.

A bit of left over wire, two stakes and a bit if red nylon rope and  the device has been constructed. Ugly but hopefully functional?

• Do lorikeets steal your berries?
• What about your currawongs?
• How do you keep the birdies off your fruit?
• And, does anyone out there have advice on pruning blueberries?

I believe that you cut them back 1/3rd after they finish fruiting.

• Has anyone tried to strike new plants from their blueberry prunings?  
• Do you use hard or soft wood?

Winter wrap - '12

Winter here in Sydney has been a season of two halves.  The first part of winter was decidedly wet and the second half quite dry -  a harbinger of the return of the little boy  El Nino? The last part of winter has also been unseasonably warm - I am not complaining....

Here are some of my observations from this winter.

Harvests

• cabbage - mine have been savoy
• cauliflower - these were fabulous
• broccoli
• snow peas
• spring onions
• lemons, lemons, lemons
• limes
• fennel
• rocket
• herbs - rosemary, thyme, oregano, bay and mint towards the late part of winter
• some chillies in the early part of winter
• some sunflowers in the early part of winter

What I have learnt

• lime your brassica patch lest you get mini caulies
• broccoli is less fussy liming-wise than caulies
• snow peas are heaven on a stalk
• my mint needs more winter sun
• never take your parsley for granted - it can lure you into a false sense of supply cause it lives for two years, but when it's time is up, it's up and you are left without even a sprig
• fennel loves lots of water - it will grow well without it and produce lovely bulbs, but when it gets water a plenty, the bulbs are fat and white and juicy
• plant more fennel in succession
• late winter chives are incredibly flavoursome 
• bok choi is pretty and easy
• brassicas planted in winter avoid the cabbage moth when they are babies but get the moth visiting in late winter - but by that time they are growing strongly and are little affected
• this year I was rubbish at having something to pick in late winter - I still have my second crop of brassicas in the ground and only now forming heads!
• prunning your citrus in late summer and again when the growth re-awakens is a good thing to do
• the beans you dried in summer are fantastic for winter meals
• baby rainbow lorikeets have black eyes and beaks
• lemon trees are sacred

Pleasures

• lemons all winter
• the beauty of a cauliflower
• seeing my first blueberries flower and form fruit
• thyme flowers
• the glut of lime flowers and miniture forming fruit
• the birds that visit my garden - rainbow lorikeets and currawongs especially
• Half-tail would be a comedian if s/he was a human

Rainbow Lorikeets

We are so lucky to have lots of birds visiting our garden. When we got here 7 years ago, there was no life in the backyard except loads of grass. Over time we have not only built our veg patch but we have also developed a great native Australian garden full of  local Cooks River plants.  It's been a pleasure to see them grow and develop but it has been an even greater pleasure to see the native birds increase in variety and number as the local plants matured. A list of the birds that visit and fly past is on my Wildlife pages.

The Rainbow Lorikeets have been especially fun additions to the backyard. They are so gregarious in both temperament and feather.  

Last weekend was really wet and the lorikeets used the back verandah as a spot to dry off.  They came in really wet...poor things. This photo is blurry because the where shaking themselves to remove as much water as possible. Then when they finished shaking themselves they began grooming themselves. 



Then they spent the next little while grooming each other. We couldn't stop taking photos of them.

Then last week a family turned up and 'occupied' the bird feeder -  two adults and two babies who, once they could manage to get from the tree into the feeder, sat in the middle and squawked to be fed. Notice how the babies have black eyes and darker beaks and the adults red eyes and red beaks?

We were perplexed as to why they would have big babies at this time of year. 

Homecoming

Plenty of those lovely spiders that live in curled leaves.

Back at home.  Phew!  Survived the retreat without saying or doing anything embarrassing.

After greeting the man, it was into the garden to survey, prod, determine progress, revive. Here are some things I found.  All is well with the universe!

And the big round spider is in its usual little nook on the eucalypt.

The lambertia is flowering (some might know them as 'mountain devils')

Laurie (or is it Keats?) still dropping in.

The radish and the rocket I planted in seed form on Saturday are already up! - this is the radish.

A cucumber is ready to pick

Look what I've got

Dream come true - padron seeds!

Picked

• 2 cucumbers
• a handfull of chillies
• 1 punnet of red cherry tomatoes (unsplit)
• 2 punnets of mixed tomatoes - cherries and berries (split)

Padron seeds! Shame it's not planting season, but padron are no longer unattainable. I am liking this blogging caper! Thanks to L from 500m2 in Sydney and  her referral to the Italian Gardener. Now I can dream of next spring, look at my packet of seeds and know that  piles of hot pardon with their little green skins all blistered, scattered with a little sea salt and accompanied by a glass of fino is not that far away.

And I am going finger lime hunting this weekend.

Today's two cucumbers

Today our yard was a baby bird creche.  It seems that Laurie and Keats have two babies.  Both turned up today driving their parents to distraction.  The babies were engaging in adolecent risk-taking behaviour. Instead of staying safely up on the balcony rail away from Harriet (who isnt really a bird catcher and who was hiding from the wet weather and nowhere to be seen) they doodled around on the stairs of the deck and grazed on  the grass without a care. Their parents wildly screetched at them while they were doing this as if to say, "what are you doing down on the ground, you are a bird - the cat will get you!"

Then there was a little tribe of silver eyes that swept thru the blueberry ash....

Chinese spicy eggplant

silvereye - not my photo

Tonight it's Chinese Spicy Eggplant for dinner (see Techno bimbo for recipe). Uses lots of eggplants, garlic, chillies and spring onions!

Laurie and Keats

Laurie and Keats

Picked

• 3 eggplants
• 5 spring onions
• Half a punnet of tomatoes

‘Laurie’ and ‘Keats’ are our names for the pairs of rainbow lorikeets that visit our yard. We think there are at least two different pairs that turn up - a noisy pair that ‘talk’ a lot to each other while eating  and a quiet pair that you hardly notice except when they spook.  And then there is ‘Solo’ a lone bird who sometimes visits.

One of the pairs - I think the noisy pair - has recently turned up with a youngster, who we unimaginatively call ‘Baby’. Baby doesn’t really seem much smaller than his (lets imagine he is a lad) parents – you cant notice a big difference in his feather colouring either but his beak is a little browner.  It's how baby behaves that sets him apart.

He is clumsy! This includes him mucking about in the small eucalypt hanging upside down, sitting on small branches that bend or don’t take his weight etc. Then there is his flappy flying and an inability to land on the balcony rail. It takes him several goes. 

He also has a penchant for sitting inside the seed bowl - his parents politely sit on the side of the bowl 'tutting' I expect! Baby also doesn’t really eat seed yet - he just picks the seed or the husks up and fiddles with it while sitting in the bowl. Then there is his pestering for crop feeding.  I guess they are trying hard to wean him thus the visit to our seed?  But he insists in sitting up close to parents and pecking at their beaks for a feed.

I have recently been told that they probably shouldn’t be eating sunflower seeds and if we are going to put food out we should put out food suitable for nectar eaters (a special mix which I will look into) or fruit, which when I put out they never eat!