Master of space, master of heat

I love my Space Master cucumbers - they are actually growing and setting fruit, they are actually thriving.

This is a major miracle considering that most other things in my patch have either expired from heat exhaustion -  weeks of heat over 30c, most over 35c and into the low 40s.

I have 7 Space Masters in. I raised them here in Highfield more or less as soon as we got here. I started 8 off and 7 came up and I decided to plant them all out thinking that some might not make it - they all have.

They have benefited from the demise of others. As the beans expired from the heat or failed to develop becasue their growing tips had been nipped out, I re-distributed the grass-clipping mulch for the beans to the cucumbers. This picture below shows the ravaged bean patch. In front of these three cucumbers was once three rows of borlotti beans - now there is only one left and it is just hanging on.

The bed where three more cucumbers are growing is heavily mulched with bark and leaves from  the eucalyptus. This was the only other free mulch available. I couldn't get more mulch from mowing - it was too hot and a fire risk in itself, so I went out collecting the leaves from fallen limbs and the bark that the trees had shed. It has been very effective. The young chillies and capsicums have benefited as well.

I am looking forward to eating the first  produce from these little survivors. It is possible that I will have a glut  with 7 plants all setting fruit. I think this one is going to be a little wonky - I like wonky fruit.

The growing tips of the cucumbers are laden with flowering buds and look beautifully woolly.

What is your best survivor of all this heat? Got any good cucumber recipes or am I getting ahead of myself? It's good to dream that there will be some produce from this garden!

Where to hang the star?

I have been tinkering with bits of wood and prunings to make festive things.

I have made two wonky bush stars from the hard prunings of the peach trees - this little one above and a bigger one below.

I used my 'skills' (somewhat faded) in lashing, learnt when a wee girl in the Girl Guides. It surprisingly worked -  the muscle memory was still there!

But I know that Brown Owl would not be impressed - when I was a pre-pubescent lass my lashing was much, much neater than this. (Do I have to hand back my badge in Campcraft?)

I also made a wreath from the prunings from the bottle brush (Callistemon) and decorated it with Hakea nuts. It's hanging on the big Red Box tree near the house. I like it there. Don't you love the bark of this tree?

But where to hang the wonky stars? On the fence post, on a tree, on the hat stand or on the house?

Have you started to 'fester' yet? What festive items have you made? Are they vegetable, animal, mineral, textile, preserved? 

Or (more importantly) were you a Girl Guide? What skills did you learn that you still use? (Come on... don't be shy!). How is your reef knot and your round turn and two half-hitches?  Do you tie and tie and light a fire better than your Lad?  Like getting dirty?  Handy with a trenching tool in the dark? Too'wit, too'woo! 

I am contributing this to My Creative Space. See what others have been making this week.

Hakea nuts

Celebrate the wonky, the curly, the pale and the dark

Celebrate the curly

There are many great things about growing your own. I needn't tell you what they are...you already know!

But one of the things I most enjoy is that your produce looks 'real'.  Home grown veggies are like real people, they are unique, not like the 'super models' of the supermarket.

Celebrate the wonky

Do you have pictures of your wonky veg, your curly veg?  The 'imperfect ones' that are never seen in the supermarket? I bet you do. 

Celebrate the pale, the dark and the in-between