Food and Health

My good friend Annemarie sent me a picture this morning. It's too good to keep for myself:

I checked out their website, but could not easily spot this picture on it, check it out yourself if you like. This statement is probably not true at face value, as the importance of food gets more and more recognised. So I would replace the word 'no' with  'not very much'. But pointing out the lack of interaction between food and health industry is a very valid point which needs to be raised.

Finally the rainy season has started in Perth. We got a wooping 54mm on 28 April!  It poured down, a welcome breathing space for plants and soil biodiversity. I noticed that due to the humidity in the garden the sound levels especially at night time have risen significantly, lots of crickets and frogs. A real pleasure to watch and listen.

Despite a broken foot I have prepared pots for planting and sowed lettuces and herbs.  I pulled out huge stalks of sun flowers and will get the garden bed ready for beans. I also pruned some bougainvilleas and will have another go at propagating them, as the last attempt was unsuccessful. I noticed small roots starting already to grow out of some stems close to a leave. This season might be better.

Getting my hands dirty, turning the compost, emptying the worm farm and preparing the garden beds feels go good and right. I can't wait to go out in my garden again.

My herb garden

In the past years I had herbs growing next to the grape wine in front of a fence in poor soil. I grew majoran, thyme, mince and parsley. Alas, the plants did not survive and it was time to find a place for my new herb garden. I new it was the right time when I heard about the University of Western Australia having another plant sale on the 30 November. I came home with some lemon and anise basil, black cummin, spearmint, dill, Vietnamese mint and a plant called mushroom plant, I never heard of before.

The right spot was quickly found just outside the back door and close to the water tank in full sun most of the day with a bit of shade in teh arvo from a wattle tree. I removed the grass cover and weeds and gadded compost in the planting spots. Before I set the herbs I laid eight bricks flat to make a small garden path for easiert access. I split some of the plants in half with the aim to increase their survival rate. the other halves I put into one of the garden beds where I had already seeded lots of parsley and coriander a few weeks ago with healthy plants developing.

I am pleased with my new herb garden. I also included a parsley plant which I transplanted from another spot. The patch is flanked by a pot of mince and a pot of coriander. There is ample room for more herbs and yesterday a new gardening friend gave me some majoran and thyme that I will add to the patch. He also has promised me a blood orange tree that I will be picking up in a few days. Although it's the wrong time to tranplant trees, I am hopeful and will give it a shot. More about this another day.

Not sure what this iris is called?!