Rainbows in our Backyard!

This morning after all the work, I fixed up the nozzle and watered the garden.  And we were so excited to make double rainbows with the fine mist. My boy was having so much fun.

Before all the fun, we planted some watermelon seeds.

And then some native daisy seeds.

I caught a snail and we studied it.

I spotted a spider web on the pomegranate tree and asked my boy to spray the web with water so we could see the fine water droplets.

Four stringless pioneer bean plants have emerged.

Harvested a big basket of pak choy.

And a basketful of spinach too. (Picture could not be rotated not sure why)

And a big basket of gai choy for soup again!!! Yummy!

Yesterday we had homeschool out on the front patio table as the weather was superb.

And we harvested arum lilies and dutch iris bronze perfection plus a few plum tree twigs in our tall vase.

Bird Watching & Flowers

Recently, my son and I have gone more into bird-feeding and bird-watching. We have scattered some seeds around the grevillea tree (back garden out of the kitchen window) and also under the plum tree (front garden out of my son's window)

So far we have attracted two spotted-neck pigeons which come regularly.

And two non-native mynahs. Here is a picture of all four under the grevillea tree feeding.

One of the mynahs decided to take shelter on my neighbour's toilet window when rain poured.

Then yesterday we had two honeyeaters feeding on the grevillea flowers.  I only managed to take a rough shot of one as the other decided to fly off.  They are fast-moving birds.

I have many flowers in bloom now but I want to highlight a few here :

This is my pyrethrum daisies in a rough terracotta pot.  I bought the seeds from Diggers' Club. They did not flower last year but this spring they have rejuvenated and are putting on flower buds. Fortunately I was patient enough not to throw it out.

I harvested my first proper artichoke green globe flower  for salad last Saturday.  Not bad testing especially the heart. I ate it with whipped mayonaise and white balsamic vinegar.

 This is a picture of my edible Chrysanthemum (Tung O) plant. It survived winter very well and growing taller. It also started to form flower buds but I had to remove them in case flowering affect the leaves.  The leaves are what I harvest for soup (esp in steamboat/hot pots) or miso soups.

Some of the leaves have a funny curvy track on them.  I reckon it is some leaf miner?? Not a big problem as I removed most of the affected leaves.

 My two 'rescued' Tomato Silvery Fir are getting stronger and are having flowers.

Here is an inedible flower.  My first few Dutch Irs Bronze Perfection from Tesselaar have bloomed. Pretty things!

Preliminary Work for a New Lawn

Sunday was a sunny day. We sprayed the lawn with Roundup. I wished I did not have use that and I hope the earthworms in the soil would not be affected as I had read that they would not. I had wanted to spray with a pine-derived organic herbicide called Bio-weed but they come in 15L drums, too much for this project.

This little stretch in front of our garage nex to the car porch will be worked on as soon as we can lay our hands on it. I dislike these bushes and they are getting unsightly with all the little plantlets they are producing.

I managed to divide up all the iries and have them in these pots. I intend to see how pretty they are and what shade of purple they are. Then from there I will assess their final planting spot in my garden.

My Poor Grape Vine!

My third? fourth? harvest of sweet potatoes. I was almost to tears when I found out my dog, Marco, has 'chopped' off my grape vine (carolina black rose)! It was growing so well! I was angry with my dog for a whole day! I hope by trimming off the rough ends, it will survive and resprout. It was an extremely 'hard prune'. Fellow blogger Scarecrow and another gardener on the forum gave me some hope that it could survive. I have since fenced it with chicken wire and mulched it with bark chips.

The pot of daffodils which did not flower last season finally resprouted! I left the whole pot in the garage, covered with a plastic bag eversince the leaves died down completely. A few mornings ago, I took the pot out and yippee! A daffodil shoot...looks like the complete dying down really regenerated new bulbs as books stated.

I bought and planted some daffodil bulbs under the plum tree (right outside Samuel's bedroom). The ground has turned soft enough to dig eversince we mulched the plum tree canopy heavily.

This tuft of iris was given in a pot by Fina, a life group friend. I have planted it in front of the blue and white daisies at the patch next to the garage.