Tearing Down The Old Aviary
Hello friends,
Down the south side of our house, in the part of the garden you never get to see on the blog, is an outdoor aviary the previous owners of our home constructed to house their many birds. When we first moved into the house we used this section of the garden to host our strawberry and raspberry plants away from local wild bird life who wanted to eat our fruit.
The aviary was beginning to rot back then, and in the time since, the aviary has been falling further and further apart. Now with pieces of rotten wood falling off it, it was time to tear down the aviary this winter. The first job was to rescue the strawberry plants, and then tie back the raspberry canes to protect them while the aviary was being demolished.
Next up was taking off all the facing boards so we could access the chicken wire, so we could tear it off with brute force using hammers and a prying bar. We also removed the doors to get easier access into the aviary while demolition was under way.
The aviary was far more rotten than we expected, especially on the south side, so we had to leave some wire netting in place so that whole walls wouldn't fall down. In the mean time the pile of rotten wood and chicken netting was steadily growing bigger and bigger in our empty vegetable garden beds.
We decided that the best way to go forward was to start taking down the aviary at the most rotten end, which was the south end. It didn't take very long to remove stuff section by section. By the time we got to the northern end of the aviary, the structure became quite unstable. And considering we were due for 100 km/hour gales in the coming days, we made the decision to take an hour off work one day to drop the last of the aviary before it fell down by itself in the wind.
The last wall, which had green corrugated iron covering it, was the last to go, and all it took was a gentle push for it all to collapse. Now all that was left was to finish pulling apart the walls and corrugated iron, and begin hauling it away to the rubbish tip.
Luckily my dad has a car and a trailer, and left his trailer with us so we could fill it up over a weekend. Between that, and also filling up our car with loads of rubbish, we were able to get it all taken away. We also salvaged some good pieces of wood for other projects around the garden.
All that remains now is to clean up the area, do some weeding, and I can begin an exciting project in this space. I can't wait to show you my plans in an upcoming blog post.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Harvesting Calendula, Lavender, Chamomile, and Catnip
Hello friends,
It's a very busy time in the garden with lots of harvesting to do, and last week I finally got around to harvesting chamomile, lavender, calendula, and catnip.
It was a bit of a battle to work around the many honey bees, bumble bees, and native bees who were all doing some harvesting of their own, but I finally got the flowers harvested.
The calendula and chamomile went straight into the dehydrator, but I had to chop the lavender stems back to make the lavender flowers fit inside. My dehydrator now lives in the garage, as the scented air flow sets off my asthma.
Once that was done, it was time to harvest the catnip. I grow our catnip in the berry cage, as it's the only way of getting a harvest for our indoor cats, Missy and Rosie, without the neighbourhood cats destroying it first. The catnip plants however had grown like weeds, and were far too large to fit inside the dehydrator.
After giving the branches a trim, luckily there was enough space inside the glasshouse walkway to fit them all in, so I laid the catnip out flat to dry. I put an old mesh door over the glasshouse during the day to stop the birds eating my tomatoes, but it also handily fends off the neighbourhood cats too.
Now that all the plants are dry, they go into storage for later on in the year. I plan to use the chamomile, calendula, and lavender in soap making once I have the time and space to do it. And the catnip will go into the cat's stash of catnip I keep all year for them.
Do you spoil your fur babies with their very own catnip? I find homegrown catnap is much more potent than store bought.
Have a wonderful day.
Julie-Ann
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Transplanting my Blueberry Plants
Hello friends,
When we moved from Wellington back to Dunedin in October 2019, our new home came with a large outdoor aviary. At first I really wasn't sure what to do with it, but after a couple of weeks I came up with a perfect idea—if birds couldn't get out of the bird cage, then that meant that birds also couldn't get in. It would make a great berry cage to protect all the precious strawberries, raspberries and blueberries I wanted to grow in the garden.
Over the next couple of months I removed all the nesting boxes and bird related stuff, and began turning it into a berry cage by making sure that light and rain could get in. When all that was completed, I then planted a raspberry bush, multiple strawberry plants, and three varieties of blueberries. All these plants have grown very well in the last three years thanks to the previous inhabitants droppings, and it has now come to the point that the blueberries have outgrown the small space that I gave them in the berry cage to live.
So this meant that I had to find somewhere else to grow them in the garden. There is a section of the garden down near the clothes line that already had a gooseberry bush, a giant blackcurrant bush, rhubarb, and a dwarf apricot tree I planted last year. I had began clearing up all the overgrown weeds in that section of the garden last autumn, but after my sinus operation that all came to a halt.
By the time I got back around to tidying that section of the garden this month, the weeds had all returned in a vengeance. Hubby has helped me tackle this area over the last couple of weeks, and last weekend he dug four holes for me, three for the blueberry bushes, and one for the tea plant I had ordered online, but hadn't arrived yet.
As you can see from the above photo, Luna, our neighbour's cat came and helped me with the transplanting. She is a very good girl, who I will miss very much, as her owners have just sold their house, and Luna will soon be living elsewhere. I think she mainly helped because I have catnip growing in the berry cage, and she wanted to partake in its benefits...
It didn't take long to transplant the blueberries, and they have bounced back quite quick, which is great. I have also transplanted some natural dye plants I had growing in the vege garden, into this garden space as well. I am growing St Johns Wort, Woad, Madder, Tormentil, and Lemon Sorrel to hopefully dye with later on in the growing season.
I know that I will now have to net my blueberries from the birds, but I will deal with that closer to the time. I hope that very soon my blueberry bushes will provide me with lots of delicious blueberries to eat and put in smoothies over the coming summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.
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