Signs of Spring 2024
Hello friends,
Spring is just around the corner, and my garden is showing many signs of spring. I'd thought I'd share with you some photos I've taken recently.
My miniature Irises have already put on a show with their beautiful, dainty flowers.
Crocuses have also been flowering.
As are a lot of my daffodil varieties.
And finally, my deciduous shrubs and trees have started breaking their buds, and there's also blossom appearing on our fruit trees.
Spring is less than a week away, and I'm so excited for warmer and longer days. There's lots to do in the garden now, so it's time to get on with all the things, especially seed sowing.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Backyard Plant Removals and Planting Spring Bulbs
Hello friends,
While the garden consultant was designing a plan for our backyard, it was time to start removing plants, and taking all the resulting green waste to the local rubbish tip.
The first plants to go were the rhododendrons, camellia, and the hydrangea taking up space in the back yard. I don't like rhododendons at all, they are poisonous to native bird life who are sugar feeders. As our local area has numerous tui, bell birds, and wax eyes, I wanted all the rhododendrons gone. The camellia in the backyard also got removed because it was squishing my beloved feijoa bushes. A hydrangea was also removed because our home's previous owners planted it in the wrong place.
We were able to remove half the garden shrubs ourselves, but after my shoulder tendonitis flared up from removing shrubs and then digging up their root systems, we ended up getting our local garden contractor (who trims all our hedges) to help remove the remaining shrubs and their green waste.
He also helped us remove an old coal storage concrete bin from our back path, so we had enough space to fit in all the new council rubbish and recycling bins that had just been delivered.
I bought clearance daffodils and tulips from an online store to help fill in the spaces where the rhododendrons and other shrubs had stood. It was late in the season to buy them, so I got them on sale. It didn't take long to plant them into the ground on a warm sunny day.
After all that, the back garden was mostly a blank space, and it was just a matter of waiting for the garden plan to be ready. The garden consultant said it would be done in 2 - 3 weeks, but it ended up taking 6 weeks...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
A Birch Tree, Severe Allergies, and a Maple Tree
Hello friends,
I've always had moderate allergies—when I was tested as a teenager they found I was allergic to dust mites, grasses, and mold. In my early twenties I was treated for my dust mite allergy with allergen immunotherapy, but as I'm allergic to multiple things, I've always had to take antihistamines and allergy sprays daily. But over time my allergies have gotten worse and worse, and over the years my allergen immunotherapy treatment for dust mites wore off.
My sinuses, which are under attack constantly from my allergies, also got worse and worse, and I ended up having sinus infections 3 - 4 times a year. Last year I had sinus surgery to improve drainage, but unfortunately it made my situation worse. I'm still getting sinus infections multiple times a year, and my allergies have gotten worse too.
In September of 2024 I had another complication, when I developed asthma during peak pollen season. I couldn't go outside without needing to wear a mask, and sometimes had to wear it inside the house also. I couldn't catch my breath, was coughing and wheezing, and had to keep taking breaths between talking in sentences. My GP prescribed asthma medication, and got me fast tracked to see an allergist. My allergist checked me over, gave me extra asthma medication, and had me retested for allergies. It turns out that in addition to having allergies to dust mites, grasses, and mold, I now also had a severe allergy to birch.
She advised a 3 year long allergen immunotherapy treatment for birch, grasses, and dust mites (which they can now do in one injection once a month), but it couldn't start until the end of birch season in March 2024. All parts of the birch tree including pollen, seeds, leaves, and stems contain the birch allergen, and can cause allergies and asthma, and unfortunately my symptoms were severe because outside our house on council land was a giant birch tree.
And because of wind patterns, and it being very close to our house, our home and garden was constantly inundated with leaves and branches and pollen and seeds. I couldn't escape the birch allergen at all, and had to dry our washing inside the house (so not to bring the birch allergen inside), and keep all the windows closed permanently. Over spring and summer until allergen immunotherapy therapy treatment could begin, I had to wear a mask both inside and outside the house to keep my symptoms under control. By February I was over it, and I contacted the council about the birch tree, and my allergist sent them proof of my severe allergy. The council agreed to removing the birch tree, but only if I could get consent from all neighbours within a 50 metre radius of the tree.
Over a period of a couple of months I contacted all 23 of my neighbours, and over time I got consent from every neighbour, except one. The problem was the neighbour over our back fence,who refused to sign the consent unless I chopped down the maple tree in our backyard. They said they hated trees, and wanted ours gone. We tried comprising with them, and other neighbours tried talking with them, but they were nothing but rude and horrible to us. No matter what we suggested in terms of compromising, they refused, saying that they were blackmailing us.
After talking with other neighbours we found out that this was a known thing they did, and the neighbours had had problems with them reaching over other their fences to attack their trees and plants if they thought the plant was annoying them. The non-consenting neighbours had even battled with the DCC for years about a council owned tree outside their property, and it mysteriously ended up dying under suspicious circumstances...
I was angry and heart broken. Our stunning Japanese maple tree, Acer palmatum, was one of the reasons why we bought our home. After much convincing, my husband said that I couldn't keep living this way with severe allergies and asthma while the birch tree was still outside our home. He said that while the non-consenting neighbour's condition was that the maple tree would come down before they gave consent, they did not make any other conditions regarding what happened afterward. He said we could replant another maple tree, and as many other trees that we wanted too.
We gave the non-consenting neighbours our agreement that the maple tree would come down, and they handed over the consent. I sent all the consents to the DCC, and they approved the removal of the birch tree. Within weeks, they had organised a contractor, and they came in early May to remove it.
The removal of the birch tree made such a big difference to my health, and my asthma symptoms decreased to a tolerable level. And as a bonus our home now had more light now that the tree wasn't shading our property. Other nearby neighbours were also happy that their homes had more light.
The non-consenting neighbours started hassling us about getting the maple tree removed, even though we told them that we had contacted an arborist, and that the wait would be approximately a month. They didn't believe us, and kept on complaining, even though we showed them proof of the quote from the arborist.
Well even as the non-consenting neighbours were still complaining, the arborist called, and they arrived early. Within hours they had chopped down my beloved maple tree. I'm not ashamed to say this, but I cried and cried. I was inconsolable for about a week, I couldn't even face looking out our windows without crying, let alone go outside into our garden.
In the mean time the non-consenting neighbours discovered something they hadn't thought about, they no longer had any privacy in their backyard. Our home is two storied, along with other neighbours in our street, and they all look out over the non-consenting neighbour's backyard, and lounge and kitchen. They no longer have any privacy at all thanks to multiple neighbours looking out of their windows over the course of a day, and of course they started complaining about that too—which fell on deaf ears because their other neighbours were over their complaining.
Hubby gave me a budget for replacing our maple tree, and then suggested it might be worth redesigning our back garden while we had the chance. Our backyard was a mix of rhododendrons and a mishmash of other random plants and trees that at the least were boring, and at the worst were weeds. After much thinking, I contacted a garden consultant to come over and give me some ideas about what to do with the space. The consultant went away to work on coming up with a plan, and I got to work with removing shrubs and plants we definitely wanted removed...
Over the next wee while, I'll be sharing the garden plan the garden consultant came up with, my tweaks to it, and then the work being done in our back garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Making Lime Syrup With A Glut of Limes
Hello friends,
As it's now winter, it's peak citrus fruit season for our lemon and lime bushes. The lime fruit ripened on the bush first, so we've been using them in various baking and cooking recipes for the last couple of months (wherever citrus is needed), and I've even been giving away limes to anyone who comes to visit us...
But even after doing all that, we still have too many limes sitting on our kitchen window sill and also on the bush, so I searched the internet for ideas for what to do with all the limes.
After searching for a while, I settled on making some simple lime syrup. It uses up a lot of limes, and it means I have homegrown syrup for hot and cold drinks, and also for using in baking recipes.
Simple Lime Syrup
Ingredients
1/2 Cup of Fresh Lime Juice
Zest of Those Limes
1 + 1/2 Cups of Water
1 Cup of Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon of Citric Acid (citric acid makes the lime syrup flavor more intense)
Recipe
(1) Zest limes one by one before you juice them, aiming to have 1/2 a cup of lime juice, plus the zest from them at the end. This step is not exact, depending on how much juice is in the limes. As I had a lot of limes, I just kept juicing them until I had enough juice and zest. It's always easiest to zest the limes first before cutting them in half and zesting them.
(2) To a pot, add 1 + 1/2 cups of water and heat to a simmer, add the sugar and citric acid, and mix until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add in the lime zest and juice, and cover the pot, and simmer for 15 minutes.
(3) Remove the syrup from the heat and allow it cool. When the syrup is cool enough to handle safely, strain the lime syrup to remove the zest and any stray lime pieces. I used a dexam strainer that I got from Moore Wilsons when we lived in Wellington. (The dexam strainer is very useful for many cooking, bottling, juicing, and jam making projects, as the strainer is super fine.)
(4) Collect the lime syrup in a container, and store it in the fridge, where it will last for up to a month.
You can also use this recipe to make a simple syrup with other citrus fruit like lemons and mandarins and oranges. I've found that the lime syrup is great for making a hot citrus drink, similar to making a hot lemon, and you can add honey to it as well. It's quite refreshing and warm on a cold frosty day.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
This Year's Wheat Harvest and New Harvesting Methods
Hello friends,
We grew wheat again in the 2023/2024 season with the hope to grow enough flour to make a loaf of homemade bread. We planted out our wheat seeds back in November 2023, and had a great harvest in February 2024 this year. If you want to learn more about growing wheat at home you can read it in this blog post.
With the wheat harvested, I dried it in readiness for processing. This year I wanted to try some new processing methods, to see if they would be more efficient than last year's methods. The first new method was to try removing the wheat heads from the stalks using a garden chipper/shredder. You can see footage on Youtube of this happening here.
Luckily we had a garden shredder in our garage, so we got to work. It didn't take very long at all to harvest the wheat heads from the stalks. The wheat heads fell into the hopper below, and the stalks were dug back into the garden bed from where they came from. I had hoped that the garden chipper would break open the wheat heads, but unfortunately they were still mostly intact afterward.
The next step was to thresh the wheat. Last year we just bashed the wheat heads with a piece of wood, but it was a lot of work. But I found this video on YouTube recently of someone threshing wheat with a flail.
Eager to try this method out, I bought two broom handles from Mitre 10 (broom handles are much cheaper than dowel), two metal eyes, and a length of rope. Once I got home I sawed off the ends of the two broom handles so that one handle was 1.5 m long, and the other 1 m long. I then tied them together with a length of rope.
Hubby got to work threshing the wheat heads on an old sheet. It turns out that the 1 m length of flail that was hitting the wheat heads was too long, so we cut it down to 75 cm. Another problem was that the wheat heads were flying off in every direction when hit, so we wrapped the wheat heads up into the sheet like a burrito, to keep them all in one place. After a couple of minutes of threshing using this method, it was completed. We separated the bigger pieces of plant material by hand, and then used a large sieve to further remove the medium-sized pieces of plant material.
When we thresh the wheat again next year I think we will alter the flail, and use leather strips to connect the two broom handles. The rope had a tendency to come undone, and the short piece of broom handle doing the threshing would fly off. I would also love to invest in a seed saving screen from Crafty Gatherer NZ, but it's pretty pricey.
After that, all that remained was the wheat berries and the chaff. The next step was winnowing. After watching the videos above, we saw that most people used small fans to separate the wheat from the chaff. Luckily it was now autumn, and most places were selling off fans very cheaply. Hubby took a trip to our local Mitre 10, and purchased a fan at a decent price.
He set up the fan, and got to work winnowing. The videos above suggested working a slow speed for the first pass, to remove dust, and then work your way up to faster speeds to get rid of bigger material. With the help of the fan we got the winnowing done a period of less than five minutes. With a constant breeze, it made the job so much easier.
With the winnowing done, the processing of the wheat was complete. Overall, these new wheat processing methods saved us a lot of time, and it also made the process so much easier. We'll be using this method again next year when we grow our own wheat. In a future blog I will be showing the wheat milling process, and also our recipe for making bread in a bread maker.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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