politics
Australians will be voting in a Federal election shortly. Both major parties are promising all sorts of unachievable changes, such as more doctors and nurses and aged care staff. These are going to be created out of nowhere! Political magic. One party is promising more workers for rural areas. More magic. We have the lowest unemployment rate since 2014 and anyone still unemployed, especially in Western Australia, has probably made a choice not to work.
Of course, I’d like to hear about importers, manufacturers and consumers held responsible for their use of plastics! This is not a hot topic with either major party, but it should be up there with national security, food security, education, health and housing costs. Instead, both parties promote green washing, fake change to make people feel better.
Tiny changes, such as refusing plastic cutlery and using your own bamboo implements which can be washed and reused, taking your own reusable straws and your own reusable cup are easy and would make a difference. Single use plastic bags are now banned in Western Australia. Look for products in glass containers as glass is infinitely recyclable. Use the paper bags intended for mushrooms if you don’t have fabric vegetable and fruit bags when you’re shopping. Little changes.
eating
It is so much cooler now in Western Australia and we have had very welcome rain, too. My thoughts turned to warming foods. I’ve made vegetable soup and also fritters. These are corn fritters. For a pop of colour and flavour I added finely chopped spring onion. Served with chili dipping sauce.
When I’m making cupcakes, muffins and fritters I use an old fashioned icecream scoop. This is an easy way to regulate the amount of batter used and the contents fall smoothly into the hot pan or paper cup. Easy to wash too and no spillage to clean up afterwards.
planting
The cooler weather means it’s time to plant tulips. In the past I have ordered tulips for my Mother and myself from a famous tulip grower in the east but we were both disappointed with how poorly they performed recently. This year we’ve bought the bulbs from a local shop. This was far more economical as we have to pay a quarantine fee to bring bulbs from the east to Western Australia to prevent the spread of disease.
I’ve planted Ed Rem Darwin tulips. The flowers are described as being intense orange – red with a yellow edge to the petal. A Darwin tulip is a cross between a single, late tulip and an early emperor tulip. I didn’t know that!
I have also planted out the cuttings I took from a pink pelargonia. I struck them in water until threadlike roots appeared on the stems then planted them in soil. They look healthy. The creeping fig and lucky bamboo I propagated are doing well, too. I enjoy creating new plants from cuttings.
COMPOST WEEK is from the 1st -7th May. I don’t make compost having created a few evil smelling piles of horrible mess in the past but I do make weed tea. I have plenty of weeds and like the idea of them adding nutrients to the garden. I use a plastic pot which has inbuilt drainage holes and a little metal bucket. I put the pot in the bucket (it goes about half way down) fill it with weeds then add water to the bucket until it is full. For a few days after I push the now dying weeds down until all the foliage is in the water and leave it for about 10 days. Then I throw the mushy weeds into a big pot which holds my exhausted potting mix and pour the ( slightly stinky) weed tea concentrate into a bucket. I dilute this about 1:3 so I can see the bottom of the bucket. Today I poured it on food plants such as the passion fruit, blueberries and all my pots of herbs and spring onions.
Put weeds into a pot with drainage holes.
Insert the weeds into a bucket filled with water.
After about 10 days remove the weeds and pour the tea into a bigger bucket.
Dilute the tea about 1:3 with water and pour around plants.
The soggy dead weeds I put in the exhausted potting mix will become part of the soil improvement plan.
painting
We celebrate Mother’s Day in Australia on Sunday 8th of May. My Mother really likes and grows many carnations. She takes a slip off any existing plant and grows her own from it. So I have painted a carnation on the front of her Mother’s Day card. Every year we renew her subscription for her favourite gardening magazine as her Mother’s day gift. She is such an avid gardener!
Painted a few other flowers, too. I read blogs where the writers commit to doing a painting a day. I once followed a group doing a painting every day for one hundred days and made the time to complete that task but have never been able to consistently paint every day since. I paint in fits and starts. I mostly flowers.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, is the largest ecosystem in the world. Made up of nearly 3000 individual reefs, it can been seen from space.