Shade House

Summer has struck with a vengeance. 42C are forecast today.
Even when the plants receive enough water (not always the case around here), the sun can burn some of the bigger-leaved plants.

These shade houses are easy and quick to put up. They are also very quick to dismantle, and can therefore be as temporary or permanent as you want them to be.

Take a length of light-weight rebar, push one end into the ground, then form a tunnel and push the other end into the ground. Put some shade cloth over the structure. Tada!

Honey ice-cream

First ice-cream of the season. Honey.

 Only 3 ingredients. Cream, eggs, honey.

Just perfect for this warmer weather. :)

The window sill is getting crowded

Spring is always crazy. The first seedlings have moved from the propagation boxes to the window sill.
Some have already had to move further. On to the decking outside, but where they are still protected from frost.

How is your spring planting/sowing going? Isn't it a marvellous time of the year?!
Crazy busy but wonderful.

First seedlings!

The propagation boxes seem to work well. The first seedlings emerged after only a few days.

They are now basking in the sunshine on the window sill - making room for the next seeds in the box.

The weather is glorious at the moment. Frosty mornings, then warm sunshine during the day. :) The spring air is filled with hope and expectations.

Propagation box

It's still winter, but now is the time to start the first seeds. I am keen to have some biggish seedlings when it is finally time to start planting. Chillis, capsicums and eggplants seem to need longer to grow to a decent size. What to do?

Make your own propagation box!

Take some styrofoam boxes.

Add heat mats (in this case they are actually reptile mats).

Put your trays on that. (The seedling punnets will go in there.)

Cover with an old window.

Get yourself a thermometer with a probe, so that you can measure the temperature of the tray.

Start sowing! :)

As you may be able to see in the picture, the temperature inside the box climbed to 24C within a few minutes.

Frosty mornings

...and this succulent is still looking good!

Hope all is well with everyone! Life is good here. :)

Striped Turkish Monastery

Yes. There is such a thing.
And it is a tomato!

Here it is.

Very pretty, don't you think? Tasty, too.

We are picking the odd tomato here and there. The weather was a bit extreme for the garden (stinking hot, etc....) so now with the milder weather we hope it will recover and finally give us something to harvest. How is your garden doing?

It's snowing!

Just for the record. It's spring.

 And we don't get snow in winter normally either.

 So. This is today's weather.

11.29am and 5.4C on the balcony.

And it is snowing. Madly.

A very short break in the rain

We have been having wonderfully rainy days the last two days. A bit cold, but I don't want to complain. The rain is beautiful. The ground makes squishy noises when you walk about.

The water tanks are overflowing - they've done so for a month or more, after every rain. Here you can see the garden water tank overflowing. The sun had come out for a few minutes, so I quickly went and took a few pictures, before it started raining again.

The white camellia has been flowering for a while. The red ones have fat flower buds on them and should start soon, too.

 The proteas are starting to flower.

Signs of spring?

We have had a few incredibly warm days (10 degrees higher than usual), but now the temperatures are back to normal.

First signs of spring?

Frosty morning

We do have frosty mornings, but usually not as bad as today's.
It was beautiful, though. With the sun making all the tiny icicles glitter and glisten.

No major damage, so I'm happy!

KaleCorianderCabbagesSome other green stuff
Carrots

Bonsai Egg

The nights are getting pretty cold (6C). During the day it is sunny, but the wind can be unpleasant. Day time temperature is around 16-17C.

The chooks can feel the cold, too. And they are moulting. No pictures of the scraggly beasts. Yet.
No wonder the eggs are getting smaller! (They have also slowed down their egg production.)

Wild and wet!

We've had an incredibly wet, windy and wild August so far. In the last two days we have had 80mm of rain, fierce winds, hail, thunder, fog, etc.

Yesterday's view during a hail storm.
Even the balcony wasn't spared. Nice little layer of hail. There was more outside, but I wasn't game to go there.
At the back of the house we have a lake - it's all flooded up to the walls of the house, even the carport has turned into a river. (Not in the picture.)
The dam filled up incredibly in the last 2 days. It's still very windy, wet and cold today.

This morning...

...the whole place glittered in the sun, including this spiderweb.

Dew on the kale

Plus some slugs, but we won't go into that!

It's a glorious, sunny (and very cold) morning here!
Dew everywhere. The sunshine is reflected in millions of dew drops.

Absolutely glorious. Life is good!

So, it's official...

...this is the first heatwave in November in Adelaide.
5 consecutive days of temperatures above 35 C.
And no end in sight.
Well, okay, there is a little break on Monday.

Thursday  Dry. Sunny.                    Max 39
Friday    Dry. Sunny.          Min 23    Max 39
Saturday  Dry. Sunny.          Min 25    Max 39
Sunday    Dry. High cloud.     Min 26    Max 40
Monday    Fine. Mostly sunny.  Min 19    Max 28
Tuesday   Fine. Sunny.         Min 15    Max 30
Wednesday Dry. Sunny.          Min 20    Max 36
Thursday  Dry. Mostly sunny.   Min 25    Max 38


The last time it was that hot in Adelaide in November
was (4 days in a row above 35 degrees) in 1894.

So, no vegetables in the ground yet.
Okay, it's not the end of the world. But. BUT.

Ps.: This post is for Maggie who wondered why
no bloggers had written about the heat yet.
There you are! :)

Another Ps.: I want spring! This heatwave is not welcome!
It's for summer, if it must!

Surely not!!

Just when we thought the coming week was going to be bad, the forecast changed to the worse:

Monday        Dry. Sunny.   Min 24    Max 37
Tuesday       Dry. Sunny.   Min 24    Max 37
Wednesday     Dry. Sunny.   Min 25    Max 39
Thursday      Dry. Sunny.   Min 25    Max 39
Friday        Dry. Sunny.   Min 20    Max 36
Saturday      Dry. Sunny.   Min 16    Max 34
Sunday        Dry. Sunny.   Min 18    Max 29

Hey, it's spring!! This is something we may experience in February. But not now.

None of the seedlings are planted. They are in pots in the shade. Let's hope we will get some cooler weather again soon, so that I can finally plant out all my veggies. :)

What?!

The forecast for next week. This can't be true! Can it? It's spring, for goodness sake! I don't like it.

Saturday      Fine. Sunny.            Min 15    Max 33
Sunday        Fine. Mostly sunny.     Min 20    Max 33
Monday        Dry. Mostly sunny.      Min 21    Max 35
Tuesday       Dry. Mostly sunny.      Min 21    Max 37
Wednesday     Dry. Mostly sunny.      Min 22    Max 37
Thursday      Dry. Mostly sunny.      Min 22    Max 37

The dam...

... is filling up.The heavy rainfall in the last few days has really saturated the ground. Despite the wild and woolly weather, there was not a complaint to be heard. Everybody is just so grateful for all this rain.

We only have one tank left that is not overflowing. It is more than 2/3 full and we are happy. :)

Overflow!

We have two overflowing tanks! Oh, what joy! The fire tank is full and the overflow is going into the dam (which is rapidly filling up, too). The house tank is overflowing, but not yet into the garden water tank, as it's too wet, wild & woolly out there to rig that up.

Rain gauge readings:
54mm on Sunday morning
60mm this morning

The sheep are wet, woolly monsters. Please do not watch this little clip if you are getting bored of rain and sheep. :)
Ps.: However, there is at least something happening in this clip.