Updates from around our house and garden

My sister-in-law, Kim, saw my gardening post last week and was so happy I'm finally getting my own garden, she surprised me with money to buy more plants as an early Birthday present. She knows how important it is to get my fruit trees planted before spring brings them out of dormancy.

With some of the money she gave me, I bought an Apple Ballerina Bolero Columnar tree and planted it next to one of my vegetable patches. The sun direction means it won't shade out the growing veges. The tree itself is on a bit of an angle, just the way it was grafted to its root stock. I'm going to plant another apple and a double-grafted nashi on either side of the columnar apple.

I also bought lots of strawberry plants, which I planted in a wave pattern around the base of my citrus trees.

I'm keen to get as many perennial food producing plants into my garden as possible, so I also bought a rhubarb which I planted next to my blueberries. Hopefully it will grow up a bit and hide the pipe behind it. I also bought several bags of compost and sheep pellets to plant with my fruit trees, since my soil is dense clay that is not suitable for fruit trees.

Last week I moved my dwarf nectarines, because I noticed where I had planted them wasn't getting any sunlight. I've now planted them along the same fence line as my peaches, blueberries and cranberry, so that's going to be a busy stretch of garden. I moved them just in time, because they started blossoming this week.

I recently got a free set of drawers from my community Facebook group, so I gave it to J and put his old set in our dining room. His old set has cupboards down the bottom which are not very practical for clothes, but are great for storing my small appliances. That has cleared up space in our pantry, so it's fitting our food a lot better than before. 

Two of our fruit bowls now live on top of the chest of drawers.

Our other fruit basket lives on this sweet little column I was given as a wedding present by an old flatmate. My daughter, L, pretty much lives on fruit, so we have lots of it tucked around the place.

Since it was raining heavily yesterday, I dedicated the day to shifting storage items up to our attic. Our new attic stairs are so great for this. Now our garage/office has more usable space, and doesn't feel quite so cluttered with boxes.

Paul is thinking about bringing the Lego down here from Baby J's room, so the girls can still play with it after J goes to sleep. 

What have you been doing in this rainy weather?