Gardening Fun

2 years ago, our backyard looked like this. (Which, trust me, looks SO MUCH better than when we moved in. I really don't think the previous owners knew they had a backyard...)

Lame hail.

Last year, we put in these.

We still have 3 more bosex to put in this year. We got an amazing crop of vegies from them. Carrots, radish, broccoli, cauliflower, runner beans, sugar snap peas, beetroot (which I preserved!!), spring onions and tomatoes from a tomato plant we put in a seperate bit by the house. We will be using 3 boxes for summer/autumn plants and the other 3 for winter/spring. We have planted the 3 we have with Carrot, radish, beetroot, spring onion, broccoli and cauliflower. YUM!!!

We also had this weird bit in front of the carport.

When we were looking at the house, I saw that and told Mr. Foster that I wanted it to be a herb garden. That was the only thing it could be. Right by the front door (see the landing with the gate on the left?) and its gets all day sun (like the backyard), but it was close enough to the house that I could still run out for herbs when it was raining. Plus they look and smell amazing when they come back in Spring!!

So we did...

Keen eyes will notice the unrestrained mint on the top left. Yeah. That was a mistake. However, the sage and rosemary together in the top middle, garlic chives out the far top right, pizza thyme on the bottom left and lemon balm at bottom right were most definitely not. OMG I had never tried or even heard of lemon balm before I put it in. When we were picking herbs, I was picking ones that I actually eat, not just herbs to have. I don't eat parsely or corriander, so they were no gos!. But this lemon balm is just amazing on chicken and roast carrots. 

Keen eyes will notice that the mint got ripped out and placed in an old washing machine tub piece. That took us 6 months to get all the shoots that kept popping up. You will also notice that we replaced the mint spot with more chives. That is because over spring/summer we ate all our other chives bush and had none until Spring again. So 2 chives bushes should keep us going, we hope. They are delicious in a potato salad too.

Problem is, even though I hate parsely, I am a sucker for a dying plant. Even if there is no hope, I feel like I need to plant it to give it a chance, rather than just throw it out. We had a dying parsely plant that we had bought for my mum for Christmas, but decided to give her a lemon balm cutting instead. So it didn't get much love. But I planted it to give it a one-last-shot at like as a living herb. Then this happened. It has done this twice in 9 months. I chopped it down to almost nothing about 12 weeks ago.... Luckily we have friends who love parsely, and take our shopping bags-full clippings. But this bad boy is getting donated to Squish's daycare. They are doing a lot of gardening this spring/summer, so the least I can do is deliver them The Hulk this parsely shrub. It is dome shaped. It is as deep and high as it is wide. We don't look after it. Apparently it just likes our backyard and wants to consume it. If you don't hear from me again, check the parsely's alibi.