Then and now: the courtyard bed.

During the dry midwinter, it our courtyard garden bed seemed to do ok-ish. (The same garden bed back in mid-Autumn was a mud pit.)

Since I photographed Willow with her flowers, she wanted to photograph me with mine. The whispy plant to the right is coriander, the stuff climbing up the fence are peas. The peas went fairly well, although I think they went better by the driveway, where they get full sun. This garden bed gets some morning sun, once the sun clears the house, but the fence blocks it getting afternoon sun. Salad greens and red scarlet runner beans don't like it here. Beetroot, carrot, basil, sunflowers, coriander and parsley seem to like it here, except it floods, and beetroot and carrot don't like that.

Now, in the spring? Willow and I got a carrot each to eat. Willow loved pulling them out of the ground.

I don't know where they came from, but I suspect Willow planted them. (She also planted the parsley which is doing really well, so she's a better gardener than me.) Also, see that bushy looking thing next to Willow as she's pulling up the carrot? That's the coriander you can barely see in the photos from winter- it really took off.

Then, spring. Well, remember the house that they pulled down? The reason I was wandering around after hours was because I was on the prowl for bricks. I carted them all back to the the garden, two by two, until I was thoroughly sick of the job. I used it to build a part of a retaining wall. You can just see it on the left, behind Willow's parsley. It turns out now I need about a third more bricks for the garden :(

The garden bed by the front door. This is where mint and/or chives are supposed to grow. Nothing grew all winter, nothing seems to want to grow this spring. I don't get it. My neighbor has mint in the exact same spot and it's gone crazy. But mine? It keeps dying. Something keeps eating it, despite all the crushed egg shells I dump there.

Behold my massive coriander. It towers over Willow. Do you like my retaining wall?

The other side of the coriander. It's uh... a work in progress.

MissBean's baby beans.

Hanging pot of tomatoes, beans and basil. Yes, they're planted close together... but it's an experiment. Like the Hunger Games or something. Only the best can survive. The pot behind has silverbeet.

Pots hanging from the clotheslines.

Tub to the right of the bird's cage. Malabar spinach, amaranth, cress, beans.

Seedlings. Mostly rainbow beet and corn and beetroot and beans.

By the driveway, under the lemon tree. Beans, tomatoes and perpetual spinach.

Willow must have planted these or something. Mark accidently poisoned them, and I panicked and watered them straight away and hoped they would survive. They didn't.

Then I did some glamourous things with chook poo and other good-for-the-soil stuff, and dug out the plants so I didn't bury them when I raised the soil level.... and then we were in the grip of hellfire hot weather and no rain. The water tanks have been empty for ages. Everything was struggling. We've had plants die- something randomly killed all the beans in one pot, and some beetroots just failed to thrive, and apparently, stevia and mint are delicious and everyone but me should get to eat it.... But whatever. We've put in some beer traps for the slugs, and thickly mulched everything. Then, because there was no grass left in the area we normally have the guinea pigs hutch, we decided to block off the garden best we could, and let them roam free, and find whatever greens they could. First they ate all my basil, then all my parsley. Then they all the bean leaves they could reach, then the long grass we originally hoped they would eat. They knocked over my corn and ate all that. Then all my other plants. We got some good beetroots, and some of the beans were tall enough to escape the guinea pigs.... but they basically stripped the garden.

Since we are looking at moving into our own home really soon, we decided to plant in a new easy care garden. It was something we were going to do anyway when we left, since veggie gardens are rarely attractive. So, stay tuned for the big reveal once the rain stops and we get back out there!

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