Christmas Ponies

Ginny was my pony. Choc was my sisters pony. Today they both died. I'm always scared of getting a phonecall from Australia with bad news. Today was the first time it happened. My poor mother who has been looking after them both had to make the difficult decision to put them down today. Choc was in his late 20's which is a pretty good age to live to for a horse. He had been a champion show horse, won an arabian horse race, bucked his first owner off, and eventually came to my sister when he was in his late teens. Caroline learnt much of her riding on Choc. He took her through pony club winning competitions every time they entered. I don't have a photo of him in Austria, but he was a beautiful liver chestnut with white socks and a blaze down his face. My sister seems to attract a certain personality in animals. Her long time cat companion had a similar personality to Choc, and that is strong headed, strong willed, won't do anything they don't want to, but also amazingly strong creatures that can achieve so much. Yesterday something happened to Choc. My mother went to feed the horses and Choc didn't seem well. She went back this morning before work and he was worse. The vet came. She said he either had a stroke or was bitten by a snake and it was too late to save him.
Ginny was my pony for the last seven odd years. I can't believe it was that long! I loved horses for a long time and had been riding for years. Many times I had bad experiences, and lost a lot of confidence with my first horse as a teenager after a nasty fall. My aunty who was training horses in those years happened to buy Ginny at a market. She was badly trained or at least had learnt many bad habits, and my aunty trained her for the next few years, attending shows (photo above), pony club and dressage events. Mostly they went trail riding. At one point my aunty set me upon Ginny's back. I was petrified! I had seen her antics, most of the time she looked like a hyped up games pony jogging or cantering on the spot with neck arched, always ready to gallop. But to my surpise she was comfortable to ride with a very soft mouth and very responsive. I learnt to trust her, more than I ever trusted any horse. Eventually I came to own her. I brought her closer to where I lived and we began our own relationship of horse and rider without outside interference. I never competed with her, we just rode out on trails or worked in an arena. I fell off her one time. I was riding her bareback in summer and her bay coat was so shiny I just slipped right off! Ginny was a very sensitive pony. My heels never touched her. Slight pressure from my calves or thighs was more than enough for her to understand to step up the pace. Actually most of the time I was telling her to slow down a bit! For all her crazy antics, I would never trust a horse to be more sensible than her either. One road we always had to ride along had a very narrow edge next to a deep ditch. There was just room for us to fit. Huge semi-trailer trucks would drive at 100km per hour speeding past us. Ginny would tense her muscles as they swept past but she never stepped off our path. A truly brave pony that can never be replaced for me. She taught me trust, gave me confidence and I was always and still am so proud to have known her.
Ginny was retired when I left Australia. I had only been riding her very occassionaly anyway, and had every intention of returning to Australia after one year of travel and to continue weekend riding. Choc and Ginny were kept together for longer than six years. They were close companions even if Choc was the boss when Ginny wanted to be. They were living in a field alone for the past few years until today. My mother had to make the decision for Ginny. Her leg was only getting worse, she stood my Choc the whole time and as we know from previous errors, she frets when a horse is taken away from her(she will gallop around a paddock neighing for 2 or 3 days and won't eat). As there was nowhere else for her to go, the decision was made to put her down at the same time. That means she never has to have any trauma again, no leg pain and not panicking at the loss of Choc. My mum said they were both peaceful and relaxed as they died. I know in my heart that it was the right decision, but I can't stop feeling regret at her loss. If horses could talk, would she have chosen this? Certainly her arthritis can be treated until a certain point, but her quality of life would have gone well below average in my mind. She would have developed more pain in her knee making it hard for this active spirit to move, and she would have been utterly alone. If I was in a situation like that, I would have wanted it that way.
Six days until christmas but who feels like celebrating. I've lit two candles today for their spirits and I'm trying not to cry too much because I'm 14 weeks pregnant, but I will never forget those two ponies who are my memories of many happy days.

Doggy days and Zucchini cakes

Crispy and Samson turn five months old today! Haven't they grown? In the first photo they are just four weeks old. Thank you to Matron for her wonderful Dog Blog!






I've been so slack with writing a new post, no excuses. I prefer reading other peoples blogs to writing my own. But now it's really been too long, so here it is.
The dogs are great. They ate/chewed/pulled up all of my sweetcorn plants that I planted along the fenceline of my veggie garden. But I still have three on the inside. I really don't think I'll get any corn from them as I planted them so late. The weather is already much cooler too (we've had the heating on at nights this week). My zuchhini plants have been the heroes of the season. Yesterday I harvested six zucchinis and they were all huge. They're still producing flowers and there are still quite a few small zukes on the plants. I've never grown them before so have been pleasantly suprised at how easy it is. I've made two zuchhini cakes this week which were/are scrumptious! I'll include the recipe at the end of this post.
I've been baking like mad. For a cousins party I made three batches of chocolate chip cookies which covered half the kitchen table.



My tomato plants, which along with the whole veggie garden, were planted late, have so many tomatoes on them but nearly all are green. I hope I get some red ones before it really does get too cold. Even my peppers (capsicums) finally kicked off and each have two to four peppers on. On the other hand, my cooler weather loving plants are also growing well. I picked a small bucket of pod peas and snow peas, the bush beans (I thought they were runner beans) should be ready for picking in two to three weeks, and my carrots need a few more weeks too. I also picked my first cucumber yesterday. It was prickly! I never expected that. One of the problems of not speaking the language very well is not being able to buy exactly what I want. I think next time I'l
l order my seeds online. Brocolli seedlings are doing really well too. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to eat some!
So here's the recipe for Zucchini Cake (very simplified)
Beat together 3 eggs and 250g sugar. Add the following ingredients:
300g grated zucchini
300g self raising flour
100g ground hazelnut
tspn ground cinnamon (to taste)
150 ml oil
50 ml water
Mix them all together and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for about 35 minutes. From experience, if you put more than 300g zucchini in then the cake is very moist.

My new energy saving background

I've been lazy and haven't posted here in a while. I don't have a good reason, but I do have a good reason for posting now. My best friend on the other side of the world sent me an email this morning as follows:

For those worried with energy consumption and all its downsides.
When your screen is white, be it an empty word page, or the Google page,
your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it's black it consumes only 59
watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would
be
achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge
number of
page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year
would be saved.

In a response to this article Google created a black version of its
search
engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white
version,
but with a lower energy consumption, check it out:

www.blackle.com


So I thought I better log in and change my background from beloved green to an even 'greener' black background. Considering the amount of people that view my page, I'm sure it makes no difference in the general scheme of things, but it's my input for the day. Now I'm off to do some searches on blackle.com

Oh, and a quick garden update: I have some green tomatoes, nothing close to ripening yet. My sweet corn is growing steadily even though it's too late in the season, my broccoli has disappeared, lettuce is going great guns (we eat some nearly every day) and a second crop needs to be transplanted into the garden bed, climbing beans and peas are taking ages to grow-still only 10-20 cm high, capsicums have hardly grown at all in two months and I might pull them out to make space for radish, cucumber and especially zuchinni's are fantastic (my home seeded plants are bigger than store bought seedlings and about four weeks younger, although different variety. All in all I'm quite happy with my garden!

Summer rain

Oh, rain, rain, rain. It's summer, but it's been raining for the past six days - except Saturday, my mother in laws birthday, an all day event. I've been out in the garden wearing a thick jumper and raincoat to do some necessary planting of runner beans, but the weather doesn't tempt me out to do the normal potting around the garden. Normally I go out four or five times just to look at things. Not tempted now. I do have a new garden workbench! Yesterday I managed to re-pot some sweetcorn. I didn't really think they would germinate, but all 15 did. I think it's a bit too late in the season anyway, so I'll just call it a learning curve.
Yesterday DH told me that the neighbour said nothing in my veggie garden will grow this year, it's too late. He is a farmer so he would know, right? Well, his mother watches my every gardening move from her kitchen window, so she can report to him that I'm not giving up! I do have some green tomatoes, and surely my lettuce can't fail now. I'm very hopeful for my green beans too. I was planning to start some seeds for the cooler weather - lettuce, radish, beets- but now I'm wondering if we will have a very late summer like last year. The last week hasn't gotten over 22 degrees C, but this weekend is predicted to reach at least 36 degrees. Maybe my peppers will finally kick in, but I fear they are just wasting space. Haven't really grown since I planted them.
So another day spent inside, at least I haven't had to water the garden!

Georgous Basil

My baby Basil's. I'm experiencing many 'Firsts' with my garden. So far they are mostly positive. It's the first time I've grown anything from seed (besides sunflowers when I was a child). Every morning when I wake up I think, oh if I get up now then I can see if any seeds have germinated! This week I've been pleasantly surprised every morning. Sometimes something new has germinated (today it was pod peas), and other times something like my broccoli has grown a huge amount through the night. From all the seeds I planted - broccoli, green beans, peas, carrots, sweetcorn, zucchini, parsley, basil, red capsicum, marigolds and nasturtiums- the red capsicum is taking the longest time to germinate. It and the basil are both inside at night, as it's getting quite cold at night this week. I know I have a bad mix of hot weather and cold weather plants, and I'm sure I will know it even better in a couple of months when some things just don't grow, but now I know for next year!

As for some of the less positive experiences, I experienced one not long after taking the above photo of baby Basil. I must have been inside for 10 minutes. As I walked from one room to another I happened to glance outside and see one of our beloved puppies standing on the table with both her paws digging furiously inside my baby basil pot. She knew she was doing the wrong thing because as soon as I opened the door (probably with wide eyes and my mouth hanging open) she made a quick escape. As I slowly surveyed the scene I realised she had pulled a tomato cutting out of it's pot and was trying to bury it in the basil. Or she had dropped it in there by accident and was trying to dig it out. Either way, the tomato was dead. The new roots were still in the pot with a little nub of stem, the rest was chewed. So now I know the dogs are big enough to climb on the garden table, and to never keep anything precious there! Now what remains of the basil sits on the window sill with the remaining tomato cuttings. Talking about tomatoes, I have three varieties growing in my vegetable garden, Bush tomato, Salad Tomato, Flesh Tomato. That's what the German label says. I'm not sure exactly what they are. So long as they taste good, I don't really care. Tomatoes have moved up to my absolute favorite veggie/fruit. Lebanese cucumbers were my previous fave, and probably still would be, but I haven't seen one since I came to Austria. Oh, and today I got a new job! Woo hoo!! Nothing to do with gardening except now I can buy more plants!! And the school (I'll be teaching English) is in the same town as the garden nursery hehehe.

An Orange Morning

I'm glad I was awake early enough to see this Zucchini flower open.

It closed by 8am, the same time the sun reaches the garden.

My new lettuce haven

Two days ago I made a shade box for my lettuce seedlings. It was actually quite easy. I'll need to make it higher when they get bigger, or maybe I won't need it if the carrots behind grow quickly enough. Hubby was quite impressed! Point for me! I cheated with the lettuce, it's store bought. I have about five packets of various lettuce seeds to plant, but these looked so healthy and were really cheap (and I want lettuce NOW!!). This is the first lettuce I've ever had in any garden I've owned. With all the rain, the slugs have come out on show. I've been ready with the beer traps in hand, but even though I see them in the grass, none have discovered my vegetable garden yet. I thought maybe they find the rough wood to hard to go up. It certainly gives splinters very easily although we made the top smooth. We'll see how long my luck lasts...

And

Crispy,

my non-

helper!

I love living in the country!

Tonights evening walk with the dogs led me to my favourite tree near the forest which produced these results:

I'm going to try a recipe for Cherry and Toasted Pine Nut Frozen Yoghurt. I'll post the results, which may be dubious as I don't have an ice cream machine to make it with.

Random Photos

Photos: A sea of lobelia; Capsicum blossom; our apples are turning red; happily repotted sage; Pots of zucchini, broccoli and sweetcorn.

Finally, the garden is ready!

Completing the fence

My husband adds the finishing touches to his self-made gate.

Soil to plant in at last!

Doggies are very tired after their Helpful input

It's Sunday afternoon. My husband is about to start the BBQ. I've had a very fullfilling weekend in the garden! It was great, I've even been dreaming about vegetable gardens (that's a little sad!). So my vegetable garden is finally complete! We made a no-dig garden with two beds each 1x3 metres. We finished the frames and fence last week. On Saturday we filled the beds with lucerne hay, old cow manure, straw and compost. That was the best method I used at school when I studies horticulture, worked a treat. My hubby made the gate.

Today we topped up the beds, as they had sunk a little. I expect they will settle quite a bit more, especially after todays added worms get to work. I think I should wait a week or so before planting, just to let everything settle down, but I'm too eager to see my plants grow. So I'll plant some of the tomato seedlings that the naughty dogs chewed on a bit. They may die anyway but the leaves are still green, so I'll give it a go. I know my whole veggie patch is really late, but I'll try it anyway. At least next year I'll be ontime and expecting a load of vegetables.

Today some of my green beans sprouted. If all goes well, I should have beans to eat by the end of August. I wish we didn't have such a cold winter here otherwise I could grow something over winter. But last winter we had very little snow and it was still three feet deep at times.

My First Post!!!

Well, I've been reading gardening blogs all day, and have been so inspired I just had to start my own. I'm an Australian that decided to travel to Europe. I fell in love whilst working in Austria, and am now happily married. My husband and I live in a small rural village of about 25 houses. Most families here are farmers. We have a house in the centre of the village (literally) and therefore no farm, but we do have a nice sized garden. For the last 15 years my husband worked hard to maintain a beautiful lawn with a few trees, very much like a park. Now he has me, and my ideas of gardening. Over the last few weeks we have been planning and building a raised vegetable garden. I want to grow (and eat of course!) lots of organic vegetables and herbs. Unfortunately the process of building the beds has taken so long that we are already into summer and I fear many of the plants I want will have to wait until next year.
This will be my first proper vegetable garden, and so I'm sure I have a lot to learn by doing, and by reading. Most of my gardening experience has been flower beds, roses, lavender, and all in a rather different climate from here.

Today I spent time outside making a plan for my new beds. I'm hoping we can complete them by Thursday. I have two beds, each 1 metre x 3 metres. I already have herbs in pots and look forward to some companion planting with the veggies.