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.