Pushing Spring Along

It's the beginning of May, the mercury has finally risen above 10 degrees (most days), and everyday we get out of the house to take the little one for a walk around the neighbourhood.  It refreshes my spirit to see the buds and blooms of new beginnings on the trees and shrubs.  I feel 'twinkly' inside when I hear the baby birds chirping in the nests high above our heads.  And when I lift my face to the sun and feel her warmth on my skin, I also feel the thick, dry, smothering winter 'coat' that's been covering my mind and blocking my energy, gradually crack and crumble and fall away.  I'm remembering that I'm alive, despite this horrible winter we've just endured.  I'm remembering that there's more to life than extra thick socks, dry skin, grey skies, coldness, darkness, loneliness...

So to celebrate we've been thinking about new life.  Yep!  We're thinking it's about time to have another baby!  And in the meantime we've been planting seeds of new life in our garden.

A couple of weeks ago we planted a bunch of fruit trees - a white mulberry, a black mulberry, a pear, a plum, an almond, an apricot and a quince.

Our tiny plum tree struggling to bloom against the still pretty cold weather.

We're trying out a couple of blackberry bushes at the bottom of our retaining wall.  Not sure how they'll go with the extreme heat in summer and cold in winter.  But ya never know!

We also planted a Judas tree right in front of the kitchen window.  This tree in particular I can't wait to see mature.  In spring it bursts into a magnificent display of magenta flowers which covers the entire tree, trunk and branches.  It's such a beautiful tree!

Evidence of what will, in a couple of years, be a beautiful display of rich magenta blooms.

We also planted a heap of strawberries in our retaining wall along with a few herbs and some small heat-resistant succulent plants.

I really hope we get lots of stawberries.  Yummo!

I don't know the name of this plant but I love it simply because it loves 'the wall' and in the 3 years since we first moved in to this house, it's the only plant that has thrived and thrown seeds all over the wall.

I have no idea what this is called either.

Yummy mint!

I'm not sure if these flowers will survive 'the wall' but for the sake of their pink beauty, they're worth a try.

The annoying retaining wall actually is starting to look quite nice with all this greenness.

Don't be fooled by this picture, Murat's on the wall only for the pose.  The plants in this wall found their new homes in my hands :) 

Always eager to help!

But after lots of working, a dirty, tired and cranky little boy he became!

And we also started a vege garden.  Right now we're still preparing the ground but we did plant out a variety of vegetable seedlings in some containers on our balconies.  We're now just waiting for the little plants to show themselves before we plant them out into the garden.  We've got carrots, capsicum, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, chives, chillies and some basil.  We also planted a couple of pieces of ginger ... we're not 100% expectant about the tropical veges - chillies and ginger - but we're hopeful.

The soil around here is just awful!  Pretty much dead.   But with some compost and lots of cow poo mixed in, we're hoping it will be good enough for our veges. 

This particular container is the creche for our baby tomatoes, capsicum, cucumbers, basil, eggplant and carrots.

And finally we've been trying our hand at propagating new life from cuttings from our old lavender plant.

I just love lavender.  I really hope these babies grow up big and beautiful!

Despite being raised on a small crop farm, I've never been particularly successful with any kind of gardening so if you hear nothing more from me about this topic, you'll know we didn't experience a happy outcome.  By the way, I planted some tulip bulbs in a pot outside several weeks ago and I'm still sadly awaiting some evidence of life.  But it's not looking good.