My humble garden

We live in a moderately sized regional town on the northern New South Wales coast of Australia. Our town boasts being the most easterly point of the mainland (at low tide) but Byron Bay, 30 km to the north is the widely accepted most easterly mainland point. We live in a small two bedroom apartment on the first floor. Our apartment block is situated on one of the busiest highways in Australia. A bypass for our town was opened in December last year, which thankfully has had a noticeable decrease to noise and pollution. Living in a small apartment means we have no real recreational space or garden, but we do have a sensational north facing balcony. All in all, I love where we live.

You may have caught my weekly photo challenge earlier this week. It was a photo of my garden. I’ve had to adapt to the lack of space and on mothers day last year, I started my humble little garden. It consists of used second-hand polystyrene boxes commonly used for transporting broccoli. We punched holes in the bottom of the boxes to ensure that there was good drainage. In the bottom of each box, I placed a few sheets of newspaper to stop the soil falling out. We purchased some cheap’ish potting mix from a department store and the rest is history!

Aided by the Gardenate Garden Calender which tells me what to plant at what times of the year, our veggie garden has become a reality. Last year we harvested bok choy, all manner of herbs, leeks, tomatoes, salad greens, and more. I have just planted our winter crops which I water daily. The baby leeks in my banner photo are actually from my garden! I have just planted our winter crop and soon we will be feasting on leeks, tomatoes, herbs (thyme, rosemary, parsley, oregano), pak choy, pumpkins, salad greens, broad (fava) beans and capsicums. As a promise of things to come, my heirloom tomatoes produced four beautiful tomatoes ahead of schedule, one of which we picked today!

Stay tuned to this space… I hope to post some photos over time of how my organic crop matures!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Two Subjects

Every Friday, the fine folk over at The Daily Post issue a weekly photo challenge. This weeks challenge is Two Subjects. In their post, they suggest “this “theme” is more of a composition challenge”. This is my entry.

There are actually several things in my post, but the two I wanted to talk about was my garden and my cat.

My Garden

My “garden” (as much as it is) is a collection of reused polystyrene (broccoli) boxes placed on our north facing balcony. We live in a small flat (aka apartment or unit depending on your prospective of the world) in a medium size regional centre. Our home is situated on a busy road, and as such, I have very little to no room for a garden. This is my alternative which happily substitutes our diet with quality fresh produce. I will actually be posting a whole post about my garden in a few days time, so I wont elaborate much more on it today

My Cat

I adore my kitty. Her name is Zoe, but she is more use to her unofficial names of kitty and precious. We got her as a 7 month old from a no kill rescue organisation. She was the oldest kitty there and as she wasn’t a cute playful kitten any more, was always being over looked. She was also shy and nervous which may not have helped her case much. But for whatever reason, on the day of our visit, she decided to jump into my lap and purr. The rest, as they say, is history. We rescued her from “the kitty orphanage”, and she has become a very important member of our family.

She is de-sexed and will never be bred from – we do not want to contribute to the worlds pet overpopulation issues. What struck us about our visit to “the kitty orphanage” that day is how many kittens there were. How many hundreds of kittens went through the doors of that place while our kitty was looking for a home? How many have since produced more unwanted kittens? How many will end up feral or euthanased?

She sees the outside world through windows and from our balcony when I do my daily gardening. Every day, she watches the birds from the windows, making her excited little chattering. I know if she were to get out of the house, she would kill wildlife. For this reason, she is a strictly inside cat. Pet ownership is about responsibility, not to just feed and vaccinate your pet, but also to ensure that it does not leave a massive carbon footprint.

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