My top favourite flowers

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Just for fun
my top 5
favourite flowers and ARE THEY USEFUL?

Rose
 classic, divine aroma, beautiful, a range of colours, although i love my hybrid tea rose.
Are they useful?  They sure are, mine give some great rose hips, I've yet to sue them but i'm planning on doing exactly that soon.
some of the uses.

Passion Flower
This is a hard one.  there are some amazingly beautiful passion flowers out there but not all the vines produce useful fruit.  The most boring flower is the one that produces our fruit, but wow they can be pretty.  To be fair though, even this boring old version of it is really quite a fascinating flower to look at.

blossoms crab apple/cherry. 
I have a crab apple to get my blossom fix, but cherry blossoms are dear to my heart.  So why don't i have a cherry blossom?  Because a cherry tree is HUGE!  I don't have the room for it.  So i went for a smaller option and i can use the crab apples in crab apple jam/jelly.

Carnations 
 I've always loved the aroma, and I've recently found that they are edible which kind of sky rocketed it them this list.

Australian Bottle Brush
I don't like many of our natives but this is one I've always liked.  as for uses, to my limited knowledge they are perfect for attracting bees...that would be the sun of it, but I've not done research into it either.  Still bees are pretty important.

Plans for next years school fair

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Next year i want to contribute towards the school fair and the best way I can see to do that is hit the tip shop up for jars and tins, and then grab some of the extra plants form my yard.

I've left a strawberry in the patch with the rhubarb hoping it'll propagate itself for that very reason.  I have a succulent that i think already has a few babies and hopefully there will be more next year.  And i'm hoping to learn to propagate rosemary and lavender as well.  I also have these hothouses for growing herbs in, i might put them together and use them to sprout herbs for the stall too.  I'm also wanting to establish an aloe patch in the yard somewhere too which of course will provide babies.

It's a lot to learn in 12 months, because I've always found propagating kind of intimidating and if it's going to be a cost effective I need to be careful.  It's exciting though, the idea of being useful and contributing towards something that really was an extraordinary experience.  Their school fair is quite spectacular.




Wish me luck!

Gecko Block Update Oct 2014

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So spring has sprung and i'm still trying to sort things out here.
There's some good news though.
My peaches and nectarines are growing.  These pictures aren't form my tree  butt his is about the stage they are at.

Peach

Nectarine

They are both suffering from leaf curl unfortunately and I've been pulling the leaves off but that doesn't seem to have helped an awful lot.  Treatment seems to need to be done during the dormant stages so we're enduring it for now and hoping the fruit won't be effected adversely by it.

My apples flowered recently too, they too seem to be showing signs of some issue on their leaves, i need to get it to a nursery to see what they say.  But both the golden delicious and granny smith have flowered, i'm excited to maybe get some fruit from them this year as well. 

Last night at my kids school fair i managed to acquire some more edible options for the garden.

Some African Violets which are going to be repotted soon and take up residence in the bathroom.

Here's some Health benefits of eating violets.  

And I've heard candied violets are good.  Pansies being part of the violet family works too.

And some miniature pansies which i'm going to pot for the back porch area, although i need to look up their sun preferences yet.  But i'm excited to try some of these, and other thing.

Pinterest pansy recipes

Beautiful Delicious Pansy Flower Recipes

I also managed to acquire some geraniums for tge girls, nice and cheap and while not edible, my girls  will appreciate the easy to grow nature of them and their flowers

I'm thinking in  pot maybe or perhaps over on the far side of where i want the drive way to be where they can get nice and big.  Perhaps in a pot t begin with, I have some nice unused big ones that they'd look nice in.

I know they don't fit my usual guidelines for a plant in my garden, they aren't in any way edible but heck we all have to bend and break, even on our own rules sometimes.  These will hopefully get my girls to stop asking to buy flowers simply cos they are pink (mostly cos they already have them) and when they get their Christmas presents, being their own garden beds and tools to work it, maybe i'll be able to steer them to more edible flowers or even veggies.

In the beginning.

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Block

In the beginning there was an 'empty' block of land, purchased by a small family back in 2008.  Mum dad and one daughter, another on the way, leaped on the economy crash bail outs that their local govt offered and made moves towards moving into their own place.  With another daughter on the way and their current residence being too small anything bigger seemed like heaven.
After daughter number two was born and time passed the house seemed small, particularly with mum out of work and dad working from home.  The girls had to share a room to make way for an office, and there seemed to be no hint of that dreamed of library in the near future.  But when the topic of moving to a bigger place was raised one thing came to light that made me, the mum, decide that staying where they were was the best option.
"We'd have to start again with the fruit trees."

It's a bizarre story but it's mine and there are a number of facts involved in me choosing to forgo a bigger more roomy house, to stay here and build up the resources we can on what property we have.  We live on a suburban block on what i call a small block, although i have seen people put two houses on a block our size, to my mind it's still small particularly when you have children.  Nevertheless, there does, with some careful planning seem to have worked out to be enough space on our black for me to build what i hope will one day be a mini homestead.
"Homestead: noun, a house, especially a farmhouse, and outbuildings."
OK i can't have a farm, i guess thats why the 'mini' is important to note.  However i can do what i can to provide what i can for my husband children in the most economical manner.  I don't have a job, and while i'm not 'bludging' off the government, this social status of stay at home mother begins to wear thin once both the kids are in full time school which is next year.  
So, what am i going to do to make life easier for my family, financially, seeing as i'm not contributing to its financial health by adding to it?  
So far we have, a peach tree, nectarine tree, golden delicious tree, granny smith tree, strawberry bushes, rhubarb plants, mint, and a massive rosemary bush.  
I've attempted to establish some aloe but  i think in an over zealous attempt to rescue it i may have drowned it, and i have roses, which on their own might not seem terribly helpful but they produce a lovely quantity of rose hips every year.  Newly planted is a lavender plant from which i plan on propagating more.

I've decided to keep a record of how things go from this point on, the different projects we embark on, the trials and tribulations of what i'm affectionately calling gecko block.