Winter is here. Cold nights (and cold days, too, at the moment!), rain and wet, black soil. Every night there’s the smell of woodsmoke from wood-burning heaters in the neighbourhood, and the deciduous trees are all in the last stages of losing their leaves. The sweetgums are glorious, red and purple and gold. Everything is settling in for a good winter’s hibernation. Perfect time to plant tree seeds.
I’ve had some stone pine (Pinus pinea) seeds and cork oak (Quercus suber) acorns in the fridge for a couple’ve months, getting the chill they need to start germinating. They’re going to go into the zone 5 woodland, along with the edible-seeded wattles from the last lot of seeds. The first stone pine seed has just cracked open, so it’s time to plant them out, let them start getting the warmth of the winter sunshine as well as the cold. That was today’s task.
I’ve also planted another load of vegetable seeds, mostly beans and a few different squash. The tomatoes have all sprouted, and realy need planting out, and the eggplant and capsicums have started sprouting as well now. The peas I planted are well on their way to taking over the world, triffid-like, and I’m hoping they survive long enough to produce peas! In the past I’ve had a lot of trouble with snails every time I’ve tried growing peas; they’re just too delicious, apparently.
On the house front, our achievement for yesterday was to put up the second towel rail. It’s been sitting there waiting for weeks, and it finally went up last night. There was much rejoicing. We celebrated with a bubble bath, and chocolate biscuits.
Corvy (the newest addition to the menagerie, a little black kitten we adopted to be a companion for George) fell in the bath, but he wasn’t too fussed about it. No scratching and clawing to get out, he was just a bit unsure because he couldn’t reach the ground – and a bit cold once he got out, until he was dry again. He was more careful after that, though, and stayed next to the heater to finish drying off instead of scrounging for chocolate biscuits.